Iván Mordisco on April 16th in Los llanos del Yari (Colombia). Sebastian Marmolejo (Getty Images)
The government of Gustavo Petro decided on a bilateral ceasefire this Monday. The dissidents call themselves the Central General Staff (EMC), a coalition of groups that are primarily active in the south of the country and are commanded by the pseudonym Iván Mordisco. According to the official document signed by the Minister of Defense Iván Velásquez, it will come into force from this Tuesday, October 17, and will last until January 15, 2024. The decree, signed “on the basis of an agreement to respect the civilian population”, was published shortly before the start of the installation ceremony of the dialogue table with this armed group in Tibú, Norte de Santander.
To monitor the ceasefire, the executive branch also establishes the Oversight, Monitoring and Verification Mechanism (MVMV). This technical body will be composed of representatives of the Government, the EMC, the United Nations Organization Verification Mission in Colombia and the Organization of American States Peace Process Support Mission, as explained in the decree. The MVMV is also supported by the Colombian Bishops’ Conference and the World Council of Churches.
Danilo Rueda, High Commissioner for Peace, with Andrey Avendaño, spokesman for the EMC, in Tibú on October 16.Mario Caicedo (EFE)
The measure ends a tense period of rapprochement between the two parties. Last Tuesday, October 10, as a gesture after this difficult ordeal, the Executive announced the suspension of offensive actions and special police operations against the EMC. The government then explained that it viewed this attitude as “necessary,” “as a mechanism to reduce the impact of the confrontation.” The EMC emerged from members of the defunct FARC’s first front who refused to sign the Havana Accords. It was nurtured by other dissident groups of these guerrillas and, above all, by the forced recruitment of minors.
A few hours before the decree became official, President Petro celebrated it on his favorite social network X. “Today, Colombia hopes to send a message of peace from within its society. We cannot send a coherent message of peace to the world if we kill each other. “A Colombia at peace will be a world power of life,” he wrote on Monday morning. The president’s activities on this social network have sparked international controversy since the start of the war between Israel and the Hamas group due to his controversial tweets and his refusal to condemn the brutal attack by the jihadist militia on October 7. This time, however, he limited himself to talking about local politics.
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With the ceasefire and the start of peace talks, the executive branch and the so-called EMC are trying to push aside the disputes of the last few months. It is the second bilateral termination they have signed. A six-month period began in January, which the government suspended in May after two members of this dissident group killed four young indigenous people in Putumayo department.
Just a few months later, in August, tensions rose again when the EMC bombed a police station, injuring seven police officers in Cauca. After this attack, the Minister of Defense and Vice President Francia Márquez questioned the group’s desire for peace. The state then launched an offensive in the Micay River gorge, in the Cauca area, where the EMC operates and is one of the country’s main coca leaf production enclaves.
The peace table between the state and the EMC is the second set up since Petro launched Total Peace – the president’s project to simultaneously negotiate with the various armed groups in the country. The first took place in November 2022 in Caracas with the National Liberation Army (ELN), the last guerrillas in Latin America. In a second round of negotiations last June, both sides signed a six-month ceasefire that came into effect on August 3. After persistent violence, partly due to clashes between this group and other illegal actors, they again agreed in September to strengthen the state’s presence in Bajo Cauca, southern Bolívar, northeast Antioquia, and Bajo Calima and San Juan on the Pacific coast. all areas of the old Elena presence.
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