Violence against civilians in Colombia is rising amid the various crises facing the government’s Total Peace policy and the strengthening of armed and criminal groups. 

Between January and May 2024, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) recorded a 36% increase in the number of people being displaced compared to the same period in 2023. There was also a 171% increase in people experiencing confinement and a 13.8% increase affected by conflict. So far, 53,600 people have been affected by confinement and 29,200 people by mass displacement.

“Since January 2024, there has been a significant increase in the number of confinements. In all months of the first quarter, there has been an increase in events compared to the same period last year. March stands out in particular, with almost four times as many events,” OCHA told InSight Crime in an email.

SEE ALSO: High-Level Attack Punctuates Security Crisis in Southwestern Colombia

Colombia’s security situation has been aggravated by several factors, including the criminal actions of armed groups and difficulties in negotiations between the state and armed groups under Total Peace, the flagship policy put forward by President Gustavo Petro in which the government negotiates with different armed groups and criminal gangs in parallel.

Below, InSight Crime analyzes why violence is rising in Colombia.

Criminal Disputes Fuel Violence

The Pacific region, comprising the departments of Chocó, Valle del Cauca, Cauca, and Nariño, has been the most affected by violence in 2024, with criminal disputes increasing the number of people affected. 

In Chocó, the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional – ELN) and the Gaitanist Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia –  AGC), also known as the Gaitanistas, have for years been engaged in all-out war over drug trafficking and illegal mining.

In Cauca and Nariño, the ELN and dissidents of the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC), also known as the ex-FARC mafia, are fighting for control of areas crucial to different parts of the drug trafficking chain, from coca cultivation and cocaine processing to maritime drug departure ports. 

In Putumayo and Caqueta, the humanitarian crisis stems from clashes between the Carolina Ramírez Front of the ex-FARC mafia’s Central General Staff (Estado Mayor Central – EMC) and the Border Command, a group allied to another faction of FARC dissidents called the Second Marquetalia. The departments are among the country’s coca-growing hotspots and are key departure points for drug shipments leaving for Ecuador and Brazil via the Putumayo River. 

“In recent months, these dynamics [of violence] have resulted in large-scale confinements, with more than 17,000 people affected in the municipalities of Puerto Caicedo, Puerto Guzmán, Puerto Leguízamo, Villagarzón in Putumayo, and Solano in Caquetá, areas where these kinds of emergencies had not occurred in years,” the OCHA commented.

Other areas, including southern Bolívar, also saw rising levels of violence. Since 2023, the Ombudsman’s Office has warned of increased clashes between FARC, ELN, and AGC dissident groups for control of the area, which is another key corridor for drug trafficking and illegal mining. 

Peace Negotiations Stall

The increase in humanitarian incidents in Colombia comes as Petro’s government is seeking peace deals with some of the country’s largest armed groups: the ELN and factions associated with the EMC. But negotiations with both groups are currently on hold.

Dialogue with the ELN stalled in February after the government announced the initiation of regional talks with the Comuneros del Sur Front in Nariño, a group that declared a rebellion against the Central Command (Comando Central – COCE), the ELN’s main leadership body. The ELN’s emissaries argued that only delegates at the national level should be authorized to negotiate with the government and subsequently suspended their part in negotiations. 

Additionally, in May, the ELN announced the reactivation of extortion kidnappings as a form of financing, causing tensions. Although both parties signed an agreement on the participation of civil society in the talks, the ELN claims that the talks remain frozen.

SEE ALSO: Colombia’s Ex-FARC Mafia Issues IDs to Enforce Criminal Governance

Talks with the EMC fragmented in March, when Petro suspended the ceasefire in the departments of Cauca, Nariño, and Valle del Cauca, which together account for 30% of the humanitarian incidents recorded by OCHA between January and May. This break in the ceasefire came after factions associated with the EMC killed an Indigenous leader in Cauca. Tensions within the EMC over whether to continue negotiating with the government led fronts loyal to Néstor Gregorio Vera Fernández, alias “Iván Mordisco,” to leave the table, while others decided to continue. 

The crises in the negotiations have cast doubt on the effectiveness of the government’s Total Peace policy in reducing the rates of violence in the territories where these groups are present.

“Between January and April 2024, continued clashes between Non-State Armed Groups (NSAGs) and the suspension of the bilateral ceasefire between the government and one of these groups resulted in an increase in people affected by confinement and massive forced displacement, especially in the departments of Cauca, Putumayo, Caquetá, and in Magdalena Medio, mainly Sur de Bolívar,” OCHA told InSight Crime.

Ceasefires with the ELN and the EMC have only reduced violence against security forces, while clashes between illegal groups continue, affecting citizens. 

“The ceasefire is with the armed forces, but not with the community,” Alejandra López, a humanitarian analyst told InSight Crime. 

More Violence, Greater Social Control

As violence and conflict have increased, armed and criminal groups have deepened their social control. 

One of the main forms that this control has taken is “carnetización” — the issuing of IDs to inhabitants in territories where the groups have a presence — to control the entry and exit of people. During the year, the Ombudsman’s Office and other institutions announced an increase in the number of people being given IDs by FARC dissidents in the departments of Meta, Nariño, Antioquia, Cauca, Tolima, and Huila, among others. 

In addition, the groups have increased mobility restrictions in departments such as Caquetá, Cauca, Córdoba, Chocó, Meta, Antioquia, Nariño, Norte de Santander, Santander, Guaviare, Arauca, and Putumayo.

Restrictions on mobility and/or access are part of the strategy to control NSAGs, including the control of businesses, restrictions on movement, limitations on access to cultivation areas, and in some cases, the carnetización of people,” OCHA said. 

As with enforced IDs and restrictions on movement, confinement is aimed at controlling the entry and exit of people, goods, and services into and out of a territory. This gives the groups enforcing confinement greater territorial control and allows them to mobilize troops and illegal resources without major impediments. An example of this are the armed strikes that the ELN launched against the Gaitanistas in Chocó in February, which affected approximately 24,000 people.

In other cases, confinements occur because victims of violence prefer not to move, said Manuela Barrero, a researcher who has studied the topic extensively.

“If they are displaced to the nearest municipal capital, there is no effective response from the state to relocate them or to guarantee their humanitarian needs,” he said, adding that displacement can also generate more pressure from the armed groups, who seek to prevent the humanitarian impact of their activities from becoming visible.

Feature image: The EMC mount an illegal roadblock in Corinto, Cauca, in April 2024. Credit: Associated Press.

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Netflix recently released its eponymous Griselda Blanco biopic, starring Sofía Vergara, which follows the drug trafficker’s journey from Medellín to becoming “The Godmother” of Miami’s drug empire. But like many other narco TV shows, it falls into the stereotype trap.

Griselda Blanco was one of the most prolific Colombian drug traffickers of the 1970s and ‘80s, and the most famous woman drug trafficker in Latin America.

SEE ALSO: Griselda Blanca, alias ‘La Madrina’

Blanco grew up in Medellín, and later moved to New York, where she began her drug trafficking career in the early 1970s. Together with her then-husband Alberto Bravo and his brother Carlos, she imported cocaine and marijuana to the United States. In 1974, Blanco was indicted and added to the state’s most wanted list. She and her husband fled the country, settling down in Medellín, Colombia, to keep running their illicit business.

By 1975, she had allegedly killed her husband and moved to Miami, where she continued her drug trafficking operations and became the head of a powerful drug trafficking ring.

