The Colombian government and the ELN rebels signed a ceasefire agreement in Cuba on Friday.
Preparations for the ceasefire, which will come into full force on August 3 and last for 180 days, must begin immediately, the parties said at a joint press conference.
The ceasefire announcement is good news for the embattled Piotr, who is facing charges at home for financial irregularities in his campaign that threatens other aspects of his planned political and social reforms.
The left-wing Petro, who attended Friday’s ceasefire announcement, promised early in his tenure an ambitious plan for total peace in the South American country, long plagued by internal conflicts.
Negotiations in Havana stalled in mid-May after Colombian President Gustavo Petro questioned the unity of the group’s leadership, prompting a rebuke from the ELN, who at the time said the talks had entered a “crisis”.
“These efforts to find peace are a light of hope that conflicts can be resolved politically and diplomatically,” Pablo Beltran, the rebels’ lead negotiator, said at the ceremony.
The talks were originally supposed to end with an official ceremony on Thursday, but were put on hold as the parties asked for more time to work out the final details. Petro traveled to the island for the ceremony, saying it could mark an “era of peace” in Colombia.
Negotiations between the parties were halted in 2019 when rebels detonated a car bomb outside a police academy in Bogota, killing 21 people.
Following this incident, the government of then-President Ivan Duque (2018-2022) issued arrest warrants for ANO leaders in Cuba in connection with peace talks. But Cuba refused to extradite them, arguing that doing so would jeopardize its status as a neutral country in the conflict and violate diplomatic protocols.
Negotiations resumed in November shortly after he became Colombia’s first left-wing president.
Petro insisted on what he calls a “complete peace” that would demobilize any remaining rebel groups in the country, as well as drug gangs. He wondered if the ELN’s top leaders had complete control over the younger generation of commanders, who he suggested were more focused on the illegal drug trade than political causes.
ELN was founded in the 1960s by union leaders, students and priests inspired by the Cuban Revolution. They are Colombia’s largest remaining rebel group and were notoriously difficult for previous Colombian governments to negotiate with.
In 2016, the Colombian government signed a peace agreement with the larger group FARC, ending a fifty-year conflict in which some 260,000 people were killed.
But the violence continues to affect the country’s rural areas, where the ELN is fighting the Gulf clan and holding FARC factions for control of drug trafficking routes and other resources.
