Colombian President Gustavo Petro got a much-needed political win on Friday as he announced a six-month ceasefire between the government and the ELN Marxist guerrilla group, part of his broader plan to achieve “total peace” between the state and Colombia’s armed organizations.
The agreement was sealed in Havana, Cuba, with ELN leader Antonio García shaking hands with Mr. Petro. Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz Canel acted as a mediator.
The ceasefire will come into effect on August 3.
The Havana meetings followed two other rounds of negotiations in Caracas and Mexico City, with multiple ups and downs during the talks, including a failed ceasefire announcement at the start of the year.
The news came shortly after Mr. Petro’s approval rates hit rock-bottom following a bizarre wiretapping scandal that raised questions about his campaign’s finances and led to the resignation of two of his closest advisers.
Mr. Petro, a former guerrilla member himself, was at the vanguard of peace deals between the armed left and the state when his M-19 group agreed to put down its weapons in 1989. The FARC, the biggest left-wing armed group in the country, followed suit in 2016.
But small FARC splinter groups and the dissident ELN remained skeptical of such agreements, while paramilitary organizations and drug cartels are also still active.
“By signing these agreements, you are putting yourself in a different circumstance to those who did it before. This is the end of an era: that of armed insurgency in which we all took part. Latin America will now be transformed in a different way,” Mr. Petro said.
The president added that the ceasefire will only be the first stage of a larger plan that should end conflict with the ELN for good by May 2025.
Mr. García was more cautious in his comments, saying “we have still not reached a substantial agreement, only procedural points that will allow us to move forward for Colombia to change. But we can’t let old stories be repeated, we have seen many peace processes that only had disarmament and demobilization while everything else remained the same.”
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