Blanco successfully ran her operation until 1985, when she was arrested during a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) operation. After one of her hitmen testified against her, she was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Blanco was released in 2004 and moved back to Colombia, where she lived until 2012, when she was shot by a hitman in the streets of her neighborhood.

The show, by the producers and writers of Narcos and Narcos Mexico, picks up Blanco’s story in 1975. “Griselda” follows the trend set by its predecessors of presenting fictionalized versions of the lives of infamous Latin American drug traffickers, though very few of these have focused on women. The show has been marketed as a new take on the narco TV show in an attempt to set it apart from other adaptations like La Reina del Sur, an adaptation of the novel by Arturo Pérez Reverte, said to be loosely based on Sandra Ávila Beltrán. 

InSight Crime Analysis

The fictionalized version of Blanco’s story presented by Netflix is advertised as a groundbreaking narrative about a woman who makes it in the male-dominated world of drug trafficking, but it ends up reproducing common stereotypes about women involved in organized crime.

The series attempts to portray Blanco as a mother who had no other choice than to get into the drug trade to provide for her sons after running away to Miami to escape her husband. 

SEE ALSO: Female Criminal Leadership and Differing Use of Violence

Women’s involvement in the violent world of organized crime, especially in leadership roles, makes audiences — and society — uncomfortable. As a result, the show tries to turn her ascent into a drug queen into a melodramatic story of a mother going to extreme lengths to provide for her children, engaging in violence only to protect herself and her family. In contrast, in stories featuring male drug traffickers, violence is almost expected, and such justification is often absent, like in depictions of the Medellín Cartel leader, Pablo Escobar, in Narcos.

“The motherhood aspect seems to be necessary in order to anchor this violent character in femininity so that we can sort of accept the violence,” María Luisa Ruiz, a professor at Saint Mary’s College of California who has studied representations of women in the world of the drug trade, told InSight Crime. “There’s always this need to associate these ultra-violent heads of organized crime to their domestic life, which I don’t see in the portrayal of men.” 

In reality, Blanco became a well-known figure for her use of violence. She was known to be ruthless with her enemies, and even pioneered the modus operandi of sicariato, or assassins-for-hire, which has become common in every country in Latin America. 

The use of violence by female criminal leaders, which is varied and complex, is regularly overlooked by researchers, security forces, and prosecutors. Violent women, especially those associated with organized crime, are treated as outliers because they defy the gender stereotype of women as natural caregivers rather than perpetrators of violence.

“There’s something about that violation of social norms or expected cultural norms that I think people are still uncomfortable with,” said Ruiz.

Despite Vergara’s claims that she wanted to avoid glamorizing Blanco’s life, the show does the opposite, presenting her life as an (anti)hero’s journey of rise and downfall. 

“This story is ‘Scarface,’ it’s ‘The Godfather’ with drugs,” said Ruiz. “It’s still that idea of one person having their journey… And to me, that focus on the individual really loses the fact that you do have this organized [criminal] network.”

Women involved in drug trafficking are not usually leading drug empires. They are more frequently employed in the lowest ranks of criminal groups, as human couriers, lookouts, and retail vendors, and few of them manage to climb the ranks of the male-dominated organizations. Despite their lower rank, women are frequently punished with harsher sentences than their male counterparts for the same crimes because they have betrayed the traditional ideas of femininity. The reality of women in prison, and their relationship with the criminal underworld, is less glamorous than the rise and fall of a drug queenpin, but just as illustrative of criminal dynamics. 

The show also willfully ignores the true start of Blanco’s drug trafficking career, as several reviews have pointed out. By 1975, when the show begins, Blanco was already a prolific drug trafficker, managing a lucrative business with her husband. However, the show minimizes her role in his business to make her supposed ascent into a crime queenpin more dramatic. She is portrayed as a secondary character in her husband’s drug business, and at one point it is insinuated that he sexually exploited her to pay back debts to his brother.

However, court documents and journalistic investigations into her life show she was a central player in the trafficking scheme. This is another common error in narco TV shows: Despite being key players in illicit activities, women are often portrayed as secondary characters. Throughout the six episodes of “Griselda,” women, including Blanco herself, are referenced as sex objects and trophy wives who display little agency in their lives and are swept along by the men who run the drug business.

In the end, “Griselda” is just another narco TV show aimed at entertaining English-speaking audiences, rather than telling the true story of a hyper-violent woman that rose through the ranks of the drug world, and set a precedent for how we understand women’s participation in organized crime. 

The post What Netflix’s ‘Griselda’ Gets Wrong About Women in Organized Crime appeared first on InSight Crime.

Women are participating in more spaces in organized crime in Mexico, according to a new report that highlights the consequences of this trend for their families and communities. 

The report from the International Crisis Group is based on interviews with over 70 women in prisons and drug rehabilitation centers. Most of the women interviewed are single mothers from low-income communities who have a history of drug use and were, at some point in their lives, victims of violence inside and outside their homes. These shared characteristics reveal the factors that make organized crime an attractive option for an increasing number of women in Mexico. 

Women are often recruited by criminal groups through their drug use or through their personal and romantic relationships with members of criminal groups, the report found, confirming previous InSight Crime findings.

Once part of the group, women carry out the same activities as their male counterparts, including intelligence gathering, small-scale drug peddling, hired killings, and leading criminal cells. Other investigations have found that some women even lead their own criminal groups, although there are fewer women criminal leaders than men.

Women are not afraid to use violence to advance in the criminal world, especially in matters related to the drug trade, the report found. Previous investigations have echoed this claim, highlighting women’s complex roles as victims and perpetrators of violence within organized crime. 

Below, InSight Crime outlines three new findings from the report. 

Criminal Groups Offer Women Power

Amid rising gender-based violence in Mexico, joining criminal groups has become a way for women to protect themselves and gain power in a deeply patriarchal society where they are left unprotected by state institutions. 

Between 2019 and 2022, more than 15,000 women in Mexico were murdered because of their gender, according to data from the National Statistics and Geography Institute (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía – INEGI). Never before has Mexico seen such high levels of femicides and sexual violence.

SEE ALSO: Mexico’s Rising Femicides Linked to Organized Crime 

In this context, criminal groups offer women the chance to find justice and protection, as well as garner their own power. Although there is no data on the number of women active in Mexican criminal groups, the number of women in prison for crimes related to organized crime has increased from 5.4% of the total prison population in 2017 to 7.5% in 2021, the report found.

The researchers attributed the increase to the lack of justice and protection for women in Mexico, among other factors. However, the increase was not linked to changes in government policies.

“They are sick of being victimized and turn to the criminal world to avoid that at any cost,” explained Angélica Ospina, author of the report. 

“Imagine how much violence and insecurity they must face in their lives to make being in a criminal group feel like a safe space.” 

Collateral Damage

Women’s participation in organized crime impacts not only them, but also their families, expanding the hold organized crime has over communities where it is present. 

Most of the women interviewed in the study are the main providers for their families, and many of them are also single mothers. Criminal activities provided them with the means to support themselves and their families, an opportunity they would otherwise not have, as many are from low-income areas. 

“Criminal groups also extort women, saying they will do things to their children in the future, like recruit or kill them. So their kids are targets,” said Ospina. 

And these are not just empty threats. Many children of women who participate in organized crime also end up joining criminal groups. This rising intergenerational dependence on crime is contributing to the worsening of armed conflict in parts of Mexico, where more and more children are being recruited by criminal groups. 

