War in Catatumbo
Since January, the Catatumbo region has been ravaged by a war between the ELN guerrilla and FARC dissidents, affecting over 90,000 people. It sealed the end of Petro's total peace strategy.
On January 16, the ELN guerrilla launched a bloody offensive against FARC dissidents in the Catatumbo region in Norte de Santander, killing over 100 people and displacing 60,000 people from their homes—a level of violence that hasn’t been seen in the country for many years. President Gustavo Petro has declared a state of internal disturbance in the region and suspended peace negotiations with the ELN.
The violence in Catatumbo is one of the country’s most serious humanitarian crises in recent memory. It also buries Petro’s ambitious paz total (total peace) strategy, with the risk of a broader conflagration of violence in other regions.
Context (1900s-2016)
The Catatumbo region is located in the Norte de Santander department in northeastern Colombia, extending between the Cordillera Oriental and the Venezuelan border. The Catatumbo river, which gives its name to the region, empties into Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela. In Colombia, the region includes 11 municipalities: Ábrego, Convención, El Carmen, El Tarra, Hacarí, La Playa de Belén, Ocaña, San Calixto, Sardinata, Teorama and Tibú (other definitions may vary). The Catatumbo is subdivided into three subregions, reflecting the topography of the region, from the flat areas around Tibú and Sardinata to mountainous regions towards the Cordillera Oriental. It is rich in natural resources such as oil and coal, and its soils are suitable for diversified agriculture.
The region’s settlement is fairly recent, beginning with the discovery of oil at the Barco concession in 1905. The oil boom, which lasted until the 1960s, led to rapid population growth, the violent displacement and dispossession of the indigenous Motilón-Barí people and the rise of organized labour movements in the oil industry. In the 1950s, peasants fled partisan violence towards peripheral frontier regions in a process of spontaneous and anarchic colonization. As part of agrarian reform policies in the 1960s, the government promoted the ‘directed’ settlement of the region and the adjudication of vacant public lands to peasants. However, as elsewhere, the achievements of agrarian reform were limited and the state neglected the region’s agricultural development, a context which later allowed for the growth of coca cultivation, a more profitable crop.
The region’s history has long been characterized by the absence or limited presence of the state—the provision of goods and services to local inhabitants had from the beginning left in the hands of the foreign-owned oil companies. The state’s response to strikes, protests and peasant activism was almost invariably repression, with the militarization of the region under extraordinary ‘state of siege’ powers, mass arrests and the persecution of social protest.
In this context, guerrilla movements found fertile ground in the Catatumbo. The ELN (Ejército de Liberación Nacional) was the first group to appear, beginning in the late 1970s. The FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) entered the region in the early 1980s, as did the smaller EPL (Ejército Popular de Liberación), originally of Maoist inspiration. In the absence of the state, the guerrillas enjoyed genuine popular support and acted as a substitute for the state, coercively regulating daily life and social dynamics, building community infrastructure (roads etc.) and imposing—violently and forcefully—their authority. In the 1980s, the Caño Limón-Coveñas pipeline, which opened in 1986 became a prime target of sabotage by the ELN, which became known for its attacks against oil infrastructure.
The civilian population became trapped between two hostile adversaries, the guerrillas and the military, instrumentalized and forced to obey by the former and stigmatized as ‘collaborators’ by the latter. Social movements, community leaders and left-wing parties like the UP, which enjoyed significant electoral success in the late 1980s, were likewise stigmatized and tarred by association with the guerrillas.
The EPL demobilized in 1991, but a minority of dissidents and deserters did not demobilize. The dissident group in the region became known as Los Pelusos.
Coca cultivation in the region began in the 1980s, with its epicentre in La Gabarra (Tibú), which experienced a coca-fueled economic boom. The FARC came to dominate the coca economy, regulating its cultivation and drawing profit from the sale of coca leaves and cocaine paste, before becoming even more directly involved in the late 1990s. With the expansion of coca cultivation, the FARC replaced the ELN as the most prominent guerrilla group in the region in the 1990s. In the late 1990s, lucrative coca leaf production and cocaine paste production became the mainstay of the regional economy, attracting settlers from other regions and changing socioeconomic and cultural dynamics.
