COLOMBIA

Colombia's 2016 peace accord with FARC ended the longest armed conflict in the Western Hemisphere, but nobody signed a peace treaty with the trauma inside Colombian men. Ex-combatants — guerrilleros and paramilitaries alike — re-enter a society that has no framework for integrating men whose primary skill set is warfare. The reintegration programs focus on vocational training and economics but offer almost nothing for the psychological devastation of decades spent killing and watching friends die in the jungle.

The narco legacy adds another dimension: Pablo Escobar created a masculine template that persists decades after his death. In Medellín's comunas, the traqueto (drug dealer) archetype offers young men what the legitimate economy can't — money, respect, women, and power. Netflix's Narcos glamorized this globally, but for men in Quibdó, Tumaco, and Buenaventura — Colombia's poorest, most violent, predominantly Afro-Colombian cities — the narco economy isn't entertainment, it's the only employer. Meanwhile, coffee-region men face a different crisis: generations built identity around the cafetero tradition, and as climate change and global price fluctuations make coffee farming unviable, these men lose not just income but ancestral purpose.