This Tuesday, the teams of the Petro executive and the terrorist guerrilla will face each other again in Havana
It is an image that has been repeated since 1991. An ELN delegation and another from the Colombian government intend to: a political agreement End the armed conflict. All previous attempts have failed and citizen disapproval of this terror group remains high – 88% in the latest Gallup poll. But 55% still agree that the negotiation It is the best way to put an end to a guerrilla that has existed for more than half a century. Sow misery and tragedy in Colombia.
This Tuesday the teams of President Gustavo Petro and antonio garcia, the supreme leader of the ELN, will again be sitting across from each other in Havana. They continue in Cuba third cycle of a long process that started in the administration of Juan Manuel Santoswithout making any progress, and then broke Iván Duque.
Petro at Nariño Palace hasn’t produced the expected results either, as the head of state promised during the last election campaign that if he wins, he would make peace with the ELN three months after taking power. at present has only reaped setbacks and arguments with Garcia and his henchmen.
In December last year, the President informed the country via Twitter that an agreement had been reached armistice and García didn’t just deny him with words. Even with facts.
The Chavista Refuge
The subversive leader, a refugee in Chavista Venezuela, explained that putting down arms is not a priority or the main port of arrival for the peace process. Meanwhile, on Colombian soil, his men massacred nine soldiers in cold blood while they slept.
The brutal attack that took place in the region in March katatumboin eastern Colombia, deepened skepticism about the guerrillas’ true desire for peace, as evidenced by the fact that 42% of people polled by Gallup do not approve of the negotiated path.
With Petro at the Nariño Palace, the delegations have held meetings in Caracas and in the Mexican capital, and the only result has been the so-called Mexico Accord: both parties recognized the need for a “major national agreement” to “drive forward the changes that the Colombian society needs”.
The Elenos aspire to make it the starting point of the new talk cycle, as they always strive to talk to different social groups, forge alliances, and transform the land.
The guerrillas don’t believe in the high percentages of social rejection that opinion polls show every year. He thinks they are just as misrepresented by the economic powerhouses as the elders FARC. Until they went to the polls as a party and hardly came 52,000 votes the more than 20 million who supported the remaining political formations.
But the government needs to do more than travel around Colombia, it needs to reduce violence and show results soon. For this reason, she is aiming for a bilateral ceasefire, which the ELN has not yet wanted to endorse.
Not even the dust that Antonio García stirs up with his controversial opinionsnow that it has been included in social networks.
“We have made it clear that the ELN does not recruit. People join voluntarily flood of allegations of victims and evidence from the Family Welfare Institute and other independent bodies.
His words, which deserved widespread rejection, found the surprising support of the government’s chief negotiator, Otty Patinoformer M-19 guerrilla.
“Forcibly, I don’t know. I really don’t know,” he told a group of journalists, a phrase that drew countless criticisms.
“To deny that the ELN recruits girls, boys and youth is to deny an obvious and worrying reality for those who live in the areas,” he said. Carlo Camargo, Ombudsman. “This guerrilla has committed multiple and systematic acts of forced recruitment of minors in the country.”
constant complaints
One of the most recent complaints was filed in April by the mayor of Yarumal, in the Antioquia department. the ELN tried to recruit 15 minors with promises of money. This time they were unsuccessful, but usually they take them away and when the guerrillas repent they don’t let them return to their homes.
He also Kidnapping of an 86-year-old rancher last week in Curumaní, Department of Cesar, and that of four other seventy-year-olds in the previous months, for whose release they are demanding large sums of money from their families, making it clear that old age does not slow down their barbarism, it is another factor that weakens them the credibility in the dialogues with the ELN.
“We ask for commitment and seriousness from the ELN because they have increased their terrorist and criminal actions in recent years. It’s a mockery of the country,” he told EL MUNDO Luis Naranjo, a young politician from Arauca, a department on the border with Venezuela, who is threatened with death by the ELN. “Our region is the stronghold of these guerrillas and what we want is for it to be left in social, economic and political calm. And that those who want to vote in the municipal elections (October) can do so without the ELN bandits attacking the candidates, they declare themselves enemies“.
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