At the same time, paramilitary groups—primarily the Bloque Catatumbo of the AUC (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia)—entered the region in 1999, competing with the FARC for control of the coca economy and strategic drug trafficking corridors (notably the Venezuelan border). Businessmen, merchants, landowners and others suffocated by the guerrillas’ extortions and kidnappings collaborated financially to support the paramilitaries. As elsewhere in Colombia, the complicity and support of the military and authorities was indispensable to the paramilitaries.
The conflict for control of drug production and trafficking income exacerbated violence. The period of paramilitary onslaught (1999-2004) was the bloodiest in the region’s history, with over 2,000 targeted assassinations, 1,400 forced disappearances, 75 massacres with over 500 victims and hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons.
Paramilitary demobilization (the Bloque Catatumbo demobilized with 1,400 men in December 2004) and Álvaro Uribe’s democratic security reduced the intensity of the conflict, for a time (and at a cost: there were 298 cases of falsos positivos, or extrajudicial assassinations by the military, in Norte de Santander from 2002 to 2008). Illicit crop eradication, including aerial fumigation, significantly reduced the scale of coca cultivation to just 488 hectares of coca crops in 2006, compared to 15,000 ha in 1999. From 2007, the number of hectares of coca in Catatumbo increased again.
The territories occupied by the paramilitaries, and the control they had over illicit economies, became a source of dispute between the guerrillas and post-demobilization criminal groups. In Catatumbo, the FARC, ELN and EPL dissidents (Los Pelusos) recovered the power they’d lost and control over the coca economy and drug trafficking, dividing the territory and drug trafficking activities amongst themselves. Since the mid-2000s, the ELN, which had previously been hostile to coca cultivation, ‘pragmatically’ became involved in the cocaine production and trafficking economy and the income it offered (despite rhetorically denying involvement in drug trafficking).
A new cycle of violence
The peace agreement and demobilization of the FARC in 2016-7 brought some hope for peace in the war-torn region. Instead, a new cycle of violence began as the ELN, Los Pelusos and criminal groups, soon to be joined by FARC dissidents, competed to fill the vacuum left by the ex-FARC and control the lucrative drug trafficking business.
The Catatumbo is a coca cultivation and cocaine production hotspot, fueling the persistent conflict between armed groups. Since 2011, coca cultivation has surged in the region, reaching over 43,000 hectares in 2023—accounting for around 17% of all coca crops in the country. Tibú has more coca crops than any other municipality, at over 23,000 ha.
The Catatumbo is a strategic region for all illegal groups, bordering Venezuela and connecting to the Magdalena Medio and southern Bolívar via Cesar.
In March 2018, war erupted between the ELN and Los Pelusos, owing to conflicts over control of drug trafficking, territories and the elenos’ view that the rump guerrilla group had grown uncontrollably and was meddling in their business. Following several months of intense confrontation, the Pelusos were forced to retreat. Caught in the crossfire, the conflict strongly affected the civilian population: homicides spiked, tens of thousands of people were forcibly displaced and in total over 165,000 people were affected by violence in 2018. Although militarily weakened, the Pelusos continued activities of drug trafficking and extortion. In recent years, the EPL remnants have suffered from internal divisions, splitting into two factions in 2019 while its leadership has been decimated by military operations and internal purges.
In 2018, the dissident front 33 of the FARC reorganized around Tibú and expanded to at least six other municipalities, under the command of ‘Jhon Mechas’, aligned with the Estado Mayor Central (EMC) dissident structure of ‘Gentil Duarte’ (killed in 2022). While rhetorically they claimed that they had rearmed in reaction to the ‘lack of guarantees’ from the government in the implementation of the peace agreement, in reality the front 33 dissidents are directly involved in drug trafficking, reportedly controlling 20% of illicit crops and cocaine production in 2020. Front 33 was responsible for a 2021 car bomb attack against the 30th brigade in Cúcuta, a highly publicized attack against President Iván Duque’s helicopter in 2021 and an attack against a police box in Bogotá in 2022 that killed two children—making it one of the most criminally visible FARC dissident groups in Colombia.
On the basis of shared strategic interests, the FARC dissidents and the ELN established a non-aggression pact, dividing the territory amongst themselves—the ELN took the border area and the Cúcuta metropolitan area, while the front 33 took the rural zones of Tibú and other ‘inland’ municipalities.
