Colombia and ELN Guerrillas to Continue Peace Talks in May

The peace delegations of Colombia and the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas will meet again between May 20 and 25 in Caracas, Venezuela. This was announced by the parties in a joint communiqué at the end of the extraordinary meeting held in the neighboring country between the 12th and 22nd of this month, following the crisis in the talks. However, there is no mention that this is the beginning of the expected seventh round, but rather some new extraordinary meetings to resolve differences.

The peace table, which began in November 2022, experienced all kinds of problems and threats of rupture during the last year and a half. The most recent was provoked by the guerrilla leadership, when it announced that it was “freezing” the dialogue because of the territorial roundtables that the government of the Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, was carrying out without agreement with the ELN leadership.

In all this time, however, what has become evident is that not all the fronts that make up this guerrilla group are committed to peace. In the words of yesterday’s High Commissioner for Peace, Otty Patiño, the Colombian State will continue peace talks with the ELN structures that have demonstrated their commitment and will militarily combat those that are not committed to peace.

Colombia’s peace in fits and starts

In statements made by Vera Grabe, chief negotiator of the Colombian State with the ELN, the delegations will meet again in Venezuela at the end of next month. “From May 20 to 25, 2024, the peace talks between the Government of the Republic of Colombia and the National Liberation Army, ELN, will meet in Caracas, Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela”, said the veteran ex-guerrilla of the M19, today head of the peace talks between the Colombian State and the ELN.

This meeting in Venezuelan territory will be held to receive the executive report of the participation model, the national participation and recommendations, and to sign the agreement on the first point of the dialogue agenda. It was precisely this point on participation and the ways to do it that provoked the last of the many crises that the dialogue has experienced in its 17 months of existence.

For his part, alias Pablo Beltran, head of the ELN peace delegation, thanked Venezuela, the guarantor countries and the accompanying countries “for welcoming the work of the peace talks table”. Talks resumed in Venezuela on April 13, with an extraordinary meeting to resolve the crisis.

ELN and the alleged differences in the government delegation

On account of the announcements of alleged divisions within the ELN, in an interview to Maria Fernanda Barreto, Pablo Beltran asked the government “where is Jose Felix Lafaurie?”, a member of the government peace delegation that the guerrilla leader identifies not only as the leader of the Colombian cattle ranchers, but “as the presenter of former President Uribe at the table”.

Lafaurie is, in addition to being the president of the Colombian cattle ranchers’ union (Fedegan), the husband of the Democratic Center senator Maria Fernanda Cabal, one of the most critical voices against the government of President Petro. In this sense, it is true that Lafaurie has not participated in this last extraordinary meeting, something that Beltran has taken advantage of to wonder if this fact is not a sign of disagreement with what is being discussed at the peace table.

Rebuilding distrust and broken commitments

According to information provided by the Colombian government delegation, during these extraordinary meetings the cease-fire and territorial transformations will be addressed, as well as substantive decisions on the future of the process.

In this way, the peace process continues in a “frozen” stage, since the issues that are and will be dealt with in a month go along the lines of resolving the crisis of confidence that the parties are experiencing, but do not advance in the agenda of dialogues that was established at the beginning of the seventh round of the talks.

The ELN is currently the oldest illegal armed group in Colombia. Armed since 1964, the guerrillas have approximately 5,800 fighters and a wide network of collaborators, according to military intelligence, which have allowed them to survive over the last forty years.

Although it has a central command, its fronts are autonomous in the military field, which, according to experts, makes negotiations extremely difficult, since some fronts do not abide by the agreements and ceasefire agreements between the leadership and the State. It should also be recalled that the ELN has held peace talks with up to five Colombian governments in the past, and all of them ended up failing.

Inspired by the Cuban revolution and Liberation Theology, the group currently commanded by Eliecer Chamorro Acosta, alias Antonio Garcia, states that it does not seek to obtain an agreement for political participation, as the FARC achieved in its 2016 peace. The ELN, on the contrary, has always advocated a real and profound transformation of the economic structures in the country, something that today it is trying to negotiate with Colombia’s first leftist government, itself led by a former guerrilla.