For more than 30 years, six Colombian presidents have tried unsuccessfully to negotiate disarmament and consequent peace with the National Liberation Army (ELN), one of the oldest guerrilla groups in the country. Gustavo Petro is the seventh president to try it and the first from the left with whom the insurgents have sat down at a dialogue table. The talks have been taking place in Venezuela since Monday.
The revitalization of the negotiations occurs in the first hundred days of the legislature and when six years have already passed since the Peace Agreement was signed in Havana with the FARC, the great Colombian guerrilla. Petro is determined to obtain “total peace” and end the violence that for years has stained the South American country with blood. The president intends not only to convince the ELN but also to include other armed groups of different origins in the dialogue.
The executives of César Gaviria (1991), Ernesto Samper (1994-1998), Andrés Pastrana (1998-2002), Álvaro Uribe (2004), Juan Manuel Santos (2014) and Iván Duque (2018). The latter suspended negotiations when the ELN carried out an attack against the Bogotá Police Cadet School in January 2019, which left 22 dead and 68 injured.
When the Caracas dialogue table was set up, the armed group’s chief negotiator, Pablo Beltrán, highlighted the change that Colombia is experiencing both in the streets and at the polls. “We understand this moment and we take responsibility. This table must be an instrument of that wave of change that society is asking for and we hope not to fail that expectation,” said the guerrilla, who joined the group 42 years ago. “We Colombians cannot see ourselves as enemies,” he pointed out.
“The work we have is one of reconciliation, of finding common ground again, of building a nation in peace and equity. That is the bet that we have and that is why we come to this table,” added Beltrán, second in the leadership of the ELN central command, in which the number one is Antonio García. Beltrán has already participated in various attempts to negotiate with the government and is considered the most important political spokesperson for the ELN.
The agenda of the dialogue table has six important points to reach a peace agreement. For the ELN, the participation of civil society in the construction of peace is essential. The armed group demands that the people participate with initiatives and proposals. He considers that this represents a whole dynamic and active inclusive and pluralistic exercise that “allows the erection of a vision of peace that promotes transformations for the nation and the regions.”
Anti-poverty programs
Secondly, for the ELN it is also essential to review the forms and representations of the people in the democratic exercise and for this it proposes guarantees for public demonstration. In the third point, transforming programs are contemplated to overcome poverty, social exclusion, corruption, and environmental degradation in search of equity.
The fourth point is related to the victims. The recognition of their rights to truth, justice, reparation and non-repetition of acts is sought. The fifth step of the agenda talks about the end of the conflict. What would the transition of the insurgents to legality be like, a legal resolution that presents security guarantees for those who lay down their arms, and also guarantees for the exercise of politics, the bilateral ceasefire and the future of weapons left by the warfare. Finally, the sixth refers to a General Execution Plan, which will have control, monitoring and verification mechanisms, and in which civil society, the international community, the Government and the ELN will participate.
Already in the first approximation meeting with representatives of the ELN, the High Commissioner for Peace, Danilo Rueda, with representatives of the ELN, made it clear that the negotiation will be far from resembling the one carried out with the FARC. So nothing was agreed until everything was agreed. Now the formula is “a point that is agreed, a point that is fulfilled,” said Rueda.
No arrest warrants
Petro ordered the negotiation round with the ELN to begin when he had only been in power for a few days. The first measure he took was to suspend the arrest and extradition orders against the leaders of the insurgent group. The ELN responded by releasing nine people it had kidnapped.
Chief among the delegation designated by Petro to resume dialogue is Otty Patiño, who was a former leader of the M-19, a guerrilla group to which the current president of Colombia also belonged. Also participating are María José Pizarro, a senator from the Historical Pact, a coalition that won the last elections and daughter of the ex-guerrilla and top leader of the M-19, Carlos Pizarro Leongómez, assassinated in 1990 when he was a presidential candidate, and Iván Cepeda, also a senator from the Historical Pact. and that he participated in the peace agreement between the Government of Santos and the FARC.
Petro also offered Félix Lafaurie to participate in the dialogue table. The president of the National Cattlemen’s Federation, which had been characterized as the most radical sector of the opposition, accepted. Petro reached an agreement with Lafaurie last month for the purchase of three million hectares of land that the Government will give to peasants and corresponds to what was agreed in the first point of the peace agreement with the extinct FARC.
The ELN has survived thanks to drug trafficking and crime. Founded by the priest Camilo Torres, it also counted among its members the Spanish priests Manuel Pérez Martínez, who would be commander-in-chief in 1978, José Antonio Jiménez Comín and Damingo Laín.
Apart from kidnappings and attacks against civilians and soldiers, the history of the ELN includes three massacres that marked it as a terrorist group for the UN and the European Union. The most cruel and serious occurred in October 1998, in Machuca, in the municipality of Segovia (Antioquia). During the early hours of the morning, the group detonated an explosive charge in the central oil pipeline of Colombia, causing a fire that reached the population and killed 84 people.
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