The state’s presence has increased, but its intervention has been disjointed and fragmented, with difficulties in connecting the security, peace and development agendas and, oftentimes, a militaristic reactive response to problems. There’s a permanent military presence in the region with the Rapid Deployment Force 3 (FUDRA 3) in Ocaña, established in 2018, and the army’s Vulcan task force (FUVUL) since 2011, but this presence hasn’t been entirely welcomed by local communities, undermining trust in the military’s presence. Some have reported abuses (restrictions, damage to property, curfews, activation of explosives against civilians etc.) and complained that stigmatization of local leaders and social movements, arbitrary arrests and falsos positivos have continued. In a case that sparked national indignation, in April 2019 soldiers killed Dimar Torres, a demobilized FARC ex-combatant (in February 2024, a colonel and three soldiers were convicted for his murder). Members of ASCAMCAT, an influential peasant association in the region, have been killed or arrested by authorities during protests.
The implementation of the 2016 peace agreement has been very difficult, facing obstacles, insecurity, delays, lack of funding and of political will. Eight municipalities are part of a PDET, a planning mechanism to implement the peace agreement and bolster development in regions affected by the conflict. In the Catatumbo PDET, over 470 projects have been approved and 916 billion pesos (US$ 221.6 million) invested in development projects and initiatives, particularly in transportation, education and agriculture. The national illicit crop substitution program (PNIS), of particular relevance to the Catatumbo, aims for the voluntary substitution of illicit crops by local growers in exchange for the provision of financial and food assistance to families and support for alternative productive projects. Greeted with high expectations, delays in the implementation of the program quickly dampened expectations. In Norte de Santander, just under 3,000 families signed up for the PNIS and while most received the immediate food assistance, only a tiny number have received the entirety of the benefits promised or support for productive projects. In addition to the problems in the PNIS, illegal armed groups have pressured local peasants not to substitute their crops and targeted crop substitution advocates. The Duque administration was hostile to the PNIS and instead prioritized forced eradication by the military, leading to conflicts with local peasants who resisted forced eradication in the absence of any viable legal economic alternatives.
The ELN, through its northeastern war front (Frente de Guerra Nororiental), is the dominant, though not hegemonic, illegal group in the Catatumbo. The ELN and other armed groups in the region, control daily life and social order, meting out punishment for fights, thefts, drug use and carrying weapons, resolving disputes and interfering (in different ways) in local government and elections. They regulate the circulation of smuggled goods and fuel, levy taxes on certain extractive activities and oversee the production of pategrillo, an artisanal fuel derived from crude oil extracted from the Caño Limón-Coveñas pipeline and used as gasoline and a chemical precursor in cocaine production.
In addition to drug trafficking, the guerrillas participate in illegal gold mining, arms trafficking and human trafficking through informal border crossings. They are responsible for the deaths of community leaders, demobilized ex-combatants, political candidates and Venezuelan migrants transiting or residing in the region. In Tibú, infrastructure projects have been paralyzed by extortion and threats from armed groups to contractors.
The challenges of peace
President Gustavo Petro made paz total (total peace), an ambitious plan to reach negotiated settlements with all armed groups to end the conflict, the centerpiece of his early administration. In November 2022, he restarted the peace negotiations with the ELN, which had been suspended since January 2019. It was the sixth peace process with the ELN since 1991—every president since César Gaviria, except Iván Duque but even including Álvaro Uribe, had tried to negotiate with the ELN. Every attempt has failed.
Without a clear legal framework or much of an agenda, the government also began peace talks with FARC dissidents, including the EMC-FARC group. Within months, paz total stumbled from crisis to crisis, with little to show for itself, as criticism of the government’s policy and strategy mounted.
Bilateral ceasefires became the main focus of negotiations with each group, part of a risky strategy to stop the fighting (and reduce the humanitarian impact of the conflict in the regions) to negotiate peace.
In August 2023, a six-month bilateral ceasefire with the ELN came into effect. It was then renewed for another six months, but the ceasefire ended amidst continued crises in the negotiations with the ELN in August 2024. Negotiations with the ELN have lurched from crisis to crisis, most of them of the ELN’s own making, raising serious questions about the guerrilla’s willingness for peace. In May 2024 both sides signed a far-reaching (and controversial) agreement on civil society participation in the peace process, long one of the ELN’s main demands. Despite this major win for them, the ELN spent most of the time complaining that the government was not fulfilling its commitments and sowing doubts about their commitment to the peace process. Since February 2024, negotiations had been in crisis—as declared by the ELN—because the government had opened separate peace negotiations with a dissident front of the ELN in Nariño (Frente Comuneros del Sur, which later formally split from the ELN), challenging the guerrilla’s unity.