SEE ALSO: Women and Organized Crime in Latin America: Beyond Victims and Victimizers

When women involved in organized crime are imprisoned, their family ties are also harmed. Left without their primary caregivers, children whose mothers are in prison often suffer long-term effects like lower socioeconomic wellbeing, increased marginalization, and greater vulnerability to organized crime. 

The longer women are in prison, the greater the impact on their children. And women in Mexico face longer prison sentences than men accused of the same crimes, according to several studies. 

“There you also see the issue of gender: that a woman criminal, even if she isn’t really, is an aberration that makes people uncomfortable, so we should let her rot in jail,” explained Ospina.

Policy Recommendations 

The report identifies three spaces where public policy intervention could prevent women from joining criminal groups and mitigate the impacts on themselves and their families. 

First, Mexico needs more programs aimed at increasing economic wellbeing and creating social programs in communities where organized crime is filling the gaps left by the state. Furthermore, addiction treatment centers should increase the range of services available to women with drug addictions to prevent recidivism, the authors argue. 

“Addiction treatment centers are a key [intervention] space,” said Ospina, adding that the country’s prisons are too. Reinsertion and reintegration programs focused on both women in jail and their communities could pave a way forward. 

“You also have to prepare the community to receive the women again,” Ospina said.

The post Women Increasingly Participating in Organized Crime in Mexico: Report appeared first on InSight Crime.

Pablo Escobar and his Medellín Cartel transformed the cocaine trade during their heyday in the 1980s. But the 30 years since the kingpin’s death have shown that the business remains one of the world’s most dynamic criminal economies.

Escobar was killed by a specially assigned police unit on December 2, 1993. His death marked the start of a new era in the global drug trade. Over the next three decades, drug trafficking organizations run from the top down by powerful, high-profile capos gave way to dispersed networks connected by “invisible” middlemen who tend to avoid the limelight.

SEE ALSO: InSight Crime’s Cocaine Seizure Round-Up 2022

The cocaine business has also expanded. The United States remains the world’s major consumer of the drug, but huge new markets have sprung up in Europe and Asia, spurring the emergence of new trafficking networks to feed that demand.

In response, the supply has also seen unstoppable growth. Cocaine production in Colombia and neighboring Andean countries has reached historic highs in recent years, and criminal groups have even begun experimenting with growing crops outside their native region. 

1. The Fall of the Cartels and the Rise of the ‘Invisibles’

In Escobar’s time, much of cocaine production and trafficking was controlled by cartels led by larger-than-life figures. In the years following his death, these hierarchical organizations and big personalities have disappeared. 

Traffickers have learned that it is far more profitable to keep a low profile, leading to the rise of what InSight Crime has dubbed the “Invisibles.” Among some of the most prolific of the Invisibles to be unmasked are Guillermo León Acevedo Giraldo, alias “Memo Fantasma,” and Luis Agustín Caicedo Velandia, alias “Don Lucho.”

At the same time, the cocaine market has come to be dominated by looser, more fragmented networks that specialize in certain steps of the process. And the Gaitanistas — also known as the Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia – AGC), the Urabeños, or the Gulf Clan — one of the main criminal groups in Colombia, are a case in point.

The AGC is the result of a criminal evolution that began with the Medellín Cartel and continued with the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia – AUC). Both organizations failed to recover from the death of their leaders or their internal divisions.

The AGC learned from those failures, and from the beginning, it was conceived as a network. This has allowed the group to adapt to the deaths and captures of its main leaders, without affecting its participation in the different nodes in the cocaine market.

2. Cocaine Trade Goes Global

When Escobar’s Medellín Cartel was at the peak of its power, most of the profits from the cocaine trade came from the voracious appetite for the drug in the United States.  

Though the United States still accounts for a major share of global cocaine consumption, expanding European markets have become increasingly important in recent years. The drug fetches high prices across the Atlantic, and criminal groups in Latin American and the Caribbean have built trafficking relationships with a range of European partners. Italy’s ‘Ndrangheta, Dutch-Moroccan mafias, Albanian networks, and others now maintain upstream trafficking relationships that increase their profits by bringing them closer to the product’s source.  

SEE ALSO: The Cocaine Pipeline to Europe

Cocaine produced in South America has also begun to flow in significant quantities through new regions. Nigerian networks have emerged as key players in trafficking to and through Africa. In the Middle East, cocaine now moves through Turkey, Israel, and other countries. Several Asian markets also appear poised for growth. Cocaine prices in Australia and New Zealand are among the highest in the world. Large, recent seizures of the drug in Asian major transportation hubs like Hong Kong suggest traffickers are seeking to meet that demand.

3. Production Increases and Expands

Over the past 30 years, coca cultivation has continued to expand, increasing the potential production of cocaine to record highs.

Despite numerous initiatives over the last three decades, including forced eradication, aerial fumigation, and crop substitution programs, Colombia remains the world’s main producer of cocaine. Since 1999, when the government began to measure coca crops in the country, the number of hectares has continued to rise, reaching a historic 230,000 hectares in 2022. Increased areas of coca cultivation, coupled with advances in technology that generate higher crop yields and more sophisticated methods of refining coca base into cocaine, has led to steady growth of the country’s potential cocaine production since 2013, according to United Nations figures. In 2022, the country’s production potential reached 1,738 tons per year, the highest in history.

Cocaine production has also expanded in other countries. In Perú, where coca crops also reached a record high of 95,008 hectares in 2022, crops are moving away from consolidated production enclaves and into new areas along the country’s borders, like Indigenous territories and protected areas. And coca cultivation has spread to countries that were previously not producers, like Honduras, Guatemala, and Venezuela.

The post 30 Years After Escobar, How the Cocaine Trade Has Changed appeared first on InSight Crime.

After a week involving a high-profile kidnapping and alleged ceasefire violations by Colombia’s two largest armed groups, the future of President Gustavo Petro’s Total Peace policy is in jeopardy.

First, on October 28, members of the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional – ELN) kidnapped the parents of Luis Díaz, a Colombian football star, at a gas station in Barrancas, La Guajira. The mother was quickly released, but the father, Luis Manuel Díaz, remains captive at the time of publication.

The ELN’s Northern War Front (Frente de Guerra Norte), based in La Guajira, claimed responsibility for the abduction.  

SEE ALSO: Colombia Restarts Peace Talks With Ex-FARC Mafia, but Violence Persists

Then, on November 5, the ELN’s Western War Front (Frente de Guerra Occidental) declared an armed strike in Choco, claiming the Colombian military had violated the ceasefire by colluding with the Gaitanist Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia – AGC) in the region.

That same day, the Central General Staff (Estado Mayor Central – EMC), the largest faction of the ex-FARC mafia, a dissident group from the now demobilized Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC), suspended peace talks with the government after just three weeks. A bilateral ceasefire remains in place.

The events capped a horrible turn for Petro’s Total Peace plan, which aims to end the country’s decades-long internal conflict by negotiating with armed and criminal groups. The plan was ambitious from the onset, but talks with the country’s two most important criminal groups, the ELN and the EMC, appear to be unraveling.

Kidnapping Plunges ELN Negotiations Into Crisis

The ELN’s kidnapping of Luis Manuel Díaz and the armed strike may have violated the group’s ceasefire with the government and raised concerns about its ability to adhere to any future peace agreements.

These violations leave the Colombian government in a precarious position as the ELN is Colombia’s largest armed group and is considered critical to the success of Total Peace. The ceasefire has been in place since August and prohibits hostile actions between the ELN and Colombian security forces, while also strictly forbidding the ELN from taking hostages.

