The government and ELN guerrillas meet in Mexico to renegotiate a final ceasefire in a conflict that has left more than 10,000 dead in the past 37 years
The flagship project of Colombia’s current president, Gustavo Petro, to reach a peace deal with National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas is once again on the table. On Monday, talks, which will continue for the next three weeks, resumed and plans are being made to work towards a bilateral ceasefire. An earlier process with the Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC), led by former President Juan Manuel Santos nearly six years ago, pressured Petro to achieve the dissolution of this second insurgent group.
Mexico has received the delegations. The international supervision will be in Sweden, Germany, Switzerland and Spain. The host country itself, Venezuela, Chile, Norway and Brazil are also guarantors. Almost three months after the first meeting, held on November 22, the representatives of the two sides met again despite the tensions between them. In January, the ELN announced that the process had entered “crisis” over an order from the president for a ceasefire based on an alleged agreement that the guerrillas were forced to deny. Petro had to cancel the decree a day after publication.
The government is keen to achieve the target. However, the ELN is in no hurry. Stopping the hostility of this guerrilla, which has claimed more than 10,000 casualties over the past 37 years, is no easy task. The first peace process of 2016 with the FARC set the precedents for the mistakes that must be resolved on this occasion. While it was a success and the disintegration of the troops was agreed, it also spawned dissidents and independent armed groups that still plague the country. Petro’s work extends beyond the ELN if he is to achieve his flagship proposal of “total peace”.
Negotiations are back on track after being suspended during the administration of former President Iván Duque. A four-year period in which the meetings were put aside and replaced by a strategy of armed repression against the guerrillas. The ELN even criticizes that the current government is also “acting like the traditional one” and has denounced attacks by the armed forces.
The guerrillas have made it clear that their goal is not to engage in politics, unlike the FARC, but to demand structural changes in the situations that they believe led to the establishment of the rebels. They remember taking up arms to tackle the root causes of the socio-economic and political crisis that still afflicts the South American country. Born in 1964, the guerrilla, with a Marxist-Leninist orientation, is considered a terrorist organization by the EU, the United States, Canada and countries in the region such as Peru or Colombia itself, which have investigated its involvement in drug trafficking crimes , extortion, kidnappings, murders and arms trafficking.
In the coming days, the representatives of the government and the ELN meeting in Mexico will determine the formula so that “society can participate in the building of peace”. For the first time, citizens and social actors are taken into account in the process; an implication harshly criticized in the previous dialogues in Havana.
Source: La Verdad
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