The leftist character of the Government favors a new negotiation with the ELN guerrillas, which is summed up more favorably than that of the FARC
The Government of Gustavo Petro is already moving towards the “total peace” promised in his campaign for the presidency of Colombia after announcing on Tuesday the resumption of the dialogue that former president Juan Manuel Santos began with the ELN (National Liberation Army), the second group oldest guerrilla in Latin America. On the agenda of these talks, which will begin at the beginning of November, are the participation of civil society, democracy, transformations and security for peace, the recognition of the victims of the conflict and the abandonment of arms. The same issues that were on the negotiating table in 2016.
Petro had only been in power for a few days when he ordered to resume contact with the ELN. The first measure he took was to suspend the arrest and extradition orders that weighed on the leaders of the insurgent group, at the same time that he expressed his commitment to respect the protocol established by Santos. The country has changed a lot since that time. The ELN finds an interlocutor that it has never had before. For the first time, he will negotiate with a leftist government, and perhaps because of that ideological affinity, he shakes hands with the Executive to resume dialogue.
“The new political conditions have made it possible to restart the negotiations. There is a shift in the peace policy and it is likely that the agreements that we are reaching will open up new opportunities,” said Antonio García, one of the ELN leaders. In Caracas, where the first meeting took place, the High Commissioner for Peace, Danilo Rueda, participated, pointing out that “this dialogue is based on a condition of respect for the history and memory of an organization and the 1991 Constitution. We start from what already exists, from what has already been agreed upon. We are not inventing anything », he declared. At the meeting attended by several members of the guerrilla group, there were also representatives of the guarantor countries (Cuba, Norway and Venezuela).
The ELN responded to the decision to suspend the arrest and extradition orders for seven of its members by releasing nine people it had kidnapped. According to the High Commissioner, the negotiation will be far from resembling the one carried out with the FARC in Havana. On that occasion nothing was agreed, until everything was agreed. Now the formula is “a point that is agreed upon, a point that is fulfilled.”
The National Liberation Army was founded in 1964, the same year as the extinct FARC. It was born with a Marxist-Leninist vocation, supporters of the Cuban revolution and with a strong base from the Catholic Church. The priest Camilo Torres belonged to this group, who was the promoter of liberation theology in Colombia and who was professor of sociology at the National University and joined the ELN in 1965 and died in combat a year later. His ideas were followed by many university students.
Militancy of Spanish priests
In this group, to which idealists, radicals, dogmatists have belonged, and in recent times it has subsisted on drug trafficking and delinquency, the Spanish priests Manuel Pérez Martínez, who would be commander-in-chief in 1978, José Antonio Jiménez Comín, were also integrated. and Damingo Lain.
Apart from kidnappings and attacks against civilians and soldiers, the history of the ELN has three massacres that marked it as a terrorist group for the UN and the European Union. In February 1995, Domingo Laín’s front carried out an attack on the Venezuelan marine guard in which 8 infantrymen died.
The biggest attack happened in October 1998, in Machuca, in the municipality of Segovia (Antioquia). The group detonated an explosive charge in the central oil pipeline of Colombia in the early hours of the morning, causing a fire that reached the population and ended the lives of 84 people. His last attack happened in 2019, at the Santander Cadet School and in which 22 young people died and 64 were injured. After this act, the government of Iván Duque refused to negotiate with the guerrilla group.
Topics
Iván Duque, National Liberation Army, FARC Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Catholic Church, UN, European Union (EU), Bogota, Caracas, Colombia, Cuba, Havana, Norway, Venezuela
#Petro #advances #path #total #peace #Colombia