MEXICO CITY (AP) — The National Liberation Army guerrillas and the Colombian government begin the second round of talks in Mexico City on Monday in a new attempt to end the confrontation they have waged for nearly six decades.
At this stage, the parties will have as a central axis to define how the participation of Colombian civil society will take place in the process and the possibilities of agreeing on a bilateral ceasefire. The ELN, founded in 1964, is present in over 200 municipalities in Colombia with a block structure that responds to a central command.
The ceasefire has become a neuralgic point of the negotiation because in January the government decreed it without the agreement of the ELN, generating a crisis within the table. The parties met in extraordinary fashion in Caracas to resolve the incident.
Iván Cepeda, a member of the government’s peace delegation, assured The Associated Press that before discussing the ceasefire and participation, they will settle other outstanding issues such as the agenda. talks and will report on how the respect of the agreements reached in the first cycle, such as a “humanitarian caravan” that has traveled the territories in conflict listening to the population in order to analyze how to defuse violence.
This is the sixth time that the ELN has sat down to negotiate with a government to seek a political solution to the conflict. The current process began in 2017 under the government of Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018), first in Quito and then in Havana. However, the roundtable was suspended for more than three years after the ELN bombed a police academy in 2019, killing 22 people.
The dialogue resumed in November 2022, after the coming to power of Gustavo Petro, the first left-wing president in Colombia and who in his youth was a member of the disappeared M-19 guerrillas.
The new stage of the dialogue has had itinerant places between the countries that guarantee the process. The first cycle took place in Caracas and the second was planned for Mexico City. The dialogues are supported by Norway, Chile, Cuba and Brazil as guarantors and accompanied by the United Nations and the Episcopal Conference of Colombia.
The negotiation was not without debate. The ELN has publicly questioned “total peace”, a policy under which the government seeks to get close to several armed groups and drug gangs simultaneously.
Eliécer Chamorro, alias “Antonio García” and senior ELN commander, demanded different treatment from the so-called “organized armed groups” and the head of the government delegation, Otty Patiño, responded in statements to the press that “total peace” has different treatment depending on the illegal actors and the ELN has always had a “political character”.
Andrés Macías, a conflict and peace researcher at the Externado de Colombia University, told the AP that the ELN as a group that “at least originally” had a political interest in changing the way the state should act, it is interested in not being on the same level as other armed actors like the Clan del Golfo, considered in recent years to be the most dangerous cartel in the country.
The difference is that Petro said he will not negotiate politically with the drug traffickers, but that they will have to submit to justice.