Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro on Monday announced a “state of internal commotion” in response to deadly clashes between factions of rival rebel groups in the country’s northeast Catatumbo region.
The violence erupted on January 16 and has claimed the lives of between 80 and 100 people, including civilians, according to local media reports. An additional 20,000 people are estimated to have been displaced by the fighting.
Clashes began when the Northeast War Front of the National Liberation Army (ELN) launched an offensive against the 33rd Front of the General Staff of Blocks and Fronts (EMBF), a dissident group of the now-defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which demobilized in 2016.
The ELN is attempting to expel the rival dissident faction from the region and consolidate its hold on the cocaine trade and strategic borderlands, according to InSight Crime, an organized crime monitor from Latin America.
Catatumbo, situated along the Venezuelan border, is a key zone for coca cultivation and the production of coca paste, which is used to produce cocaine.
Colombia’s government responded to the ELN’s offensive by ceasing negotiations with the dissidents. President Petro took to X to decry the actions of the guerrilla group.
“It is up to the real army, the constitutional army, to save and protect the population of Catatumbo from the ELN, its killer,” wrote Petro in a post on Monday.
“The ELN has chosen the path of war and war it shall have. We, the government, stand with the people,” he continued.
Petro invoked Article 213 of the Constitution, which allows a president to declare a “state of internal commotion” in the case of “serious disturbances of public order that threaten institutional stability … and that cannot be avoided by using the ordinary powers of the authorities.”
The measure lasts for 90 days and can be extended twice, but the second extension requires congressional approval.
Petro also declared an economic emergency alongside the “internal commotion,” but today his interior minister, Juan Fernando Cristo, clarified that this will not be necessary for the time being.
Yesterday, former President Juan Manuel Santos (2010 – 2018) denounced Petro in an interview on W Radio.
He said that the events in Catatumbo do not constitute a new threat and therefore do not warrant the use of an emergency decree.
“This idea of internal commotion was established to confront supervening events and none of those we are seeing can be described as such. In this case there is no justification,” commented Santos.
Sergio Guzmán, Director of Colombia Risk Analysis, agreed that the decree was unusual under the circumstances.
“A state of internal commotion or a state of emergency should be presented when there are situations that are overwhelming and not foreseeable,” Guzmán told The Bogotá Post.
Instead, he pointed out that watchdogs and civil society organizations issued alerts about the situation in Catatumbo as far back as November, and therefore the violence did not come as a surprise.
“They were saying, look, this is not going in the right direction. We need to do something about it. And the government essentially didn’t help,” explained Guzmán.
The analyst also explained that the scope of the decree is still unclear.
“I think we’re all still waiting very much for the decree to be issued with the specific, you know, underlying legal mechanisms that the decree requires,” said Guzmán.
Meanwhile, civil society groups in Catatumbo have called for an immediate ceasefire.
The Committee of Social Integration of Catatumbo (CISCA) shared a letter on X signed by more than a dozen local community organizations.
In it, the group called for “the armed actors to cease the confrontations in our territories.”
They also decried the murder of several community leaders.
“We condemn any attack or threat against social leaders, defenders of human rights, signatories of peace. They are fundamental pillars of our community, and their labor must be protected, not criminalized nor attacked,” read the letter.
Among the victims of the violence were Carmelo Guerrero, a prominent community leader, as well as seven others who sought to sign a peace deal with the state.
The ongoing humanitarian crisis has been described as the country’s worst in decades.