In September 2024, after an attack on a military base in Arauca that killed three soldiers, Petro said that it ‘practically closed’ the peace process with the ELN. Nevertheless, the talks timidly restarted with a meeting in November, but no real progress was made as the ELN kept making demands to return to the table. The ELN has made clear, most recently at its sixth congress in June 2024, that while it cynically proclaims its ‘willingness for peace’, it has no intention to demobilize or lay down their weapons anytime soon.
In October 2023, a first ceasefire with the EMC-FARC was reached. However, since last year, the EMC-FARC has been split between two warring factions: a majority faction led by ‘Iván Mordisco’, with strength in the southwest and the Amazon, and one led by ‘Calarcá’, which includes the front 33 in Catatumbo. Peace negotiations with the former have been broken since March 2024 and the ceasefire with them formally ended in July 2024 (it had been suspended since March in three departments). Talks are still on with the latter group, represented by ‘Calarcá’ and, in Catatumbo, the young ‘Andrey Avendaño’. In October 2024, the government and the EMC-‘Calarcá’ faction completed the sixth cycle of talks and the ceasefire with that faction was extended for another six months. While both sides affirm they’re committed to peace talks, there’s no real agenda for the negotiations—besides vague talk of ‘territorial transformations’ in regions including the Catatumbo and civil society participation—and no discussion of a roadmap to disarmament.
In Catatumbo, up until January, a tense and fragile truce existed. The homicide rate fell to 28.5 in 2024 (107 homicides), still above the national average (25.4), but much lower than in 2018 (70.8). The end of the ceasefire with the ELN led to a gradual violent escalation, with an increase in targeted killings, kidnappings, forced recruitment of minors and general expansion of social and territorial control. In November 2024, the Defensoría (Ombudsman’s office) issued an imminent alert warning of a possible rupture in the pact between the ELN and the FARC dissidents because of growing tensions between both groups. In a 2022 report, the FIP (a think-tank on peace issues) had already noted the inherent tension in the region because of the number of armed groups and the limited nature of illegal resources.
War
This tense truce was violently shattered on January 16, with the ELN attacking front 33 FARC dissidents. The violence began with the brutal murder of a funeral home owner in Tibú, alongside his wife and newborn baby (the ELN denied responsibility for this crime). In an audio recording, ‘Andrey Avendaño’, commander of front 33, said that the ELN had declared war against them, attacking civilians and unarmed people.
The ELN, perceiving the FARC dissidents as a real threat to their power and influence, moved to consolidate control of the Venezuelan border and the drug trafficking corridors.
The ELN paid no attention to the countless calls from public figures and civil society to stop the bloodshed, and instead launched a full-scale war with horrific humanitarian consequences—mass displacement, confinements, forced disappearances, homicides, threats and other human rights violations. There have been reports of the ELN going door to door, looking for supposed allies of the FARC dissidents to kill them (at least six signatories of the 2016 peace agreement, demobilized ex-combatants, were killed in January)—the kind of actions, meant to induce terror, that had been the cruel trademark of the paramilitaries in the early 2000s. The ELN’s offensive was allegedly reinforced with troops from its eastern war front (Frente de Guerra Occidental) in Arauca, its strongest military front commanded by ‘Pablito’, one of the ELN’s most belligerent commanders traditionally hostile to peace negotiations.
In a statement, the ELN declared that “blood will continue to flow” in Catatumbo until alias ‘Richard’, one of the leaders of front 33, called a ‘paramilitary’ by the guerrilla, surrenders, and warned that anyone—specifically mentioning mototaxistas, merchants and companies like Ecopetrol—who financially support the FARC dissidents will be declared military objectives. The ELN has also accused front 33 and demobilized FARC members of working with the government against them.
The first weeks of the war decimated the dissidents, with its young and inexperienced men no match for the battle-hardened elenos. Over 120 men from front 33 surrendered voluntarily to the army (versus only 4 demobilizations for the ELN; 27 minors, recruited by illegal groups, have also been recovered), a huge blow to the group considering military estimates of 400 members in late 2024. Since then, however, they’ve been able to launch a counteroffensive and regain lost territory, receiving manpower and logistical support from dissident fronts in other regions.
