Month: June 2020

June 29, 2020

Press reports reveal an internal FARC party document recommending reprimands and even expulsions of high-ranking party leaders regarded as divisive and insubordinate to leadership. They include Benedicto González, Jesús Emilio Carvajalino (Andrés París), Ubaldo Enrique Zúñiga (Pablo Atrato) and José Benito Cabrera (Fabián Ramírez). González accuses maximum leader Rodrigo Londoño and other moderate party leaders as “submissive to the state” and favoring multinationals’ involvement in productive projects at excombatant reincorporation sites.

Tags: FARC Political Future, Politics of Peace

June 29, 2020

June 28, 2020

Colombian authorities arrest Ramón Rodríguez Guerrero, a Venezuelan citizen living in Bogotá. While Rodríguez appears to be organizing Venezuelan opponents of the Maduro regime in Bogotá, Colombia alleges that he is a regime spy who has infiltrated the Venezuelan opposition inside Colombia, in order to collect intelligence on them.

Tags: Venezuela, Venezuela Crisis

June 28, 2020

June 27, 2020

Community members in the village of Filoguamo, in Teorama municipality in Norte de Santander’s Catatumbo region, allege that Army soldiers killed social leader Salvador Jaimes Durán. The military’s Vulcano Task Force, which operates in Catatumbo, releases a photo of guerrillas insinuating that Durán was a member of the ELN. The ELN denies it and the guerrillas release a recording of the individual who appeared in the photo.

Tags: Attacks on social leaders, Catatumbo, ELN, Human Rights, Military and Human Rights

June 27, 2020

June 26, 2020

The joint body for verification of the 2016 peace accord’s implementation (Commission for the Follow-up, Promotion and Verification of the Implementation of the Final Agreement, CSIVI) meets for the first time since May 14. On that date, the FARC delegation boycotted the CSIVI meeting, as did the ambassador from Cuba, after High Commissioner for Peace Miguel Ceballos applauded the United States’ addition of Cuba to its list of states not cooperating against terrorism. A subsequent effort to convene the CSIVI, on June 11, fell through.

High Counselor for Stabilization Emilio Archila says that the Colombian government “has never placed in doubt or questioned Cuba’s role as a guarantor country” for the peace talks, and “hopes it will keep exercising that function.” Cuban ambassador José Luis Ponce is a “formal invitee” to the June 26 meeting, at which, the government reports, the CSIVI “defined a calendar of meetings to speed up the work of overseeing implementation.”

Tags: Cuba, ELN Peace Talks, Verification

June 26, 2020