These incidents have underscored a longstanding concern surrounding ELN negotiations: The group’s decentralized command structure grants individual war fronts significant autonomy, leading to dissent, internal fragmentation, and seemingly rogue actions, such as the kidnapping of Díaz and the announcement of an armed strike.

The ELN has reportedly committed at least eleven potential violations of the ceasefire agreement between October 3 and November 3, according to the non-governmental organization Institute of Peace and Development Studies (Instituto de Estudios para el Desarrollo y la Paz – Indepaz). But kidnapping has drawn international attention, increasing pressure for the government to establish a clear red line with the ELN.

Doubts About Ex-FARC Mafia’s Commitment to Peace

Negotiations between the Colombian government and the EMC have come to an abrupt halt just 20 days after establishing a ceasefire. On November 5, the EMC announced the government had failed to uphold its commitments agreed during negotiations, although the ceasefire would remain.

This breakdown came after a confrontation in the town of El Plateado in Argelia, in southern Cauca, a key drug trafficking hotspot under the control of the Carlos Patiño Front, which is part of the EMC. On October 26, it was reported that members of the Carlos Patiño Front were blocking the arrival of electoral materials ahead of local elections on October 29.

Their presence appears to have violated an agreement brokered with the government, under which the EMC troops would temporarily vacate the municipality during the elections and allow the army to make sure voting happened peacefully. Following the elections, the army was to withdraw. However, the army remained in El Plateado, leading to an alleged riot instigated by the Carlos Patiño Front, eventually leading to locals kidnapping, and later releasing, 20 members of the security forces. 

SEE ALSO: Colombia’s ‘Total Peace’ 1 Year On: Less State Violence, Stronger Criminal Groups

The collapse of these talks has led to concerns among analysts that the EMC is using negotiations as a pretext to recruit more people and fortify its positions. After the collapse of two previous negotiations over the past year, the EMC expanded its influence in key areas. 

The peace process with the EMC has also struggled due to a lack of monitoring, such as delays in establishing the monitoring and verification mechanism outlined in the ceasefire protocol. “[These agreements] can’t be done on the fly. You need to have everything ready for when the ceasefire comes into effect. These improvisations here show that this government didn’t have a strategic plan,” said Luis Fernando Trejos, a professor at Universidad del Norte and conflict analyst, told InSight Crime.

Negotiations Stalled Elsewhere

While talks with the ELN and the EMC are the largest roadblocks to Total Peace, other negotiations such as those in cities like Buenaventura and Medellín, also face significant challenges.

In Buenaventura, rival gangs, the Shottas and Espartanos, have tried to maintain ceasefires while talks progress. However, Colombia’s Congress has not approved the legal framework needed to allow negotiations with such criminal groups. In early October, members of Congress presented a bill aimed at amending the Justicia y Paz law, which facilitated the demobilization of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia – AUC) in 2006 to include newer gangs. Unfortunately, this move also faces stiff opposition in Congress, where the president’s party needs majorities.

The delay in establishing a legal framework also has significant implications for the potential resumption of negotiations with one of Colombia’s largest armed groups, the AGC. Peace talks with the AGC unraveled in March when the government accused the group of orchestrating an armed strike by miners in the Bajo Cauca region in northwestern Colombia.

Political and Public Stalemate

These strains are only further eroding political and public support for Total Peace. 

Colombia’s regional elections, held on October 29, saw a slew of mayors and governors opposed to Petro’s government elected into office, further threatening support for Total Peace at the local level.

The events of the past year have also eroded public support for Petro’s flagship plan. From August 2022 to August 2023, polling showed the percentage of Colombians who approved of negotiations with armed groups had dropped from 76% to 59%, while those in favor of defeating these groups by military means climbed from 21% to 37%.

Even if the EMC and ELN talks soon continue, these may not be completed by the end of Petro’s current presidential term in 2026. The successful peace process with the FARC counted on far broader support and still took four years to complete. The responsibility for completing Total Peace may therefore well fall on a different government. 

The post Colombia’s Total Peace May Be Unraveling appeared first on InSight Crime.

Although Colombia’s regional elections, held on October 29, were more peaceful than those held four years ago, they showed that organized crime continues to be a severe threat to electoral proceedings. 

In these elections, Colombians voted for their local and departmental representatives, including mayors and governors, for the period 2024-2026. While the results were mixed, right-wing parties claimed several important victories, leaving President Gustavo Petro’s leftist government with few allies at the regional level.

This will likely influence the government’s Total Peace plan, which seeks to negotiate with armed groups across the country, as several prominent critics of this policy were elected. 

While most of the elections took place without public disturbance, attacks on polling stations were reported in Norte de Santander, Cauca, and parts of the Caribbean coast.

InSight Crime presents three conclusions on the role organized crime played in these elections: 

No Interference by Armed Groups on the Day

In 2023, the elections saw an absence of violence by criminal groups in the electoral scenario. Armed groups such as the Central General Staff (Estado Mayor Central – EMC) of the ex-FARC Mafia, the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional – ELN) and the Gaitanista Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia – AGC) were not behind any violent acts during the polls. 

SEE ALSO: Colombian Mayor Explains How Gaitanistas Took Over Key Drug Trade Town

The government’s current ceasefires with the ELN and the EMC, achieved through Total Peace talks, as well as the patchy presence of the AGC, played an important part, according to Diego Rubiano, a senior analyst for the Electoral Observation Mission (Misión de Observación Electoral – MOE).

“Since 2014-2015, we always had an action by an armed actor. There was always the detonation of an explosive device or a frontal attack on a polling station. This year, we didn’t have a single incident,” he said. 

The few disturbances at polling stations did not appear to have any links to armed groups.

The elections were canceled in some municipalities of the southern departments of Putumayo and Nariño due to the perceived risks of violent attacks. Other events also overshadowed proceedings. Supporters of a mayoral candidate in La Gamarra, Cesar, set fire to an electoral office building, killing one official, identified as Duperly Arévalo Carrascal. And in Argelia, Cauca, demonstrators angry with the voting results set fire to electoral materials.

Other irregularities were also registered. The amount of cash seized nationwide by authorities on the day for allegedly being used for electoral corruption skyrocketed by 289% over the last polls to reach 1.2 billion pesos ($300,000). The mayor of Yondó in Antioquia, Fabián Echavarría Rangel, was arrested after being caught with 150 million pesos ($37,000) in his van. 

In addition, 389 people were arrested, 189 for judicial records and 35 for crimes such as the destruction of electoral material and obstructing the carrying out of the elections. 

Political Violence Rose During Campaign

Although election day was calm, the previous months saw an increase in political violence. 

According to the MOE, between October 29, 2022 and September 29, 2023, violence against political leaders increased by 92% compared to 2019, although violence against social leaders decreased by 15.6%. At least 28 political candidates were killed. 

“There is a change in the strategy of political participation [of the armed groups],” Rubiano commented, adding that they are seeking to “take advantage of the electoral process.”

The MOE recorded 1,352 violent incidents related to armed groups over this period, an increase of 129% compared to the 2019 regional elections and 66% higher than during the 2022 presidential elections. For its part, between January and September 2023, the Ombudsman’s Office recorded at least 375 acts of violence, including threats, attacks and homicides, allegedly perpetrated by armed groups such as the ex-FARC mafia (56 acts), the AGC (54) and the ELN (44). Attacks on local authorities led to at least 12 mayors having to govern outside their municipalities from somewhere else due to threats from armed groups.