Never taking responsibility for their crimes, the ELN blamed the violence on Petro. ‘Antonio García’, the hardline and hawkish national commander of the ELN, shamelessly claimed that the president had generated the humanitarian crisis, promoting mass displacement, to justify a total war against the ELN and militarize the Venezuelan border. He also said that Petro was subordinated to the Pentagon’s military doctrine. The ELN, and their fellow travelers, have accused the government of allying with FARC dissidents (branded as criminal gangs or paramilitaries) against the ELN, plotting false flag operations to destabilize the border region or to justify an invasion of Venezuela.
Following the outbreak of the conflict, Petro suspended the peace process with the ELN on January 17, declaring that the group had no will for peace and had committed war crimes in Catatumbo. The high commissionner for peace, Otty Patiño, whose patience with the ELN had run out a while ago (just before the war broke out, Patiño had publicly denounced that the ELN had plotted to assassinate his right-hand man), told W Radio that the guerrilla was ‘afraid’ of peace and said that with their actions they’d reached a point of no return. Patiño considered that the ELN’s actions were a deliberate offensive to seize control of the region, with no consideration for the civilian population.
In a later tweet, the president lamented that the ELN had abandoned the theory of amor eficaz (effective love) of its mythical guerrillero-priest Camilo Torres Restrepo for greed and the narco-criminality of Pablo Escobar, and declared that “the ELN has chosen the path of war, and war it will have.” Petro has claimed that the Sinaloa Cartel is the ‘current boss’ of the ELN. While Mexican cartels have forged alliances with Colombian armed groups to secure part of the cocaine supply chain, they don’t control cocaine production or trafficking in Colombia and the ELN isn’t subordinated to them.
Speaking in Ocaña in late January, Petro said that there was a ‘foreign power’ behind the ELN in Catatumbo and considered the crisis an issue of national sovereignty. While he didn’t directly mention it, it’s common knowledge that Venezuela has become a strategic sanctuary for the ELN, which is sometimes considered a binational guerrilla. The ELN has a strong presence in Venezuela (as many as 40% of its men could be in the country), operating in connivance with Maduro’s regime, acting as a quasi-paramilitary force in support of the regime, and involved in criminal economies, including mining in the Orinoco Mining Arc. It’s been said that Nicolás Maduro is critical to any negotiated solution to the conflict with the ELN, which is one reason why Petro has put up with him for so long. However, as Maduro again defiantly digs in for another term in power after a fraudulent ‘reelection’ last summer, the ELN in Venezuela remains functional to his interests and there are few incentives for him to encourage the ELN to seriously engage in peace talks in Colombia. The ELN has taken advantage of this new context to reinforce itself militarily in border regions and bolster their ties to Maduro’s regime. The ELN’s increased belligerence (and sabotage of the peace process) coincided with last summer’s Venezuelan elections.
Maduro’s role in this conflict is still hazy. Shortly after the conflict erupted, Maduro launched mass military exercises, partially closing the border in Cúcuta, and said that interior and justice minister Diosdado Cabello, one of the most powerful men in the Venezuelan government, was in the region to ‘help the Colombian people’. Much to the consternation of Colombian public opinion, which holds Maduro in part responsible for the current conflict, the administration has maintained close contacts with Maduro and his government (without formally recognizing him as the winner of the 2024 elections). Petro talked with Maduro about a plan to close illegal border crossings and then-defence minister Iván Velásquez met his Venezuelan counterpart, General Vladimir Padrino, in Táchira state to discuss the crisis in Catatumbo. On January 31, Colombia and Venezuela launched a joint military operation in the border regions; Petro declared that he sought military cooperation in the fight against the ELN (there were no such comments from the Venezuelan side).
The conflict has generated a massive humanitarian crisis in the region. According to the UN-OCHA, over 91,000 people have been affected by the conflict since January 16, including 56,000 victims of mass displacement (up until February 3) and 6,350 additional victims of individual displacement since February. The majority were displaced to Cúcuta, the departmental capital, and the regional centres of Tibú and Ocaña, stretching local authorities’ capacities to the limit. Over 27,000 people face mobility restrictions, such as forced confinement, limiting access to goods and services. According to the latest situation report from the department of Norte de Santander, 61,679 people have been displaced. This is the worst humanitarian crisis in Colombia in at least three decades—in the first two months of 2025 alone, the number of victims of mass displacement has already exceeded that of 2024, an increase of 462% compared to the same period last year.
