Everything you need to know about ELN's war on Catatumbo
Colombia has declared a state of emergency and deployed military forces amidst a guerilla war in the Catatumbo borderlands. What's behind the wave of violence?
This week’s in-depth report was produced in collaboration between PWS and Colombia Reports and is brought to you by Adriaan Alsema.
The government of President Gustavo Petro declared a “State of Internal Commotion” — which grants broad powers to the military and executive branches and suspends some constitutional rights of citizens—in the Catatumbo region and adjacent municipalities in response to a major offensive by the guerrilla group ELN in northeast Colombia.
Amidst ongoing ELN attacks on FARC dissident group Frente 33, which authorities say has killed more than 80 people and displaced more than 36,000 since Saturday, Colombia suspended efforts to renew peace negotiations earlier this week.
A State of Exception, allowed by the Constitution for up to 90 days before it must be reviewed by Congress, and subject to veto by Colombia’s top court if they deem the declaration invalid, is the closest legal equivalent the government posses to martial law. It allows the Presidency and the Ministry of Defense to freely deploy the military as well as pass temporary laws directly related to the crisis without the intervention of Congress.
In the official Presidential decree declaring the State of Commotion, the government clarifies in considerable detail the actions by ELN that they say has led them to make this decision and the rational behind it. It is the first time in 18 years any Colombian President has utilized the legal mechanism.
Catatumbo and Cucuta: a borderland in the shadows
Catatumbo is the northern-most region of the Norte de Santander province and the home of some 300,000 people.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Catatumbo is the second largest producer of coca, the raw ingredient in cocaine, in Colombia — which is the largest cocaine-producing country in the world. In 2023, the region had 43,179 hectares (over 100,000 acres) of coca fields, the UNODC said in October last year.
Just south of Catatumbo is Cucuta, the capital of Norte de Santander and by far the largest and most important city on the border with Venezuela.
The city has become particularly interesting for money launderers after Venezuela's currency control created an exceptional demand for US dollars in the first decade of this century, and is also an important crossing point for illegal gold trading — both Colombian and Venezuelan.
On top of this, Cucuta is a major hub for contraband imports and cocaine exports.
All this organized crime activity and the production of cocaine in Catatumbo has made the city one of the most corrupt cities in Colombia.
Cucuta is currently controlled by a mafia with strong ties to paramilitary organization AGC.
Why is there a war between two leftist guerilla groups?
Guerrilla organizations ELN and EPL (The Popular People’s Army in Spanish) have been operating in Catatumbo since the late 1970's. The FARC joined them in the mid 1980's and began promoting coca cultivation in the 1990's.
The drug trade made Catatumbo one of the most important revenue generators for all three guerrilla organizations and has allowed them to exercise almost absolute control over the region.
The now-defunct paramilitary organization AUC, with the help of the Cucuta elite and the city's mafia, tried to expel the guerrillas from the region between 1999 and 2006 without success.
The ELN took almost absolute control of Catatumbo and its largely illegal economy after the FARC's demobilization in 2017 and the violent expulsion of the EPL in 2018.
According to ELN chief "Antonio Garcia," his regional commanders permitted dissidents of the FARC's 33rd Front to rearm under the condition they cooperated with the ELN.
The ELN apparently underestimated how failures in the peace process and the 2019 collapse of diplomatic ties with Venezuela would benefit the 33rd Front, which ended up becoming a part of the EMC's newly formed Magdalena Medio Bloc.
The situation became particularly unstable in 2021 when coca prices dropped, leaving the regional economy in ruins.
In an attempt to restart the illegal economy and boost the arrival of drug traffickers who could purchase local farmers' coca and produce cocaine, the ELN and the EMC signed a non-aggression pact.
What further stabilized the situation was the 2022 election of President Gustavo Petro, whose administration almost immediately began peace talks with the ELN and the EMC after taking office.
The EMC agreed to a bilateral ceasefire with the government in January of 2023 and the ELN followed in July of that year.
The peace talks did not go as planned and security forces resumed attacks on the ELN in August of 2024. Security forces maintained a ceasefire with the 33rd Front after the FARC dissidents split from the EMC last year.
According to the Ombudsman's Office, the 33rd Front took advantage of the ceasefire and expanded its territorial control to the south of the Cesar province, which was already being used by the ELN and paramilitary organization EGC as a corridor to smuggle troops and arms.
The growing tensions were too much and the ELN allegedly pulled out of the non-aggression pact in December of last year.
According to military intelligence, the guerrilla organization subsequently began bolstering its forces by moving troops from the Eastern War Front in the Arauca province to Catatumbo and began attacking the 33rd Front throughout the region on Saturday.
On top of that, the ELN began kidnapping and assassinating demobilized former FARC members and community leaders, claiming that they were part of the 33rd Front's economic support network.