“This violence…occurs much more at the beginning of the electoral calendar, where we begin to see problems with registering people, complaints that [groups are extorting candidates] to let them campaign or to be able to mobilize,” said Mauricio Vela, coordinator of the MOE’s Political and Electoral Observatory of Democracy.

The departments of Cauca, Nariño, Valle del Cauca and Antioquia were the most affected by violence against political and social leaders. 

Local Elections Remain Important to Organized Crime

Although the violence was not attributable to criminal groups, InSight Crime was able to collect testimonies in departments such as Norte de Santander, Chocó and Cauca that show the interference of these groups in the elections. 

Criminal groups in the country continued to unduly influence elections by extorting candidates and telling local communities who to vote for. 

“Every political actor has to go and talk to the guerrillas in order to be able to work, campaign and everything. They are very strict about buying votes,” a social leader in Guapi, Cauca, told InSight Crime before the elections. 

SEE ALSO: Colombian Mayors at a Crossroads: Co-Govern With Criminals or Flee

In Hacarí, Norte de Santander, ELN members blocked voters for one mayoral candidate, and in Bolívar, alleged AGC members intimidated voters in the municipality of San Jacinto del Cauca, according to a statement from the Ombudsman’s Office.

For decades, municipal budgets have been a source of income for armed groups, who extort money from officials and contractors. In addition, Colombia’s current coca price crisis has forced the groups to further diversify their criminal portfolios, giving more weight to illicit economies such as extortion.

The post Organized Crime Changes Its Strategy in Colombia’s Regional Elections appeared first on InSight Crime.

After a sweeping first-round victory, Carlos Fernando Galán, the newly elected mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, faces a severe security crisis, with some of the largest criminal threats in the country increasingly active in the capital.

Galán, who won the October 29 elections with 49% of the vote, based his campaign around improving security in the Colombian capital. Under the slogan “Bogotá walks safely,” the liberal candidate proposed an “Integral Plan against Organized Crime” and a program to strengthen criminal and judicial investigations. 

“We have a lot of work to do, and I want to mention some of the tasks for Bogotá that start today: first, we will concentrate on protecting this city. The levels of fear must go down and they are going to go down,” Galán said in his victory speech.

SEE ALSO: Colombian Mayors at a Crossroads: Co-Govern With Criminals or Flee

Galán’s main challenge will be to manage the current security crisis — the worst the city has seen in the last four years. According to data published by the Bogotá City Council, seven out of 12 high-impact crimes increased in the first half of 2023 compared to last year. Kidnapping, theft, and residential burglary saw the highest increases, rising 80%, 29.7% and 27.2%, respectively. 

As the country’s capital, Bogotá is a key location for organized crime networks engaging in micro-trafficking, extortion, and money laundering. It is also a strategic corridor for moving precursor chemicals and drugs that are sold in the city for retail consumption and distributed to other parts of the country.

According to data from the Colombian Drug Observatory (Observatorio de Drogas de Colombia- ODC), a Ministry of Justice agency that researches the drug problem in Colombia, nearly 50 tons of cocaine hydrochloride and marijuana were seized in Bogotá between 2019 and 2023.

InSight Crime Analysis

Galán faces a wide range of criminal groups operating throughout the city. His administration must move away from focusing mainly on the weakest links in organized crime networks, a strategy favored by prior governments.

Neighborhoods such as Kennedy and Ciudad Bolívar have seen increased activity by sophisticated groups such as Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and the Gaitanist Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia – AGC). Their increased control over parts of Bogotá has led to a rapid rise in extortion, contract killings, and kidnappings.

Tren de Aragua is allegedly responsible for several murder cases in the Colombian capital, where it has established itself as part of a growing transnational presence. These murders received a lot of attention due to the extreme levels of violence involved. 

SEE ALSO: Gaitanistas and Tren de Aragua Unlikely to War Over Bogotá, Colombia

While InSight Crime has questioned the extent of the AGC and Tren de Aragua’s actual control in Bogotá and the likelihood of a turf war between them, these threats merit further investigation by the incoming mayor.

Likewise, the Ombudsman’s Office has also warned that other criminal such as the ex-FARC mafia, dissidents of the extinct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC) guerrillas, the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional – ELN) may position themselves in the capital’s rural districts, filling a power vacuum left by the FARC after their demobilization in 2016.

One of Galán’s most significant proposals is the creation of a branch of the Financial Information and Analysis Unit (Unidad de Información y Análisis Financiero – UIAF) for Bogotá. This would create a collaborative network made up of court officials, the Attorney General’s Office, and the national police, ideally increasing the city’s ability to go after the economic structures propping up criminal groups.

In response, Galán has proposed establishing weekly security councils and strengthening police presence, especially in urban areas. However, the mayor-elect’s program so far lacks a clear strategy to address the threats posed by organized crime in rural areas, which make up 75% of the capital’s territory.

The post Security Challenges Facing the New Mayor of Bogotá, Colombia appeared first on InSight Crime.

Yefer Gamboa is the mayor of Nuquí, a city on Colombia’s Pacific coast whose beaches and tropical rainforest attract thousands of tourists each year. But, in addition to being a touristic paradise, Nuqui’s jungle is also a refuge for armed groups that occupy the area, controlling and profiting from criminal activities.

Even before being elected in 2019, Gamboa encountered Nuqui’s dark side. The most powerful of the area’s criminal groups, the Gaitanist Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia – AGC), offered to support him in the elections.

Gamboa refused their help. When he continued to reject the AGC’s advances, the threats began.

“They said the AGC was going to come in through my patio and kill or kidnap me,” Gamboa told InSight Crime.

Things got so bad that now, after four years, Gamboa is finishing his term as mayor from another city due to the threats.

His situation is not an isolated case in the department of Chocó, where the AGC has consolidated its control through violence.

In the lead-up to regional elections, which will take place on October 29, criminal groups have tried to influence voters. And one week before Colombians head to the polls, at least nine mayors in Chocó have been threatened or attacked by armed groups in the region.

The national government has recognized the crisis in the department. When President Gustavo Petro was elected in 2022, he promised to prioritize Chocó in his “Total Peace” plan, which aims to demobilize Colombia’s illegal armed groups. But negotiations with the AGC have deteriorated. And despite high expectations for Total Peace in the department, the future of Nuquí looks bleak.   

Establishing Control 

After years of working in the private sector as a civil engineer, Gamboa decided to run for mayor of Nuquí, promising to fight the corruption that for years had hindered the city’s development.

“We won the elections by a very small margin. We won by 51 votes, but we won!” Gamboa said. “We put together a campaign — with mostly young people — and we promised change.”

But even before becoming mayor, the shadow of the AGC hung over Gamboa.

Since 2016, the AGC has been in Nuquí, which, with its access to many rivers that connect the coast to inland Chocó and the rest of the country, is strategically located for transporting drugs to North America and Europe.

Gamboa’s first run-in with the group took place during the campaign. During a visit to a rural area outside Nuquí, he was approached by one of the AGC’s alleged leaders known by the alias “Jonas.” The AGC had heard that Gamboa had a good chance of winning, so Jonas, who is in charge of the AGC’s ideology and relations with local communities, offered to help him campaign.

But Gamboa refused the offer. “I said, ‘Look, the only thing that I ask is that you let us tell people what we are proposing and that you leave our boats alone, that you let us do our job like the rest of the candidates.’”

After the encounter, the AGC did not contact Gamboa again, and when he won the election, he thought that was the end of things.