According to police data, there were 101 homicides in the region up through March 12, compared to 11 in the same period in 2024, a 818% increase. The real number is certainly much higher.
The military response started with a humanitarian phase, for the first three weeks, which sought to distribute humanitarian aid to displaced persons and organize evacuations. The police and armed forces have evacuated over 700 people since January. With over 10,000 troops deployed to the region, it has gone on the offensive against the ELN, a task made more difficult by the ELN’s guerrilla war tactics (avoiding direct combat), passing as civilians in small groups and moving from one side of the border to the other. The military has focused on securing control of key roads, reinforcing institutional presence in the urban cores of major municipalities like Tibú and dismantling drug infrastructure.
Although the intensity of the fighting and its humanitarian toll diminished in February, the war is far from over.
State of crisis
In response to the crisis, Petro declared a state of internal disturbance (estado de conmoción interior) for 90 days in the Catatumbo, the Cúcuta metropolitan area and two neighbouring municipalities in Cesar. This is the first time a state of internal disturbance is declared since 2008, and only the eighth time since 1991.
Under article 213 of the Constitution, the president may declare a state of internal disturbance, in all or part of the country, in the case of a “serious disruption of public order that imminently threatens institutional stability, the security of the state or citizens’ coexistence” for up to 90 days, renewable twice (the second extension requiring approval from the Senate). The government adopts, by decree, measures that are strictly necessary to address the causes of the disruption and that are directly and specifically related with the situation. The government enjoys broad powers, subject to judicial review, to suspend laws or legislate by decree, but cannot suspend human rights or fundamental freedoms and the extraordinary measures are limited in time to the duration of the emergency (but may be extended for up to 90 days).
The Constitutional Court rules on the constitutionality both of the declaration of an internal disturbance and all the decrees adopted under it. Since 2002, the Court applies a strict and rigorous proportionality test to scrutinize not only the formal requirements but also the material content of the decrees, verifying the factual existence of a crisis, its objectively serious and imminent nature and the need for extraordinary measures (ordinary measures are insufficient to respond to the crisis). The Court has made it clear that emergency powers cannot be used to resolve chronic, structural problems. In fact, only two of seven internal disturbances declared since 1991 were ruled constitutional in their entirety (three were ruled partially constitutional, and the other two—including the last one, in 2008—unconstitutional in their entirety). In 2002, Álvaro Uribe declared an internal disturbance upon taking office, but the Constitutional Court struck down the second extension in 2003.
The 1991 Constitution imposed limits and controls on governments’ emergency powers. Under the 1886 Constitution, the stage of siege (estado de sitio) had become the rule rather than the exception, with few limits (despite some reforms in the 1960s) on the government’s power to declare indefinite states of emergency and legislate by decree (in 21 years from 1970 to 1991, Colombia lived 206 months, or over 17 years, under state of emergency).
Petro initially said that he was to declare both an internal disturbance and an economic emergency (under article 215). Given legal issues raised by trying to declare both, in the end he only declared an internal disturbance, limited to the region. There have been concerns that Petro will seek to use extraordinary powers to legislate by decree on matters not related to the war in Catatumbo—in 2023, he declared an economic emergency in La Guajira, based on the serious humanitarian crisis in that department, but the Constitutional Court struck it down three months later. Through that emergency, Petro had sought to implement, through the back door via decrees, key parts of his policy agenda.
Under the state of internal disturbance, different ministries have issued 22 decrees. These decrees include:
Appointment of a military commander for the region to coordinate military actions
Special, temporary taxes to raise up to 1.63 trillion pesos (US$392.5 million) in 90 days including a 19% VAT on online lotteries, a special 1% tax on oil and coal and raising the stamp duty to 1% (from 0%)
Based on the above, addition of 2.768 trillion pesos (US$666.5 million) to the 2025 budget, solely for Catatumbo, about 32% for defence, 12% for crop substitution, 10% for education and 7% for road infrastructure
Facilitating temporary accommodation for displaced persons; monetary aid for senior citizens victims of forced displacement or confinement
A new illicit crop substitution program, RenHacemos Catatumbo, effectively an expanded revamp of the PNIS, including monthly payments for voluntary crop eradication and crop substitution, a 25% increase in the food support component of the PNIS and support for alternative productive projects.
