Colombia suspends warrants against 19 FARC dissidents
March 14, 2023
Colombia’s attorney general suspended arrest warrants against 19 members of the FARC dissident group Estado Mayor Central, yesterday. It is a step towards negotiations sought by President Gustavo Petro, who has promised to pursue peace deals with all of Colombia’s remaining armed groups.
The suspension will allow discussions to take place between the dissidents and government officials, Petro said on Twitter - a first step to beginning formal talks. He heralded it as the beginning of a second peace process.
The group, which split from the FARC following the 2016 peace accord, has about 2,000 fighters and is the largest armed faction of the former guerrilla group, reports AFP.
None of the 19 people affected by yesterday’s decision have extradition warrants, the prosecutor's office said. (Reuters)
Petro’s government is advancing in discussions with the ELN, the country’s second largest guerrilla force. (See yesterday’s briefs.)
“The ELN and the ex-FARC mafia are the main criminal threats to the government. If Petro wants to make significant progress in the peace talks with both, he will need the assistance of Venezuela and its president,” reports InSight Crime, which signals Nicolás Maduro as a key player in the peace process.
Colombia’s guerrillas are so deeply entrenched in Venezuela “that they have ceased to be exclusively Colombian and instead are fully binational in nature. Yet their intentions on either side of the border contrast sharply: In Colombia, the guerillas’ stated objective is to overthrow the state, while in Venezuela their aim is to support it,” according to InSight Crime.
The advances with the ELN and the Estado Mayor Central come as efforts to negotiate with the the Clan del Golfo have foundered — after the criminal group confined the residents of 11 municipalities in Bajo Cauca and attacked the Tarazá aqueduct, reports El País. Petro said they prioritized “business” over the peace process.
Authorities say the Clan del Golfo is behind an artisanal miner strike in Bajo Cauca against a government clampdown on illegal mining, which has caused shortages in the region and confined residents confined to their homes. (Deutsche Welle)
More Total Peace
The next round of ELN negotiations will take place in Cuba, after talks in Mexico City concluded last week. Previous dialogue took place in Venezuela. The FARC peace deal was negotiated in Cuba. (El País)
The agenda accorded between the ELN and the Colombian government in Mexico City favors an endless negotiation and includes vague wording, according to negotiators of the landmark 2016 FARC peace accord. (El País)
Migrants blocked at Ciudad Juárez bridge
U.S. officials physically blocked hundreds of migrants attempting to cross the border from Mexico at the Paso del Norte international bridge in Ciudad Juárez. A large group, mostly people from Venezuela, broke through Mexican lines to demand asylum in the U.S., only to be thwarted by barbed wire, barriers and shields, reports Reuters.
The rush across the bridge may have been sparked by false rumors, said Camilo Cruz, who works with the U.N. migration office in Ciudad Juarez. Cruz said the rumors are a recurrent problem.
Video of the scene at the Paso Del Norte bridge on Sunday showed hundreds of migrants brush past Mexican National Guard officers on the Mexican side, some carrying children on their shoulders, reports the Associated Press.
Many of the migrants who tried crossing the border were reportedly exhausted both by the difficulties of living in Juárez as well as by a new U.S. requirement to schedule asylum appointments via glitchy smartphone app, reports the Guardian. (See yesterday’s briefs.)
Mexico
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador pushed back against U.S. travel warnings that say Mexico is a risky place for tourism. “Mexico is safer than the United States,” he told reporters. (Reuters, Associated Press)
Elena Poniatowska is 90, arguably Mexico’s most famous living writer, and still writes a weekly newspaper column — Washington Post.
Regional
Intense drought and heavy rainfall events occurred more often in the last eight years than in the previous decade, according to a new study released in Nature Water. The analysis, which uses direct NASA satellite observations, provides “indisputable” evidence that warmer global temperatures are increasing such extreme events, reports the Washington Post.
Brazil
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva expressed support for creating new Indigenous territories, but did not announced any new demarcations, speaking at the 52nd general assembly of the Indigenous peoples of the State of Roraima. Indigenous activists have pressured Lula to demarcate 13 new Indigenous territories that have cleared all regulatory steps and require nothing more than presidential approval to be official, reports the Associated Press.
Haiti
The Haitian National Police named gang leader Vitel'Homme Innocent as a suspect in the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. The accusations against Vitel'Homme, leader of a suburban gang outside Port-au-Prince, remain murky. “What is more apparent is that Haiti's dire security situation permits smaller gang leaders to quickly grow in prominence,” explains InSight Crime.
A civil trial against a former Haitian mayor, in a U.S. court in Boston, “shines a light on the wider issue of bloodshed and unaccountability in the Caribbean nation’s politics,” reports the Associated Press.