SEE ALSO: Colombian Mayors at a Crossroads: Co-Govern With Criminals or Flee

At that point, the AGC had been slowly consolidating its power in Nuquí and other parts of Chocó for three years. Paramilitary groups under the umbrella of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia – AUC) have been in the region since the 1990s when they came to fight the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC). But it was not until 2016 that the AGC began to expand rapidly.

When the FARC disarmed and left the area after signing a peace deal with the Colombian government in 2016, the AGC and the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional – ELN) guerrilla group began a war over the FARC’s former territories that continues today.

In an “Early Alert” (Alerta Temprana) statement in 2022, the Ombudsman’s office said, “Following the turf war between [the ELN and AGC], it was the AGC who achieved an illegal and hegemonic control over the municipality of Nuquí and the rural areas around Bahia Solano.”

In the wake of the AGC’s victory, the group expanded its drug trafficking activities. According to Gamboa, they charge drug traffickers a fee to use the routes that go through Nuquí, which they also use for their own shipments. But the AGC did not stop there. The group extended their control not just over the territory and illegal economies, but also over local communities.

A Pervasive Presence 

By 2020, Gamboa had noticed a change in the area: the AGC now exercised strong social control over rural communities. Nothing happened in Nuquí without their knowledge.

Gamboa met with alias “Barbas,” the AGC’s new political leader in the Pacific region. Barbas was blunt, demanding support from the mayor’s office in the form of 900 million pesos (around $240,000).

The mayor flatly refused.

Barbas tried to negotiate, asking for 700 million (US$187,000), then 500 million pesos (US$133,000). In the end, Gamboa said, the AGC leader said their bare minimum request was seven boat motors.

But Gamboa would not budge. “Giving resources to illegal groups makes them stronger, and with those state resources, they buy weapons, extort people, and steal people’s boats. I don’t agree with that,” he said.

The AGC told the mayor that they were going to make their own inquiries to verify what he said about the lack of resources in the municipal budget. But first, they threatened him.

“Barbas told me, ‘We are going to look into the city budget, and if you have money, you have to give it to us. If not, we will take action,'” Gamboa said.

Two weeks after the encounter in Arusi, the AGC sent Gamboa a message saying he had to pay them 1 billion pesos (US$270,000) from the municipal budget.

In October 2020, confident in its territorial control, the group dared to assassinate the well-known environmental leader, Juana Perea. The media coverage, coupled with the government’s response — a joint operation between the police, the navy, and the Attorney General’s Office — forced the AGC to keep a low profile for a few months.

During that time, the AGC’s pressure on the mayor’s office eased. But Gamboa knew the calm in Nuquí would not last long.

Expanding Into Extortion

Once the authorities turned their attention elsewhere, the AGC returned to the territory in force — a scene that has taken place throughout Colombia. But, Gamboa said, the pressure from the authorities had affected the AGC’s main source of income, drug trafficking. So the group turned to Nuquí’s businesses, extorting tourism companies and gas stations.

“All the gasoline sellers had to raise the price of gasoline by 1,000 pesos to give it to these men,” said Gamboa.

The group also began to extort contractors working for the mayor’s office on various public works: remodeling the municipality’s airport, paving streets, and building community soccer fields.

According to Gamboa, the AGC demanded 6% of the value of the contract from each of the contractors in exchange for allowing them to continue with the projects.

“They called the contractors and said they were going to stop the project if they didn’t receive 6%. Of course, the engineers are not from Nuquí, they have no protection from anyone, so they stopped all the work,” the mayor said.

At the same time, the AGC began threatening Gamboa again. The group asked him for money and pressured him to meet with them.

But remote communities suffer the most.

“Since the end of 2021, the AGC has been a continuous presence in the Indigenous communities of Villa Nueva, Jagua, Puerto Indio, La Loma, Chorrito, and Yucal in the municipality of Nuquí, demanding that inhabitants sell their crops to the organization,” reads a 2022 report from the Ombudsman’s Office.

These rural areas also experience more violence because the ELN makes occasional incursions into the municipality, prompting an armed response from the AGC.

SEE ALSO: Colombia’s ‘Total Peace’ 1 Year On: Less State Violence, Stronger Criminal Groups

Influencing Elections

The outlook in Nuquí, and in Chocó in general, is not encouraging. As the local government struggles and officials flee the area, the AGC grows stronger, solidifying their control.

Since 2022, the situation for Gamboa and the communities of the municipality has been untenable. “Things got worse this past year, because [before] people saw them as distant, busy with their drug trafficking. But now they are messing with the people, now they are stealing people’s boats. Now they are coming to the mayor’s office,” Gamboa said.

By August 2023, the pressure was so high and the danger so imminent that Gamboa decided to leave the municipality. He has been interviewed in national media and continues to denounce his situation. But even with all this media attention, it is not safe for him to return to the territory. In a municipality like Nuquí, neither the army nor the police are sufficient to protect him from the AGC.

Although Gamboa’s term as mayor is almost over, it still may not be safe for him to return, he told InSight Crime. And the current mayoral candidates are facing the same security challenges.

Ahead of the local elections, there have been reports of the AGC rallying communities to influence which candidates win.

“They are participating in politics and they are telling people not to vote for this one and to vote for this one,” Gamboa said.

The election results will determine the future of Nuquí. If the AGC manages to influence the vote through threats and pressure, their control will grow. And if a candidate not aligned with the group’s interests wins, they will face the same threats and pressures as Gamboa.

Towns throughout the department are facing the same issue.

The mayors of the municipalities of Rio Iró, San José del Palmar, Sipí, and Bagadó have been threatened by the AGC and the ELN. The mayors of Atrato, El Cantón del San Pablo, Unión Panamericana, Medio Baudó, and Lloró have been victims of attacks in the last year.

As elections approach, the Total Peace plan’s promise of disrupting the control of armed groups in Chocó seems increasingly distant.

The post Colombian Mayor Explains How Gaitanistas Took Over Key Drug Trade Town appeared first on InSight Crime.

A decision by Colombia’s transitional justice body has launched an in-depth study of how sexual and gender-based violence was used as a weapon of war by armed groups in the country’s long-running civil conflict.

After more than a year of preliminary investigations, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz – JEP) officially recognized on September 27 the strategic use of sexual and gender-based violence by armed groups and security forces in the Colombian conflict and announced the opening of a judicial process dubbed “macrocase 11” to further examine it. 

The JEP is the transitional justice mechanism that emerged from the 2016 peace agreement between the Colombian government and the now-disbanded Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC). It is responsible for investigating and prosecuting crimes committed by the guerrillas, the government, and third parties during the armed conflict.

SEE ALSO: How Colombia’s Conflict Intensified Violence Against Women and the LGBTQI+ Community

The reports and testimonies compiled by the tribunal illustrate the motivations and preliminary patterns behind gender-based crimes and expose the patriarchal logic that governs armed groups in Colombia.

During the decades of conflict between armed and criminal groups and the Colombian state, people with diverse gender orientations, identities and/or expressions have been punished or killed for deviating from the traditional gender roles that many of these groups perpetuate.

The JEP revealed that two patterns of victimization were repeated in cases of sexual violence. In the first, sexual violence was used to harm enemies by attacking women and girls related to the group’s rivals. Other cases showed how members of the armed groups, believing that women were “sexually available” to them, used intimidation and power to abuse them.

In addition, the JEP has records of other crimes, such as abortion and forced contraception — forms of reproductive violence — that occurred within the ranks of the FARC and have already been the subject of judicial discussion.

The court also revealed its “provisional universe of facts,” in which it recorded at least 35,178 victims of gender-based violence between 1957 and 2016, of which 89.2% were women and 35% were children.

