The peace process between the Colombian government and the ELN will be put to the test in Mexico over the next three weeks. The two delegations will start the second round of talks on Monday with the aim of reaching the first concrete agreements. The first meeting last December in Venezuela served to take the temperature of the process and showed that negotiations to end a six-decade conflict will not be easy. The ceasefire, which was not possible then, is at the center of the discussion today. Whether you achieve it or not will measure the success of this round.
The two leaders of the delegations addressed the issue that has so far strained communication the most. The ceasefire is the first goal of President Gustavo Petro, who from the start wanted to give the process more speed than the guerrillas seem to show.
The head of the government delegation, Otty Patiño, assured at the press conference that opened this second round that the President’s mandate is for the dialogue table to be “deeply imaginative” to “reinterpret the ceasefire”. This means that in addition to reducing hostilities and violence, it improves the lives of communities in conflict zones. The idea is to agree on “permanent relief rather than temporary ceasefires”. Pablo Beltrán, leader of the guerrilla group at the table, was less taciturn than Patiño, confining himself to reporting that the aim was to agree on preparations for a bilateral ceasefire.
The President is in a hurry to complete a cessation of hostilities which he believes will reduce the number of killings in the regions and lay the stone on which total peace must be established, the project aimed at that all armed actors in the country hand over their weapons. This desire created the first crisis in the process with the ELN, after Petro announced on the last day of last year a non-ceasefire agreement that angered the guerrillas.
The image that the two delegations wanted to show today in Mexico City, at the headquarters of the Inter-American Conference on Social Security, where the talks will take place, is that all friction has been overcome and that progress is being made in complete harmony. Beltrán assured that the final negotiation agenda will also emerge from this cycle and the formula will be designed to include civil society participation in the process and agreements “that will be implemented immediately” in order to support the regions and the people of the country to help most suffer from the conflict.
Under the heading “Mechanisms for Society’s Participation in Peace-building in Colombia,” the parties must find a way to bring the voice of the people to the table. Unlike the FARC, the ELN has no ambitions to found a political party, but is convinced that the discussion must lead to concrete changes in society. The negotiators understand that it is a matter of including the opinion of the people in the reforms that the government is conducting. This sounds self-evident, but it is not easy to specify. Petro tried some popular dialogues early in his tenure, much in the style of Álvaro Uribe in his time, which were not very successful. Words are lost along the way.
Newsletter
Current affairs analysis and the best stories from Colombia, delivered to your inbox every week
GET THIS
Patiño said this Monday that the method she guides is that whatever is agreed at the table is implemented in the territories. “That forces a certain modesty of the table, because what is agreed can always be improved. The table is not omnipotent or infallible (…) It is necessary to empower communities so that they are also co-authors in building a new state,” he affirmed. In his mind he was certainly thinking of the agreement signed in 2016 with the FARC, which was negotiated in Cuba with much greater secrecy.
Internally, the ELN, as its supreme commander Antonio García has publicly stated, under no circumstances wants to be compared to other organized armed groups. The guerrilla was founded 60 years ago by a handful of enthusiastic students of the Cuban revolution. Along the way, the organization has faced many situations, including a possible extinction, but has come so far as to be the last active guerrilla in Latin America. Over the past decade, authorities have repeatedly linked her to drug trafficking. However, their leaders emphasize their political character, their spokesperson for civil society, and that is the treatment they wish to receive.
The guerrilla negotiator also insinuated himself to the president this Monday by alluding to one of the central themes of Petro’s speech: the war on drugs. Beltrán called for “a moral pact” to keep the country afloat after the “fatal damage” caused by five decades of failed US-led anti-drug strategy and congratulated Latin American initiatives of Mexico and Colombia on their efforts “alternative” policy according to an anti-drug strategy.
The next 21 days must start specifying all of these things to show that the process is happening. Peace with the guerrillas is fundamental to the Colombian president’s overall peace plan, although the government must tread carefully.
Parallel to the negotiating table with the ELN, the government has started talks with two other groups it recognizes as political, the EMC FARC and the Segunda Marquetalia. They are made up of groups of combatants who did not join the previous peace process – that of the FARC in 2016 – or deserted along the way. They are known as dissidents. Peace commissioner Danilo Rueda has already met the leader of the Segunda Marquetalia, Iván Márquez, who became a guerrilla spokesman in Havana and later returned to the jungle after feeling prosecuted despite his demobilized status. Márquez is currently in Venezuela recovering from an attack that official sources say was carried out by a group of mercenaries who wanted a bounty on his head. According to the same sources, he has lost sight in one eye and some parts of his face are paralyzed.
There is a third assumption for criminal gangs that are not political in nature, such as that of La Gata’s son. They literally open spaces of rapprochement and conversation to create legal mechanisms that allow accountability to society and the destructuring of the economic and criminal motivations that sustain them. This section includes the Clan del Golfo, a paramilitary group dedicated to drug trafficking, the Sierra Nevada Self-Defense Groups, and several urban violence groups. The most obvious example of the latter was found in Buenaventura, where two factions that had been in conflict for years vowed not to assassinate, torture, or make any of their enemies disappear. The drop in violence has been dramatic.
Subscribe here to the EL PAÍS newsletter on Colombia and receive all the latest information about the country.