At the beginning of Tuesday night, during the inauguration of a new magistrate in the Superior Council of the Judiciary, President Gustavo Petro has left the main negotiation of his policy of total peace in suspense. “The consequences of the actions and the flow of history today bring us a dramatic event, repeated in our last years. A dump truck loaded with explosives that injured 27 young people and killed two, according to the information I have, placed by the ELN, with whom we were talking about peace. And obviously, as happened that time in another place here nearby, in the Police school, where many Police agents, second lieutenants, who were studying there died, well, it is practically an action that closes a peace process,” he said. He compared the attack that occurred in the morning in Arauca with the attack carried out by the same National Liberation Army on the General Santander Police School in Bogotá in 2019. A car bomb not only left 23 police officers dead and more than 100 injured, but also broke up the bogged down negotiations that were still formally in force between the Government and the oldest armed guerrilla group in Latin America.

The events to which the president referred occurred in the early hours of Tuesday, at the military base of Puerto Jordán (Arauca), between the municipalities of Tame and Arauquita. Army sources confirmed to this newspaper that an attack had left 28 soldiers wounded, two of whom died – one was from Valle del Cauca and the other from the department of Caquetá – after being hit by improvised explosive devices, known as tatucos. The Army and the Government attribute the attack to the ELN, which has not claimed responsibility for the attack and has not responded to the president.

The attack occurs in the midst of the prolonged crisis at the negotiating table between the Government and the ELN, the most solid bet of the president’s total peace policy, which consists of negotiating simultaneously with all the armed groups that coexist and confront each other. Peace with the ELN was one of his campaign flags, and the installation of the table was one of the first decisions of his mandate, after resuming diplomatic relations with Venezuela, one of the countries guaranteeing the process. These dialogues were formally installed on November 21, 2022 in Caracas. At that time, it was striking that Petro did not only appoint politically similar people to the negotiating team, but also placed José Félix Lafaurie, the president of the Federation of Cattle Ranchers of Colombia (Fedegán) and close to the opposition party Centro Democrático, led by Álvaro Uribe Vélez.

In 2023, while negotiations were moving forward, the guerrillas continued their attacks. On March 9, an attack on an Army patrol in Catatumbo (Norte de Santander) resulted in the death of nine soldiers. The next day, however, the two parties announced the achievement of having a negotiating agenda, criticized for being broad and gaseous, but which gave scope to the talks. From that moment on, the rush to sign a bilateral ceasefire began to be the priority on the agenda of the talks, which had been moved to Havana (Cuba). On August 3, the two parties agreed to an unprecedented truce for 180 days that was generally maintained and even extended several times, despite events such as a confrontation between the guerrillas and the military forces in September 2023. That occurred precisely in Arauca, one of the areas where the guerrillas were most established and where the main fractures in the table have occurred.

The difficulties continued, despite the extension of the ceasefire until February 2024. Two points in particular have entangled the process: the ELN’s refusal to abandon kidnapping, and the negotiation between the Government and a dissident front, Comuneros del Sur. This led to the talks being suspended last May, amid mutual accusations of non-compliance. Four months have passed since then, and 45 days since the ceasefire extension ended. Carlos Velandia, former ELN commander and peace monitor, has confirmed to this newspaper that, in the last six weeks, this guerrilla group has committed three attacks on the Public Force in the nearby Catatumbo region that left one soldier dead; six attacks in Arauca with two police officers and two soldiers dead; and nine explosions of oil pipelines in the same department: six at Caño Limón-Coveñas and three at Bicentenario.

In mid-August, the government indicated in a press conference that the process was going through its worst crisis, but clarified that the State has always shown a willingness to move forward, and that it was the ELN that would determine the future of the process. “They have the responsibility to say how we continue. We are willing and at no time will we break off the dialogue,” said the pro-government senator Iván Cepeda, a member of the team and a confidant of the president. “We do not have a conduct of breaking off because that does not serve anyone (…). The ELN now has to respond and say what it wants,” he added. That statement recalled that a break would have a political cost that the Executive, committed to negotiations for total peace, has sought to avoid.

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Senator Cepeda told this newspaper on Tuesday that the office of the High Commissioner for Peace will not make any statements today. There will be, he indicated, an official announcement on Wednesday. The president has not yet clarified the scope of his words, and no source from the high government has confirmed whether the feared rupture has occurred.

So far, the only one who has referred to the issue is Juan Fernando Cristo, Minister of the Interior, defender of a negotiated solution to the conflict and victim of the ELN, since that guerrilla group murdered his father in 1997. In a statement to the media, minutes after the presidential speech, the veteran politician clarified that the decision to lift the table is solely the responsibility of the president and the high commissioner, Otty Patiño. But he agreed with a break that, in his opinion, Petro had already announced. “I believe that the president’s speech is absolutely clear. A negotiating table cannot continue amid the blood of our wounded soldiers, of the civilian population. The ELN did not understand the message or the government’s total peace policy. It has lost a historic opportunity to negotiate peace, it insists on violence, it insists on harming Colombians.”

Analyst Luis Fernando Trejos, an expert on the Colombian conflict, agrees that the presidential speech is an announcement of the end of talks that had already been on ice for four months. “The ELN achieved its objective of making the government break off negotiations and assume that political cost. This guerrilla group leaves with 28 signed agreements and the methodology of its national convention and will wait for the electoral results of 2026 while it consolidates itself in Venezuela,” he wrote on his X account.

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