The third city of Colombia suffers the siege of, a recycled lord of war, given dead on more than one occasion, which refuses to deliver the rifles. Néstor Gregorio Vera Fernández, his real name, leads the structures grouped in the self -denominated Central Staff (EMC), the largest group of dissidents of the extinct guerrillas of the FARC, which this week launched a.
Bordisco is a “tracheto dressed as a revolutionary,” as President Gustavo Petro has defined with Colombian colloquialism to refer to drug traffickers. “What happened in Cali shows us the passage of the dissidents of Iván bite towards a purely terrorist action,” the president reacted to Thursday’s attacks, who considered crimes against humanity. The EMC, the second Marquetalia and the Gulf clan, FARC splits and heirs of paramilitarism, “will be considered terrorist organizations, persecutable anywhere in the world,” he said.
There are three of the armed groups with which their government opened dialogue tables as part of the total peace policy. The Central General Staff, specifically, sat down to negotiate on October 8, 2023, after months of approaches. He even reached a high, but the group that was a fragile Federation of fronts ended up fragmenting in April 2024, when more than half of his men rose from the table, pushed by the bite itself – the minority faction of alias Calarcá Córdoba remains sitting. The process had then entered its nth crisis, after a series of actions of dissidents that included attacks against military objectives and indigenous communities, such as the murder of the Carmelina Yule leader in the department of Cauca, neighbor of Cali. “The offensive against EMC in Cauca is total,” Petro proclaimed in his day.
The total peace was from the first moment one of the biggest challenges of the Petro government flag policy, today blurred. In plural, several structures were separated at different times from the dialogues of Havana that led to the Peace Agreement at the end of 2016. The label of “dissidents” deserves its plural, since it is an amalgam of structures difficult to classify. The bite currents and the twenty Marquetalia of Iván Márquez consolidated themselves as the most notorious, a kind of large umbrellas.
Both were designated by the United States as terrorist organizations when it withdrew from that blacklist, unarmed and. Both also filed a war to death in some regions, in which in confusing confrontations – most of the time on the other side of the border with Venezuela – several of its leaders. It seemed to emerge as the winner, and the most visible face of the dissidents, to the point that there was talk of The Gentilians. But it was.
Blighthood since then agglutinated power, and has managed to survive almost a decade as one of the most wanted dissidents, despite having been given dead at the end of the period of (2018-2022), the predecessor of Petro. He reappeared two months later in a video to be willing to dialogue with the new government. And later, of glasses and military uniform, already as head of the then newly called central staff. A few weeks ago rumors circulated, never confirmed, that it had been dejected. And this Saturday he directed a public letter to Petro, after the authorities captured his brother, pointed out to be at the service of the dissidents. “I don’t believe in Colombian justice, but trusted revolutionary justice,” writes a bite.
He is recognized as dogmatic and radical, “always in disagreement with the political exit or negotiation,” detailed a report on the Ideas Peace Foundation (FIP), which attributes a process of “criminal degradation.” It was distinguished an openly hostile attitude to the agreements and to those who promoted them. Also its opposition to illegal crops replacement programs, in addition to a marked violence and distrust of the civilian population, particularly.
Recognizing the call as an actor armed with political status was a risky step, that the Petro administration was willing to give when it intended to negotiate simultaneously with all armed groups. It is “the worst strategic mistake that has been committed in Colombia in the last 25 years and the largest damage that has been done to the peace process,” Sergio Jaramillo, the peace commissioner who sealed the agreement with the FARC, in an intervention before the Constitutional Court, came to warn. These structures are, among others, the greatest responsible for and the forced recruitment of minors.
Even after having lost half of its members in the split, bite dissidents operate in a large part of the south of the country. They do it both in the call and three convulsive departments of the Southwest: Cauca, Nariño and Valle del Cauca. There, Cali has a great symbolic weight as de facto capital of the entire peaceful region and third most populated city in Colombia. For the EMC it is a sample of force to launch actions against the State there. There are other points in the Valley, such as Buenaventura, the main port on the Pacific, at two and a half hours by road, with a strategic value for its exit to the sea. In the end, the municipalities of the South of the Valley and the North of Cauca respond to the same dynamic of the armed conflict. They are strategic corridors that are disputed armed groups for being fundamental for illegal economies.
“Cauca has been one of the historical centers of the armed conflict. Since the FARC-EP weapons, the EMC dissidents have been reconfigured and territorially consolidated without the State being able to prevent it,” said an analysis of Kyle Johnson, researcher at the Conflict Respons Respons Foundation (Core), before another wave of attacks prior to this week. “No security policy – nor the Victoria or Orus Plan of the Santos Government, nor the strategy of the Duke Government, nor the proposals of the Petro Government – has contained its expansion. Although there are differences on paper, in practice they have not translated into results.” In addition to the muscle provided by illicit economies, they have achieved a certain internal cohesion that allows them to coordinate attacks, move members between fronts and operate in different scenarios.
The attack, part of a pattern to attack military and police facilities in Cali, is also an alert bell on the level of penetration that the EMC has in the big cities of Colombia, not only in rurality, warns Elizabeth Dickinson, of the International Group Crisis. It is part of “a terror strategy” to respond to the public force offensive in other regions such as the Micay Canyon, adds, and thus increase the cost of fighting them to the Government.
