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The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, asked the tyrant of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, to act as a mediator in what would be the “peace process” with the ELN guerrillas.
Petro, who has just assumed the presidency, asked Maduro to be the guarantor of the dialogues. The request comes amid the reestablishment of relations between the two countries.
In addition to Venezuela’s participation as guarantor, Cuba, Chile, and Spain —three allied countries led by the left— are also joining the talks. There is also talk of the possibility of Norway remaining as guarantor, as it was in the dialogues between the Maduro regime and the Venezuelan opposition.
The guarantor countries in these types of peace instances assume the role of intermediaries between the parties at the table to ensure that the protocols of the dialogues are complied with.
The ELN is an armed group that moves along the border between Venezuela and Colombia, committing criminal acts on both sides. Maduro’s role would be important, mainly because he is the one who has allowed the ELN to expand into Venezuelan territory.
One of the guerrillas’ negotiators, Pablo Beltran, recently said that the group organizes its negotiating delegation just as Petro would be doing. “We are in similar moments. Once that is completed, there will be the first meeting,” Beltran said in Havana.
When Colombia signed peace with the FARC, a Norwegian representative served as a mediator of that table, and Cuba served as headquarters. The island also facilitated the talks initiated by former president Juan Manuel Santos with the ELN and later continued by his former president Iván Duque. Dialogues with Petro’s government would be resumed in Cuba and then continued in other countries.
Closer ties
Petro’s call to Maduro is one of the most significant steps taken by the Casa de Nariño in the reestablishment of diplomatic relations with the Miraflores Palace.
Added to this are the arrival of ambassadors Armando Benedetti to Caracas and Felix Plasencia to Bogota, the reactivation of binational trade, and the total opening of the border between both countries.
Venezuela is a refuge for ELN and ELN protects Maduro
Petro’s request is not surprising, especially because Venezuela has become, over time, a refuge territory for the ELN, and Maduro has proven to have good relations with the guerrillas by allowing them to settle in the country.
A report by Colombian media Noticias RCN showed that the ELN trains a thousand men in camps set up on the Venezuelan border as part of a “contingency plan” to defend the regime of Nicolás Maduro from any external threat.
According to the investigative report, various documents belonging to alias ‘Wilki’ revealed an alleged alliance between Maduro and the ELN to protect the Chavista regime. According to the story, the alliance would have started in 2019, just when the interim president, Juan Guaidó, backed at the time by the United States, pushed for the failed entry of humanitarian aid at the border.
The ELN is at the service of the dictatorship as a paramilitary group, assuming practically the same functions as the armed collectives of Chavismo. In addition, they appropriated the exploitation of gold in that country with the consent of Chavismo.
Sabrina Martín Rondon is a Venezuelan journalist. Her source is politics and economics. She is a specialist in corporate communications and is committed to the task of dismantling the supposed benefits of socialism // Sabrina Martín Rondon es periodista venezolana. Su fuente es la política y economía. Es especialista en comunicaciones corporativas y se ha comprometido con la tarea de desmontar las supuestas bondades del socialismo