Circulation restrictions at nighttime for vehicles and boats; airspace restrictions; lifting conditions and regulations on intercity bus transportation; limiting or suspending fuel supplies when warranted
Subsidies of up to 90% on public utilities for victims of displacement and confinement, and transferring budgetary resources to guarantee public utility systems
Authorizing local governments to redirect their budget and central government transfers (SGP) to attend the crisis; special measures promoting investment projects funded through royalties
Special measures to prioritize construction of schools
Guaranteeing food production, protecting food supply chains
Extraordinary measures to protect people, groups and communities affected by the conflict
In early March, the government finally announced its comprehensive plan to put these decrees together, the Plan Catatumbo, with a heavy focus on illicit crop eradication (an extremely ambitious goal 25,000 ha). On March 6 Petro and social movements in the region signed the Pacto Social del Catatumbo, presented as a 10 trillion peso investment in the region over a decade—including paving the main road through the region (Transversal del Catatumbo), building a university (promised since the beginning of the government), economic and agricultural reconversion projects. The government response was hobbled by the Feb. 4 livestreamed cabinet meeting and subsequent cabinet crisis/shuffle, which distracted attention away from the region and hindered government response to the issue—in part because both the interior and defence ministers, among others, resigned in early February.
All that is well and good, but this government has a notoriously hard time transforming good intentions into actions and the money promised hasn’t arrived yet. A big hurdle still hasn’t been overcome: the internal disturbance decree and all the decrees adopted under it still need to be greenlit by the Constitutional Court, which isn’t a done thing. The Court is expected to issue its ruling by early May.
While the Procuraduría, Defensoría and the Senate’s special commission have asked the Court to rule in favour, several former Constitutional Court magistrates, lawyers, legal collectives, business associations (ANDI, Fenalco etc.), opposition politicians and major universities (Los Andes and Javeriana) have asked that it be struck down. The Court must decide whether the crisis at hand was extraordinary and unforeseeable, and rather than a preventable, structural and chronic crisis, and cannot be resolved through ordinary powers, and that the government is not using it to legislate on structural problems or implement its political agenda by decree. The administration is not helping its case by making it clear that it’s using the state of emergency to fix longstanding structural problems by decree—building clinics, a university, implementing cash transfers for seniors or launching a crop substitution program.
The death of paz total
The war in Catatumbo dealt a final, fatal blow to Petro’s paz total, already badly wounded and moribund.
Since 2022, the government and the media had made the peace talks with the ELN the big-ticket item in paz total. There was substantial public support for restarting peace talks with the ELN (Duque’s militarist response, after ending peace talks in 2019, had yielded nothing) and the political moment (the first left-wing president, committed to peace) seemed particularly auspicious. Despite the long history of failed attempts at negotiations with the ELN over the past 30 years, the government focused its attention and efforts on the peace process with the ELN.
Even before January 2025, it was already clear that the ELN wasn’t serious about peace. Its bloody and cruel offensive in Catatumbo was the final confirmation that they’re not ready to negotiate. Unable or unwilling to read the political moment or understand the consequences of their actions, the ELN squandered an historic opportunity. They had in front of them a government that was willing to make significant concessions, for almost nothing in return, like agreeing to binding civil society participation in peace talks on a wide range of fundamental issues including the economic and political model, a longstanding symbolic demand of the ELN and something that no previous government had ever agreed to. Instead, the ELN took advantage of the peace process and ceasefire to strengthen itself militarily.
The ELN has ‘justified’ its indiscriminate, paramilitary-like violence with violent, belligerent and defiant rhetoric, washing their hands of any responsibility in the conflict that they started. A statement from the ELN’s central command (COCE) in late January said that it would never accept submission or surrender as a peace policy, and claimed that Petro’s paz total provided criminal gangs and paramilitary groups with certain political status to support the state’s counterinsurgency plans against the ELN. In a recent exclusive interview with Los Informantes, a program on Noticias Caracol, two commanders of the ELN in Catatumbo, alias ‘Ricardo’ and ‘Silvana Guerrero’, rule out returning to peace negotiations with Petro, describe paz total as a ‘total failure’ that has become ‘total war’, deny any links with drug trafficking and vow that the war will continue until front 33 is expelled from the region.
