Colombian President Gustavo Petro said Saturday that at least four armed groups, including the main guerrillas and FARC dissidents, have initiated a Christmas truce in the country.
“At this moment both the ELN, the Second Marquetalia, the Central General Staff, the armed groups of the Sierra Nevada and Buenaventura have initiated a unilateral truce,” the president said on his Twitter account, in which he hoped that this truce will be consolidated in “true peace processes.”
The ELN announced this week that a ceasefire began today that will last until January 2, an initiative that has been joined by the Autodefensas Conquistadores de la Sierra Nevada (ACSN), the paramilitary group that controls this vast mountainous jungle on the Caribbean coast.
To these groups is added the gang members who control and terrorize cities like Buenaventura, where they have been more than 80 days with a truce declared where there have been no homicides.
According to the information provided by the president, in which he does not go into details, the two main dissidents of the FARC will also join this Christmas ceasefire: the Second Marquetalia led by “Iván Márquez” and the Central General Staff, of “Iván Mordisco”.
Both structures had declared in recent months a ceasefire in their ranks as a sign to initiate peace talks with the Government, although the Central General Staff, which brings together the largest number of FARC dissident fronts, in recent weeks has undertaken a campaign of attacks against military and police targets especially in the southwest of the country.
For the Government, the demonstration of good intentions to reduce violence is a prerequisite for undertaking any kind of negotiation or dialogue with the armed groups operating in the country.
At the moment, there are only official talks with the ELN, which resumed last month in Caracas after almost four years of rupture of the process and will continue in January in Mexico City.
For the rest of the groups, it remains to be known what formula will be offered by the Petro government, which is committed to “total peace” in Colombia, and that could happen either through political negotiations, such as those with the ELN, or through formulas of submission to justice.
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