Government and ELN negotiators are meeting again this Wednesday at the Eurobuilding Hotel in Caracas for an extraordinary meeting where they will try to resolve the crisis created by Gustavo Petro’s announcement of a ceasefire he did not actually have arranged. The guerrilla leaders took it as an affront that the President had not consulted them and called for this meeting in Venezuela before continuing talks in Mexico. The misunderstanding has for the first time put a stain on the process that Petro is holding on to with all his might to start a process of pacification across the country.
It is not easy to calculate the extent of the crisis. High Commissioner for Peace Danilo Rueda said there was no such thing. However, the ELN has used that word to refer to the moment when the parties that have been negotiating since November a peace deal that will ultimately see the guerrillas lay down their arms after 60 years of fighting the state are going through the cracks. In a statement and in its own magazine, the ELN said Petro did not respect the procedures or timing of the joint negotiating table at which such an agreement must be announced. That means Petro was free, he fought the war alone, a way of acting that suits his personality very much.
And he did it again a few days ago, when on Twitter, where the President expresses very strong opinions, he urged the guerrillas to choose the path of Camilo Torres Restrepo, an ELN guerrilla priest who has become a myth for his defense of the ELN became poor, and not that of Pablo Escobar, the drug trafficker who challenged the Colombian government in the 1990s. It is without a doubt the most emphatic way he has referred to the ELN since his tenure. This thesis he defends defends that over the years the guerrillas have evolved into a criminal armed group that is less and less ideological. Moreover, in reality, the concerns defended by the ELN are almost identical to those put forward in the electoral campaign of the Pacto Histórico, the left-wing coalition led by Petro. The President is urging leaders to conduct politics without guns, to follow the same path he did in his day, from guns to Congress – Petro was a member of a very popular urban guerrilla group called M-19.
This small setback reminds everyone that the negotiations will not be easy. Petro knows that other crises, other mistakes, are just around the corner. A peace agreement is something of a minefield. But he wants that issue to be resolved as soon as possible in Caracas, even if he gets a slap on the hand for rushing along the way. According to those around him, the President increased his concerns about homicide rates in areas of Colombia where the armed conflict has suffered the most. In the end, the places that voted for him the most. He believes there is an urgent need to reach an agreement with all factions, not just the ELN, although this is the most important of all.
At the same time, one of the agreements in the table will be implemented in the next few days. A caravan of delegates, representatives of the international community and civil society organizations will tour the Pacific areas with humanitarian aid. He will visit the poorest and most war-affected regions, where there are communities that cannot go abroad because they are caught in the middle of clashes between guerrillas, paramilitaries and the army. With no police or army, the procession is escorted by indigenous guards who do not carry firearms. “The aim is to carry out a first diagnosis of the humanitarian situation in this region, in order to determine under what conditions the communities can be released from detention in the near future or, in cases where they have been forced expulsion, return to their territories under the Principles of voluntariness, dignity and security,” it said in a statement.
These kinds of initiatives are a first in a peace process, where historically agreements are not implemented until after they are finally signed – the maxim that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. Here, on the other hand, they are developed by consensus. This desire to stick with reducing homicides caused Petro to make a mistake when he announced the truce. Your haste is your forte in processes that tend to take forever, but also the impulse that can lead you to make mistakes.
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