Colombia and the ELN are negotiating a peace that is increasingly difficult to achieve

Difficult negotiations between Colombia and National Liberation Army (ELN), the last active guerrilla in the country of coffee. Last Monday, the second round of negotiations in search of a peace agreement was inaugurated in Mexico City, which will last for three weeks. In that short period, tangible events will have to be produced, believes Otty Patiño, the head of the negotiating team articulated by the left-wing government. Gustavo Petro. This will not be an easy task as the rebel group, unlike the Executive, does not seem to be in a hurry to reach an agreement.

The relationship between the two sides is much more distant than when the first round of contacts took place in November. Petro stirred up the guerrillas on New Year’s Eve, when he announced a bilateral ceasefire that was rejected by the ELN just three days later, embarrassing the government for days by announcing the pact without prior agreement.

“OR [eligen] the path of father Camilo Torres Restrepo or the path of Pablo Escobar, the president told the guerrilla leaders through social networks, mentioning one of the priests of the forerunner of the liberation theory, who joined the ELN in the 60s, and the biggest drug dealer. in the history of Colombia.

Peter’s message on Twitter is linked to another post by Senate President Roy Barreras, who is of Galician origin. “Either they will go down in history as builders of total peace or they will go down in history as guerrillas that degenerated into drug trafficking”Barreras said.

Then there was a cross-talk between the statements of the government representative and the leader of the rebellion, alias Antonio García, who criticized Peter’s total peace project through social networks, with which the president intends to finish off the remaining armed groups in the country. . The guerrilla commander criticized the fact that his group was considered on the same level as the others.

Spirits calmed down in mid-January, at a bilateral meeting in Caracas, but it is palpable that neither the government nor the ELN started this round of negotiations in Mexico with the same enthusiasm.

Petro is working hard to achieve a ceasefire to reduce violence in the regions and sell political success, but the guerrillas continue military operations against other groups in the territories, and the leader of their negotiating team, alias Pablo Beltrán, just said on Monday that this round of talks would is about the “preparations” for that ceasefire.

The fact that The ELN does not have such a unified leadership as the extinct FARCwhich signed a peace pact with the government of President Juan Manuel Santos in 2016.

Fundación Ideas para la Paz warns that ELN negotiators in Mexico do not represent all sectors of the group and could be saboteurs of any agreement reached, as there are several structures in this rebellion, some of which have too much autonomy or lack of discipline. Even if a ceasefire is reached, internal violations could occur, analysts warn.

Another aspect that could make the negotiations difficult is the ELN’s insistence on the participation of Colombian society in the negotiations, an aspect that is difficult to implement in practice and which is barely outlined for now.