A central point of Gustavo Petro’s administration in Colombia, the so-called “total peace” has as a priority an agreement for the demobilization of the National Liberation Army (ELN). The project began to define its contours last week, when the government and the guerrillas announced the resumption of dialogue. What will come from that, however, proves to be quite challenging — even more so than the pact with the FARC.
Well accepted by the political alliance that elected the country’s first left-wing president, Petro’s total peace project provides for different instances of negotiations for political guerrillas and criminal groups linked to drug trafficking.
“It’s obvious that a force that has a political agenda, like the ELN, will be heard differently,” he tells Sheet Defense Minister Iván Velázquez. “Dialogue about commonalities, such as the agrarian question, is something possible — unlike what can happen with a Bacrim [grupo criminoso], to which some amnesty can be offered in cases of minor crimes, in exchange for information. There cannot be the same kind of reparation for everyone.”
The right interprets this proposal for pardons as generalized impunity, while Petro asked, for example, that peasants arrested just for planting coca leaves be amnestied. The “total peace” was one of the reasons that took part of the population to the streets for protests against the leftist on the 26th.
It is true that you cannot reduce violence in the country with peace with the FARC, but not with other groups, and without a new drug policy. With the ELN, Velázquez says that, among other points of dialogue, it will be possible to move forward on the need to redraw the land map in Colombia — inequality in land tenure is a backdrop to the conflicts that began in the 1960s.
No wonder the government announced on Saturday (8) an agreement with the federation of cattle ranchers for the purchase of 3 million hectares of land, at a rate of 500,000 hectares per year, to be transferred to peasants as part of the land reform. “It’s a historic pact,” Petro said.
Formed in 1964, the last Marxist guerrilla with a political agenda still active today, it is present in 9 of the country’s 32 departments and in several Venezuelan states. Until 2016, the ELN had 3,000 members; since then, it has had the support of dissidents from the post-agreement FARC and other criminal factions, as well as members recruited in the neighboring country. According to NGOs that follow the theme, such as Insight Crime, today there are 5,000 effective members.
The group also differs from the FARC for keeping a religious inspiration, linked to Liberation Theology.
The dialogue with the State, now resumed, had been initiated the last time by Juan Manuel Santos, who believed that no peace was possible without agreements with all groups that commit crimes. His successor, Iván Duque, who suspended the talks in 2019, had only a war solution for the conflict. Since then, ELN negotiators have gone into exile in Havana, waiting for negotiations to reopen.
Discussions will pick up where they left off, which can save time. On the other hand, the ELN has shown signs that the “other yes” solution will not be enough —formulated by the runner-up in the election, the populist Rodolfo Hernández—, a reproduction of the agreement with the FARC. The guerrillas, which say they are not a “mini-Farc”, want something designed according to their history and struggles.
“The first thing the government and society need to understand is that the ELN is not weakened or seeking peace as the only way out. That was the situation of the FARC. The ELN does not need an agreement and is a very stable force with control over its areas. “, says to Sheet VÃctor de Currea-Lugo, physician and journalist, author of several publications on the guerrilla. “If they are sympathetic to the process, it is because they are in agreement with reducing violence in the country, but not at any cost — they demand to put their most essential principles on the agenda.”
The group is also not interested in the rocky system of reintegration into society played out with the FARC. Instead, he demands a faster and more effective change from the State so that ex-guerrillas are not treated “as second-class citizens”, as Currea-Lugo sees happening with the ex-Farc, who suffer from low salaries and precarious—leading many to return to crime in a short time.
And, unlike the FARC and the defunct M-19 of which Petro was a member, the ELN does not intend to become a party. His political participation would take place through his influence so that the Constitution could resolve the underlying issues that motivated the Colombian conflict; the main one, that of land distribution.
“More important than being in Congress, the ELN wants to speak to the country and act regionally. The fact that they are leftist does not make them ‘Petrists’. agreements and promises to talk about the conflict,” says Currea-Lugo, who has worked in conflict camps in Colombia, Sudan and Palestine and with organizations such as the Red Cross.
Another obstacle is having Venezuela as one of the guaranteeing countries for dialogue (alongside Cuba and Norway). Many see the choice as nonsense, although the same thing happened in the agreement with the FARC and the participation of Caracas is strategically inevitable – due to the way the ELN operates in the country, with ties to Chavismo.
“[Nicolás] Maduro spent years saying he had nothing to do with the ELN, that he didn’t even know they were in his territory. Now it’s like saying it was all a lie,” said opposition leader Leopoldo López. “What credibility do we give to an agreement that has a dictator like Maduro as its guarantor? Someone with a dirty record in terms of human rights cannot guarantee anything.”
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