‘Pablito Arauca,’ the ELN military leader sabotaging peace in Colombia

Within the ELN, among the highest ranks where veteran commanders like Pablo Beltrán or Antonio García share seats, they are aware that Gustavo Aníbal Giraldo, known as “Pablito Arauca,” is perhaps the only one who can vehemently stop or challenge the decisions of the historical leaders of the last remaining guerrilla organization in Colombia. They say this with the certainty that Pablito is the third in command, and that he has at least 2,000 men under him, including combatants and militiamen, the largest single structure within the ELN. In addition, his force has armed control on the border with Venezuela in the northeast of the country, from Santanderes and Arauca to the eastern plains. His name is in the judicial files for the most high-profile acts of violence committed by this armed group, two of which have put in check the efforts of the Colombian government to achieve peace with the ELN.

Pablito was behind the 2019 attack on the General Santander School in Bogotá, in which 22 police cadets were killed and which led to the breakdown of the peace talks with the government of Iván Duque. He was also behind the murder of Pedro Antonio Bohórquez, Saravena’s municipal development secretary, in 2014; the ELN attack on an electoral mission in Boyacá, in which 12 uniformed officers were killed in 2015; and, more recently, the attacks in Catatumbo, which in less than two weeks have left over 50,000 people displaced and 52 dead.

President Gustavo Petro said that over several months, at least 1,000 armed men were mobilized from Arauca to Catatumbo, dressed in civilian clothes, to strengthen the armed group and launch new attacks amid the wave of violence that has been experienced in the subregion. “The responsibility for this action falls mainly on alias “Pablito.” For national sovereignty, the ELN must be defeated, as must any force that shares its objectives,” the president wrote on his social networks.

Although Pablito is one of the most powerful ELN leaders and has the greatest military strength within the organization, he has never been part of any ELN peace delegation, despite his multiple attempts to lay down his arms. Carlos Velandia, a former member of the guerrilla group and coordinator of the Peace and Conflict Observatory of the National University, describes Pablito as the person who “leads all the ELN military operations in the country.” He joined the ELN in the department of Arauca in the mid-1980s, at the age of 14, and became, according to Velandia, “the second generation after the founders.” Andrés Aponte, an armed conflict researcher, says that he represents “the most pragmatic generation of the ELN and the most militarized when it comes to pursuing its objectives.”

Since that time, and due to Arauca’s geographical proximity to Venezuela, his participation in the war began to overlap the border. In 1994, Pablito began to participate in the first ELN military actions in Venezuela, such as the attack on the Cutufí border military base, located in the state of Apure. Months later, in 1995, the ELN took over the naval post of Cararabo to steal weapons, an action in which eight officers were killed and which is recorded as the worst massacre perpetrated by the Colombian guerrilla organization in Venezuelan territory. “At the time it was said that [Hugo] Chávez had given the ELN that weaponry but that is not true, Pablito took it,” Velandia says by phone.

With these two attacks on the border, Pablito began to consolidate his military actions in both countries and, in 2000, he was appointed commander of the Domingo Laín front, the largest ELN structure with a presence in the department of Arauca. For Velandia, his military power is such that in recent decades the guerrilla group has managed to concentrate 70% of its power in this border zone, which Pablito has led for almost four decades. In 2005, the ELN’s central command invited him to form part of this group of political-military leaders, in which the most important decisions for the organization are made. Aponte warns that this gesture marked a precedent because “there has always been reticence between Domingo Laín — the most military wing of the ELN — and the central command, its most political structure.” Those who know the intricacies of the ELN say that he is, with certainty, the only commander who dares to contradict decisions made by the founders of the guerrilla group, and that is why he was appointed.

In 2007, when he was already on the radar of the authorities, he was captured by the military in Bogotá but barely a year later he escaped from prison in Arauca. According to intelligence reports, after his escape he moved his operations center to the state of Apure, in Venezuela, where the man who is the brain and military backbone of the ELN in Colombia remains. The authorities, who have placed him at the highest level of the ELN military organization, at the time offered four billion pesos (almost $1 million) for information leading to the discovery of his whereabouts. “He knows Venezuela well and has always traveled easily and controlled it,” says Velandia.

Despite his power, Pablito’s name has always been in the shadow of the ELN’s most important decisions. In 2015, his appointment as a member of the central command was ratified, with the intention that his participation would mean the representation of the Domingo Laín front, which has always been against peace negotiations and apathetic to the decisions of the rest of the command. What has always been clear, according to Velandia, is that Pablito has never been interested in the peace agenda either. “It is not within his interests and he has always been the loose cannon of the organization because he has all the military power, but his position is shocking for the political and conservative wing, of which Pablo Beltrán or Antonio García are part.”

According to Velandia, if a peace agreement were signed with the guerrilla group, whether during Petro’s government or any other, “Pablito would be unlikely to accept it and 70% of that faction could continue to be armed on the Venezuelan border.” He says that this has always been the ELN’s Achilles heel. Aponte also explains this, pointing out that given the sociopolitical conditions in Venezuela, the ELN “acts more like a sort of paramilitary group than a guerrilla organization, because of its sympathy to the [Nicolás Maduro] regime.” Not only for ideological reasoning, but also due to economic conditions. ““The Venezuelan state, due to the oil crisis, has its eyes on the mining arc and, being that it was in the hands of other criminals, they know how to carry out this type of regulation well and with all the experience. In that area, the ELN is very useful for them,” he points out, as the ELN regulates the mining exploitation zones in their region of influence. “The ELN has more to gain in Venezuela than here, because there they will have the state they would like to have in Colombia; for them it would be maintenance of the status quo.”

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition