Gustavo Petro, after the death of four soldiers: “The offensive against the EMC in Cauca must be total”

The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, reiterated this Sunday the order to intensify the attacks against the Carlos Patiño front, a dissident group of the extinct FARC guerrilla that is affiliated with the so-called Central General Staff (EMC). “The offensive against the EMC in Cauca must be total. They are murderers of the people and traffickers. If the president has to go, the president will go,” he said on his X account, his favorite social network. It was his response to the news that, in clashes that had already lasted five days, four soldiers had died in the village of Bolivia, in the municipality of Argelia: Camilo Molina Morales, Javier Sosa Ballesteros, Jorge Fuentes Santiago and Jairo Urrego David.

The EMC responded to the president, also through groups affiliated with the dissident have risen from it. Among the groups with which the negotiation has broken down is precisely Carlos Patiño. The Twitter account of the EMC, which is apparently in control of the sector that has broken off the dialogue, compared Petro with previous governments, and quotes the saying “the devil pays poorly to those who serve him well.”

The sharpness of the combats that already include the use of artillery on the side of the Public Force translate into a bitter debate over the handling of the bodies of the deceased soldiers. The Army stated on Saturday night that it had them in its possession, while the dissidents published a series of messages and photographs contradicting that information: “Lies to win the war: the Military Forces did not recover bodies of soldiers as they say. The FARC-EP guards and delivers them to the humanitarian mission, in the face of abandonment, decomposition and out of respect for their families. They were not desecrated, they were guarded. “You have to have military honor,” they said.

On Saturday afternoon, audios circulated with the voices of soldiers asking for urgent help for the fight: “We cannot jump into the hole because they have us surrounded at all points. If we jump into the hole, they will kill us all,” one of them explained to a colonel. Later, one could hear: “We have been in very hard combat for three hours. “They let us die.” In the background, rifle bursts sounded. Military intelligence also revealed an audio in which a man is heard saying: “Nothing about taking prisoners, all you son of a bitch.” [sic] They make his head wet.” The authorities reported that they are aliases Dumar either Chito, leader of the Alberto Poño company, a structure of the Carlos Patiño front. Presumably it refers to the “insane action” that he led, as explained by the Military Forces in their X account.

Military operations have been going on for almost a month in the Micay River canyon area, which serves as a communication route between the populated Andean area and the coastline on the Pacific Ocean. In mid-March, the Government suspended the ceasefire with EMC groups in Cauca and the neighboring departments of Nariño and Valle del Cauca. Despite the military coup due to the death of the four soldiers, Hélder Giraldo, commander of the Military Forces since Petro’s arrival to the presidency, confirmed that the operations will continue.

Violence has raged in Cauca, where the dissidents of the extinct FARC and the National Liberation Army (ELN), the oldest active guerrilla in Colombia, operate. According to the Institute of Development and Peace Studies (Indepaz), the department recorded the highest number of murders of social leaders and human rights defenders last year, with 38 of the 188 cases recorded in Colombia. “In the department of Cauca, Nasa indigenous people who oppose the abuses committed by armed groups have been threatened and murdered. Clashes between armed groups have left more than 6,500 people displaced or confined,” Human Rights Watch noted in its 2024 world report.

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