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Gustavo Petro: From ‘total peace’ to a state of emergency

The Colombian president sought to reach agreements with all of the country’s armed groups, but now finds himself dealing with a conflict that threatens to spread

Gustavo Petro
Gustavo Petro, during the Colombian Independence Day parade, on July 20, 2024 in Bogotá.Diego Cuevas (Getty Images)
Juan Diego Quesada

Gustavo Petro enjoys reading French authors. His daughters have studied at the French Lycée. On his first visit to Paris as president of Colombia, he was amazed by the pomp and ceremony with which he was received. He discovered grandeur with his own eyes. He has held the philosopher Jacques Derrida on a pedestal ever since he read his theory of forgiveness — one can only forgive the unforgivable; forgiving the forgivable is no mystery. So much so that this was the starting point of a policy that he wanted to impose when he came to power, “total peace.” It consisted of sitting down to negotiate with all the armed groups in multiple and simultaneous peace processes, instead of one by one, as had been done historically. It was an idea that bears Petro’s stamp, a combination of ambition and recklessness. His intuition has failed him this time. Where he sought peace, he has found war.

The president declared a state of emergency this week and deployed more than 1,000 military personnel in the Catatumbo region, on the border with Venezuela. He is trying to stop the brutal offensive that the National Liberation Army (ELN), a guerrilla group of Catholic origin and Castro inspiration, has launched against the FARC dissidents, one of its main enemies. To rule the territory means controlling one of the areas with the highest concentration of coca leaves on the planet. The ELN has fought with arms in conventional field combat, but has also carried out selective assassinations in villages. Residents are prohibited from going out on the street. The guerrillas have kidnapped people and held them captive in the mountains. The dead have been transported in trucks that have been unloaded in the middle of a road, in full view of the whole world.

Negotiating with the ELN was one of the first decisions Petro made as president. During his campaign, he said that he would reach a peace agreement with them within three months at the most. Two and a half years later, that possibility seems more remote than ever. The ELN is committing war crimes in the face of the impotence of the government, which has still not given the order to its army to go into combat. However, that will happen soon, if the president’s words are to be taken into account. “The ELN took the path of war and there will be war,” he said. The conflict, so far, has left dozens dead and more than 25,000 people displaced. The man who arrived at the Casa de Nariño, the presidential residence, waving a white flag has now put on the cap of commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces.

The issue has further strained relations with Venezuela. The ELN moves from one side of the border to the other, as it sees fit. And that is one of the main difficulties in combating it. Based on information from its intelligence services, the Colombian government knows that the regrouping of troops carried out by the guerrilla organization to launch this offensive took place on Venezuelan soil. Chavismo has responded with indignation, despite the evidence that this was the case. The defense ministers of the two countries, Iván Velásquez and Vladimir Padrino, met last Friday on the Venezuelan side of the border — on Colombian soil, Padrino could have been detained due to an arrest warrant issued by the United States against him. They agreed to cooperate to pacify the border, a wild territory that neither of the two states is capable of controlling.

This cooperation will not be easy. Firstly, Nicolás Maduro, the self-proclaimed president of Venezuela, is focused on creating defense mechanisms against the risk of an invasion in response to the fraud he committed in the presidential elections. Chavismo claims to have distributed 150,000 troops throughout the country. This is its main concern at the moment, not the ELN. Added to this is the fact that the guerrillas and the Venezuelan army have forged alliances in the past. “In 2021, Maduro and the ELN reached an agreement to clear the border of other groups. They jointly attacked the FARC dissidents and were left alone,” explains León Valencia, a political scientist, writer, and former guerrilla. This offensive responded, according to Valencia, to the Chavista obsession with being attacked across the border by Colombian paramilitary forces, an inherited fear since Álvaro Uribe was president.

When Petro was appointed president, he asked Senator Iván Cepeda, one of his trusted advisors, to take charge of bringing about total peace. His father, a left-wing politician, was assassinated by paramilitaries in the 1990s. Instead of revenge, Cepeda has dedicated his political life to forgiveness and reconciliation. “The worst thing is that the ELN has dealt a lethal blow to its lack of legitimacy,” he explains by phone. “How can they say from now on that they are fighting for the people” Are we facing the end of the government’s peace policy? “Not even thinking about it,” he answers. “Our position is to defend peace in all circumstances, despite the problems and adversities. To think that our security policy is going to focus on military coups is to not understand what we represent.” Petro’s is the first left-wing government in the country’s modern history. In fact, Petro himself was a member of a guerrilla group, M-19, when he was young.

It was not only the ELN that was negotiating with Petro, but also the 33rd Front of the FARC dissidents, who have been attacked. The irony is not lost on Elizabeth Dickinson, senior analyst for Colombia at the International Crisis Group, an independent organization that analyzes armed conflicts. “The ELN’s priority is no longer negotiation or a solution to the historic conflict. What they are prioritizing now are two issues: their unity as an organization, which was questioned, and their tactical position in the conflict,” explains Dickinson. The guerrillas felt that they had lost ground against their enemies and regrouped around a single commander, alias “Pablito,” the man responsible for this offensive that has put the government in check. Pablito does not necessarily respond to the interests of the old guerrillas sitting at the negotiating table with Petro’s special envoys.

The danger now lies in the fact that the conflict will spread to other parts of the country. The intelligence received by the government is that the Gulf Clan, a paramilitary and drug-trafficking group, wants to take advantage of the fact that the ELN has been careless in some regions to attack it head-on. The same is happening with other guerrilla groups and criminal gangs that want to take revenge on them. With his military operation, Petro is trying to avoid a greater catastrophe. The president of peace is now dealing with death and destruction.

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