Despite the war, the peace process and ceasefire with Calarcá’s FARC dissidents (which include front 33) remains (theoretically) alive. The ceasefire with ‘Calarcá’ expires on April 16, and its extension will be one of the issues to be discussed at the next round of talks in mid-April.
The war will significantly reduce support for a negotiated solution with the ELN (which is unlikely in the short or even medium-term) and will politically asphyxiate the ELN even further, losing whatever political support or sympathy that they might still have had. The future of the ELN appears to be the strengthening of its ‘hardline’ faction (opposed to peace talks, taking advantage of the Venezuelan situation) and the further ‘degradation’ of the guerrilla (weakening of the ‘political’ line and dominance of criminal activities and illegal economies).
The conflict could play in favour of the right-wingers who have always maintained that Petro’s paz total was not only lunacy and an unacceptable concession to criminals and terrorists, but also bound to fail.
While Petro still claims that paz total is ‘progressing well’, he and his administration seem to have largely abandoned it. The peace process with the ELN is now dead and unlikely to be revived by 2026, negotiations with the ‘Iván Mordisco’ FARC dissidents failed, talks with the Segunda Marquetalia FARC dissidents are in crisis and the peace process with Calarcá’s dissidents are unlikely to yield any kind of agreement. The only ongoing peace process that may reach a favourable conclusion is the regional one with the Comuneros del Sur, the ELN dissidents in Nariño, who have agreed to disarm and surrender their weapons. Petro has not provided leadership on paz total, showing little interest or involvement in the actual peace processes. Over the past few months, Petro hasn’t talked much about paz total—he is, to be fair, distracted by many other issues—but it does reflect how that one issue, that began as one of the new administration’s top priorities in 2022, has been quietly abandoned.
It hasn’t been replaced by ‘total war’, as the ELN claims, but there has been a perceptible change in direction. The new defence minister, retired general Pedro Sánchez, is the first military officer to serve as defence minister since 1991, breaking a tradition of civilian leadership of the defence ministry. Sánchez has admitted that the security situation in the country is bad and has spoken more honestly about the difficult situation of the conflict in certain regions, including his view that the ‘Calarcá’ dissidents have been ‘permanently’ violating the ceasefire and that it is best to negotiate without a ceasefire, as criminal and illegal actors commit crime under the umbrella of a ceasefire. Sánchez has said that peace requires a strategy of ‘30% military/police and 70% unified coordination action of the state’, which he says will take time and effort and begins with recovering territorial control, stabilizing and consolidating the territory. The government appears to recognize the need for a strong military component in any security and peace strategy, an element which was often missing since 2022.
The difficult reality is that illegal armed groups have gained in strength, manpower and territorial control since 2018—both under Duque’s more hardline, repressive strategy and Petro’s paz total and ‘humane security’ strategy. The security and humanitarian situation has worsened in many regions of the country. The Red Cross’ 2025 report warns alarmingly that the humanitarian situation in Colombia has reached its most critical point in 8 years. The Defensoría, in December 2024, reported that 790 municipalities (over 71%) are at risk because of armed groups.
The war in Catatumbo could ignite other hotbeds of violence. To begin with, the ELN and the ‘Calarcá’ dissidents share territory and alliances against the Clan del Golfo in other regions like southern Bolívar, northeastern Antioquia and the Lower Cauca (Antioquia). The ELN also has non-aggression pacts with other FARC dissident structures in the border departments of Vichada and Guainía. In February, the Defensoría warned of eleven humanitarian hotspots in the country, with ten armed groups behind the crisis. These regions are Chocó (there is an ongoing conflict between the ELN and the Clan del Golfo in the San Juan region of the Pacific coast department), Nariño, Cauca (identified as the most serious public order crisis by the defence minister), the Pacific coast of the Valle del Cauca, Antioquia, the Sierra Nevada, Perijá, Magdalena Medio, Arauca, Meta, Guaviare, southern Córdoba, Tolima and Putumayo.
What comes next for Catatumbo and other violent regions is uncertain. Gustavo Petro won’t sign any sweeping peace agreements with any major group before August 2026, at best he’ll need to settle for local agreements with small groups (like in Nariño).