Illegal armed groups still cast a long shadow over Colombia, where a string of threats against public figures raises fears of the return of the worst times of violence. The caravan of Juan Guillermo Zuluaga, the governor of the department of Meta, a region hit by the armed conflict in the center of the country, suffered an attack with explosives this Monday afternoon during a tour of a rural area of La Macarena, one of the the areas historically taken over by the extinct FARC guerrilla. Both the political leader of the U Party and his companions were unharmed, according to the Colombian press.
Zuluaga has not yet spoken about the incident, which has been confirmed by military sources to journalists. “We started the third day of the historical tour of the south of Meta. We leave from San Juan de Lozada, heading to La Macarena, more than 140 km. On the way, a red wine with Don Miguel and Mrs. Olga in the village of La Machaca. We are still in the territory listening to our countrymen! 30 vehicles. El Meta is the gateway to the vast territories that make up the Eastern Plains of Colombia.
We begin the third day of the historical tour of the south of Meta. We leave from San Juan de Lozada, heading to La Macarena, more than 140 km. On the way, a red wine with Don Miguel and Doña Olga in the village of La Machaca.
We are still in the territory listening to our countrymen! pic.twitter.com/sOkDhCzwz8
– Juan Guillermo Zuluaga (@JuanGZuluaga) October 11, 2021
The area where the former Minister of Agriculture was attacked during the end of the mandate of Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018) suffers the scourge of the FARC dissidents that departed from the peace agreement sealed five years ago. In particular those headed by Miguel Santanilla Botanche, alias Gentil Duarte, one of the most powerful factions. “We have the biggest challenge in southern Meta, where FARC dissidents, led by Gentil Duarte, want to fill that area of the department with coca, but they don’t have it easy,” Zuluaga had diagnosed in October 2020 in an interview with the newspaper The viewer.
The attack is known in the midst of a pronounced deterioration of security, with recurrent massacres in various parts of the Colombian geography and the incessant murder of social leaders and ex-combatants who signed the peace. To this rarefied climate are added threats against political leaders. The governor of the Caribbean department of Magdalena, Carlos Caicedo, denounced in August that he was forced to briefly leave the country in the face of an imminent plan to assassinate him by the Clan del Golfo, a drug trafficking gang heir to the paramilitary groups. And even the helicopter in which President Iván Duque was traveling was attacked in June with rifle bursts in Cúcuta, in the department of Norte de Santander, on the border with Venezuela, in an action that the authorities attributed to the dissidents.
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