The offensive triggered the forced displacement of more than 36,000 people to Cucuta and other towns in Norte de Santander. Another 1,500 people fled to Venezuela, according to Petro.
Among those killed are five former FARC guerrillas. Eleven demobilized rebels, who signed a peace deal with the government in 2016 and disarmed, were forcibly disappeared, according to Decree #62, which the government published to justify the new State of Commotion.
The government response
The declaration of an internal commotion suggests that the government needs extraordinary powers to address the refugee crises inside Catatumbo, in Cucuta and in the south of the neighboring department, Cesar.
The government also stressed the need to effectively implement to 2016 peace deal with the FARC in the region, which included the effective protection of community leaders and demobilized guerrillas, and a significant effort to reduce the region's dependency on the drug trade.
Petro, in public statements, has claimed that more than 100 fighters from Frente 33 have surrendered to the government rather than continue fighting ELN — an unprecedented number since Colombia’s peace deal with the FARC in 2016.
The National Army sent 5,000 troops to Norte de Santander mainly to evacuate hundreds of potential ELN targets and to provide relief to the tens of thousands who have fled Catatumbo's rural areas.
The military is expected to embark on an offensive, but would have to do so while keeping the ceasefire with the FARC dissidents in mind — a difficult strategic position.
According to Caracol Radio, the Peace Commissioner's Office has been in touch with the FARC dissidents' peace negotiators to prevent the breakdown of negotiations with these guerrillas.
The state of exception is valid for only 90 days and can only be extended with the explicit approval of the Constitutional Court, which has so far been highly critical of Petro's peace policies.
The Big Headlines in LATAM (Actually what we’re reading about U.S migration policy changes this week)
U.S. President Donald Trump’s first week in office has brought with it a whirlwind of migration and foreign policy changes that directly effect Latin America. The topic is too broad for one article, but negotiations over deportation flights have already inspired serious pushback from Colombia and Mexico.
Mexico, despite their public protests over the optics of a rejected deportation flight in a military plane, has also agreed to implement Trump’s renewal of “Remain in Mexico”, which would entail them allowing expulsions of third-country citizens from the U.S. to Mexico.
This summation is barely scratching the surface of the topic — one which large media companies have done a mixed job of covering, or even understanding, due to the volume, speed, and complexity of changes both via executive order and via protocol changes at ICE, Homeland Security, and police enforcement orders.
There has also been a lot of misinformation and disinformation about what some of these changes mean. So we’ve put together a list of credible sources on migration with decades of experience that have been digging into this.
The Border Chronicle: A substack run by seasoned reporters who actually live and work on the U.S-Mexico border. Unlike many media companies working from New York or Washington, The Border Chronicle conducts investigative field work and analysis made possible only by their deep experience and varied contacts in the communities actually affected by migration, and migration policy.
Americas Migration Brief: Jordi Amaral releases weekly summaries of dynamics in migration across *all* the Americas. It’s a useful method to find credible reporting on specialized topics as well as to get a sense of trends in migration more broadly.
American Immigration Council: AIC provides quick and in-depth analysis of policy and legal changes in the migration field within the U.S. They have been an excellent source for debunking misunderstandings (and intentional disinformation campaigns). Their bias runs a bit towards “pro institutionalism” from our point of view at PWS, favoring precedent in their analysis over new solutions, but their data and research has been invaluable to us as freelancers covering this topic.
Washington Office on Latin America: WOLA has decades of experience on borders and migration both within the U.S and across LATAM. Adam Isacson publishes weekly round-ups on migration and borders that includes hard data: like how many people crossed the Darien Gap, how many detention ICE has carried out, how many people Mexico has detained, etc etc. It is a great resource for verified information direct from the source as well as explainers on how policy changes are affecting people on the ground.
This is just a short list. Please feel free to drop any other suggestions you may have in the comments.
Spanish Word of the Week
Ojos que no ven, corazón que no siente - “Eyes that don’t see, heart that doesn’t feel.”
A less literal translation of this phrase to English might be “If you don’t see it, you can’t feel it.” This popular Spanish proverb means that people don’t suffer for what they don’t know.
Nowadays, this saying refers to all types of situations, from politics to work. But it’s most commonly used in reference to romantic relationships in which one of the partners is cheating on the other without them knowing about it.
But in terms of today’s piece, about both conflict and migration, most of the suffering caused by both happens in places where no one is watching, or much cares. The role of journalism is to bring this information, and the voices of these people, to the table.
Because we could easily reverse the phrase and say “A heart that doesn’t feel means eyes that do not see.”
And that is the quickest path to apathy, which we all must resist.
We’ll be back next week, readers. Thank you again for subscribing. Hasta pronto piratas!