According to the JEP figures, paramilitary and post-demobilization groups of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia – AUC) are responsible for most of this violence (33% of the cases), followed by the FARC (5.82%), and state agents (3.14%). In another 30% of the cases, no armed actor was identified as responsible.

InSight Crime Analysis

The opening of the new case offers new hope to the victims who have been demanding justice for years, and highlights the difficulties in investigating this type of systemic violence, which continues to be used by armed and criminal groups today.

Since the establishment of the JEP, victims of gender-based and reproductive violence, as well as civil society organizations, have asked the court to open a special case to investigate these crimes. 

Previous investigations have shown that these crimes were not sporadic but part of a pattern of violence that allowed armed and criminal groups to expand their control over the communities and territories they occupied. 

The JEP’s preliminary studies, which also supported this conclusion, paved the way for the new case, which will investigate allegations of sexual violence, murder, forced disappearance, displacement, abortion, sexual slavery, and forced contraception, among other crimes committed because of the victims’ gender orientation, identity, or expression. But investigating and prosecuting these cases is a difficult task.

“The biggest challenge facing the JEP is under-registration…and it is taking steps to ensure that more people come forward are accredited as victims under that case,” Maria Cecilia Ibanez, senior attorney at Women’s Link Worldwide, a non-profit organization that advocates for the rights of girls and women, told InSight Crime.

The new case will allow the institution to expand its database of complaints and reports from civil society to reveal new patterns. However, cases of gender-based violence are severely underreported in Colombia, and barriers keeping victims from coming forward remain.

“In many parts of the country there is still conflict, so many people are afraid to denounce and also to name themselves as victims before the Jurisdiction, explained Ibáñez. “Many people are ashamed to acknowledge that they were victims of gender-based violence, and a very important [barrier] when we talk about reproductive violence is that sometimes people do not know that what happened to them was a form of violence.”

SEE ALSO: The Paramilitaries and Sexual Violence Along Colombia’s Caribbean Coast

Traditional justice models have not been effective in providing victims of gender-based violence with justice and truth, nor in preventing the repetition of crimes. Creating a model that guarantees these rights while avoiding re-victimization of those who have come forward will be a significant challenge for the JEP. 

Another limiting factor is that the JEP only has jurisdiction over cases related to the FARC and the Colombian government. According to the September 27 announcement, the case will be divided into 3 sub-cases: one will investigate gender-based violence perpetrated by the FARC, another will look at violence by the security forces, and the third will examine cases of violence committed within the ranks of both groups.

Although it is not within the JEP’s jurisdiction to prosecute these crimes, the data the court collected on violence by other guerrilla (9,202 cases), paramilitaries, and post-demobilization criminal groups of the AUC (11,683), could contribute to more wide-reaching justice processes in the future.

Armed groups continue to use gender-based violence to control communities, and responding to these events remains a challenge for Colombian authorities. Having reports and testimonies will therefore be vital, especially as groups such as the National Liberation Army (Ejercito de Liberación Nacional – ELN) negotiate with the Colombian government.

The post Colombia Expands Investigation of Gender Violence in Its Armed Conflict appeared first on InSight Crime.

The Colombian government’s new drug policy aims to radically shift the country’s approach to the fight against drugs. But given a seemingly unstoppable increase in coca cultivation, there are serious doubts about whether this policy can truly be implemented.

On September 9, Colombia’s Ministry of Justice presented its National Drug Policy for 2023-2033, outlining how different state institutions will tackle drug trafficking and cultivation. Although some of the strategies have been in use for months, this document revealed in unprecedented detail the long-term plans of President Gustavo Petro’s administration.

The new plan represents a monumental change in strategy from the measures previous governments took to tackle one of the world’s most lucrative criminal economies. Instead of cracking down on the lowest levels of the drug trade, such as growers, Petro’s initiative seeks to directly confront Colombia’s sophisticated drug trafficking networks.

The policy is based on two main principles, “oxygen” and “asphyxiation.” The first aims to relieve the pressure on those who have borne the brunt of the so-called “war on drugs” — small coca growers and consumers — by encouraging them to voluntarily substitute their coca crops with legal alternatives and by promoting a public health approach to the consumption of psychoactive substances.

The second principle directs security forces to key flashpoints of the drug trade by boosting their ability to interdict drug shipments and destroy drug processing infrastructure. Additionally, the “asphyxiation” strategy aims to capture key members of drug trafficking gangs and increase investigations into related money laundering and corruption.

Petro’s drug policy also seeks to change the narrative around Colombia’s drug problem and the responsibility that consumer countries must bear. This message has been a crucial part of Petro’s government stance since the beginning. One month after taking office, he spoke against traditional drug control policies at the 2022 United Nations General Assembly. And last week he hosted a Latin American and Caribbean conference on drugs, convening 19 countries to reaffirm their commitment to reformulating the fight against drug trafficking.

SEE ALSO: Peace Leaders in Putumayo, Colombia Bet Their Lives on Coca Crop Substitution

The government’s announcement also comes at a problematic time for the country. For the second year in a row, coca cultivation reached a new record level, according to figures published on September 11 by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). During 2022, the country saw a 13% increase to 230,000 hectares of coca. This represents a historic level of cocaine production potential, with a capacity to produce 1,738 tons per year.

In this context, InSight Crime analyzes the successes and challenges the government’s drug policy will face.

Commiting to a Sustainable Illicit Crop Substitution Policy 

One of the basic pillars of the government’s drug policy is helping rural communities replace illicit crops with legal alternatives, supporting their transition to participating in the formal market instead of working for criminal groups. 

This strategy, which is part of the “oxygen” plan, is not new. Previous efforts, such as the National Plan for the Substitution of Illicit Crops under the 2016 peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC), have been ineffective. 

The current government is trying to avoid the mistakes of previous policies and go beyond them, while still upholding the 2016 substitution program, which, despite its shortcomings, remains in force. 

To achieve this, Petro’s government plans to extend the benefits of crop substitution beyond just coca growers. Limiting the program’s scope created lopsided incentives that led to an increase in coca cultivation in the short term, a result that the current plan aims to avoid. 

In addition, the document details plans to organize community agricultural projects and construct transportation infrastructure that will help increase sales and profits from the substitute crops. These efforts will be key to the success of the government’s drug policy because, as the recent crash in the price of coca leaves has shown, the economies of coca-growing regions are dependent on the cultivation and processing of the drug. 

The policy also includes plans for illicit crops in “Special Management Areas,” such as forest reserves and national parks, which account for 20% of coca cultivation in the country. The expansion of the agricultural frontier and the use of protected areas to grow coca also contribute significantly to deforestation in Colombia, another problem that the government has pledged to tackle.   

Attacking the Most Lucrative Links in the Drug Trade

The “asphyxiation” section shifts security forces’ focus away from coca growers onto criminal infrastructure and intermediaries, in hopes of generating a greater impact on traffickers’ finances. 

The government proposes strengthening interdiction, dismantling cocaine processing laboratories, identifying strategic nodes in the drug trafficking chain, and combating money laundering. 

This approach differs from previous policies, which focused on the forced eradication of coca crops, and responds instead to one of the realities of drug trafficking: the big profits are found in the transportation and sale of drugs. 

For this strategy to succeed, the Colombian government must strengthen its coordination with other countries — not just in Latin America and the Caribbean, but also with those receiving drug shipments from Colombia. 

SEE ALSO: Colombia’s ‘Total Peace’ 1 Year On: Less State Violence, Stronger Criminal Groups

In recent years, countries such as Ecuador and Brazil have become important highways for transporting drug shipments to the United States and Europe, where most of the profits from the retail sale of the drug are kept. Petro will need the cooperation of these neighboring countries to successfully disrupt these international transport networks.

While Petro’s plan takes into account the mistakes and limitations of past policies and proposes new solutions, there are several challenges that could derail its implementation.

The Risky ‘Total Peace’ Gamble

Although a step in the right direction, the government’s plans for its new drug policy depend, to a large extent, on the results of the risky gamble on “Total Peace,” a wide-ranging proposal for negotiations with Colombian criminal groups of all kinds.

Guaranteeing the security of social leaders and communities that agree to coca crop substitution is key to the success of the government’s proposed policy. Since the state signed the 2016 peace accord with the FARC, at least 1,514 leaders of these communities have been killed, 167 of them since Petro took office in August last year.

In this sense, the government’s approach to security relies largely on the favorable outcome of the Total Peace strategy, since the areas that the document characterizes as highly complicated for intervention — Catatumbo, Bajo Cauca Antioqueño, Cauca, Tumaco, and Putumayo — are sites of conflict between drug trafficking groups.

The bet on Total Peace therefore goes beyond just guaranteeing the disarmament of the country’s criminal groups, and directly impacts the functioning of Colombia’s drug trade and of the government’s drug policy.

But as InSight Crime and other organizations have pointed out, Total Peace still faces major obstacles.

Despite advances in negotiations with groups such as the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional – ELN) and the ex-FARC mafia, the dissident groups that abandoned the FARC’s 2016 peace process, there are still no concrete agreements to deliver change in criminal dynamics in the affected territories. In the first year of the policy’s implementation, violence between the state and armed groups has decreased, with criminal groups strengthening across the country. Moreover, violence towards civilians persists, fueled by clashes between armed groups in areas strategic to criminal economies.

Overestimation of Institutional Capacity

Implementing the new drug policy will require a much greater investment than that projected by the government, and coordination between a large number of government institutions will be critical. These challenges may overwhelm the state’s capacity.

According to statements by Justice Minister Néstor Osuna, the investment required for crop substitution alone would be 21 billion pesos (approximately $5 billion).

However, the policy also requires investment in infrastructure, security, health, and education, among other areas. One of the historical obstacles to drug policy in the country is the high rate of unsatisfied basic needs in areas where coca is grown. The Colombian state will have to increase its presence in these places if it is to achieve its new drug policy’s goals.

“The prohibitionist focus [on drugs] has created a public policy that must respond to the challenges of the Colombian rule of law,” said Luis Felipe Cruz, a drugs policy researcher for the research and advocacy organization, Dejusticia.

Previous governments have made little progress, or failed completely, to provide residents of coca-growing regions with alternative forms of work. After the signing of the 2016 peace accord, the spaces left by the guerrillas were quickly occupied by armed groups such as the ELN, the Gaitanista Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia – AGC) and ex-FARC mafia factions.

Adding to the challenge is the fact that the new substitution programs, like their predecessors, are likely to face budgetary constraints that limit their scope. The document refers to international cooperation aid and resources from the public budget. However, in the last tax reform alone, the crop substitution program saw its budget reduced as part of negotiations get the law passed. This does not bode well for the new policy’s plans.

“We have thought out a substitution policy for 56 towns across 14 departments when the real problem is just four municipalities,” Cruz said.

Ensuring Drug Policy Continuity  

Despite the administration’s efforts to change the conversation around drugs, the biggest hurdle will be ensuring its drug policy continues under future governments.

Petro is seeking far-reaching reforms designed to be implemented over the next decade. However, it is unlikely that significant progress will be made in the Petro administration’s three remaining years.

“The policy is caught in the tension between the end of prohibitionism and institutional inertia,” Cruz said. “It continues to respond to the demand to reduce hectares and reduce the production and exportation of cocaine.”

This is the problem previous governments have faced. For example, President Juan Manuel Santos’ (2010-2018) more liberal drug policy was replaced by a more conservative one when his successor, Iván Duque (2018-2022), took office and stalled processes such as crop substitution.

“I still hope for guarantees [for the policy’s continuation],” Cruz said. “It’s important to talk about laws, to talk about transformation … to open the discussion and at least present a successful bill modifying or creating new drug regulations.”

Attempted reforms by Petro in other areas have faced opposition in Congress. And similar challenges should be expected when considering the lengthy procedures needed to implement a multi-faceted dug policy. Petro faces a tough political balancing act ahead to secure his initiatives survive past 2026.

This article was updated on September 13, 2023 with comments from Luis Felipe Cruz.

The post The Opportunities and Pitfalls of Colombia’s Ambitious New Drug Policy appeared first on InSight Crime.

The Colombian government and a leading faction of the ex-FARC mafia have begun a new round of negotiations, in what appears to be a step forward for President Gustavo Petro’s “Total Peace” policy. But in reality, the talks may produce few changes. 

On September 4, the government and the Central General Staff (Estado Mayor Central – EMC) announced the results of three days of meetings held between August 31 and September 2. The EMC is the largest of the dissident groups, known as the ex-FARC mafia, which emerged after the demobilization of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC),

The two sides agreed to renew peace talks, implement a bilateral ceasefire, and organize humanitarian missions in the departments of Antioquia, Arauca, Cauca, Huila, Nariño, Norte de Santander, Putumayo, and southern Bolívar. The start date for the ceasefire will be determined on September 17 and will bring an end to these confrontations. 

The talks came at a difficult time as there have been five clashes between security forces and the EMC in the last month alone.

“This is a new stage of talks with the Central General Staff, characterized by starting negotiations and defining a high-level agenda for reaching a peace agreement,” said Camilo González Posso, the head of the government delegation, in an interview with Colombian newspaper El Tiempo.

SEE ALSO: Colombia’s Total Peace 1-Year-On: Less State Violence, Stronger Criminal Groups

This is the government’s second attempt to establish a ceasefire with the EMC. The first was scheduled to last from January 1 to June 30, but the government suspended the ceasefire in May after four young Indigenous men were recruited and killed by the Carolina Ramírez Front in Putumayo. 

Days before the latest meetings the Jaime Martínez Front, a group belonging to the EMC, claimed responsibility for an ambush in Morales, Cauca that left three police officers dead and one wounded. In the same department, more than 700 people have been affected by EMC actions — such as attacks on the civilian population, harassment of security forces, and clashes — in the last month, according to figures from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs (OCHA).

InSight Crime Analysis

While a ceasefire with the EMC would be a major development for Total Peace, these latest steps will likely have limited impact on violence levels. 

The government’s negotiated agreements demand an end to conflict between security forces and armed groups. They do not demand any reduction in violence between criminal groups, with civilians continuously caught in the crossfire. 

SEE ALSO: Humanitarian Aid Blocked by Armed Groups in Colombia

According to OCHA, most humanitarian emergencies and human rights violations in 2023 have been the result of clashes between armed groups. Since a previous ceasefire with the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional – ELN) began on August 3, OCHA has reported at least 148 attacks against civilians and hundreds of people displaced in the departments of Arauca, Cauca, and Nariño due to such violence.

And the one security gain from the ceasefires is also in doubt. During the same period, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) recorded at least 14 clashes between armed groups and security forces. Eight involved the ex-FARC mafia, four were with the Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia – AGC), one with the ELN, and one with an unidentified group.

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