The Government of Gustavo Petro sits down to negotiate with Iván Márquez, the third table of total peace

With the presence of Iván Márquez, the former chief negotiator of the defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia who breached the peace agreement he signed in 2016 to take back the rifles, the Government of Gustavo Petro established a formal process this Monday in Caracas with the dissidents. grouped in the Second Marquetalia. It is the third national table within the framework of the total peace policy, which aims to dialogue simultaneously with different armed groups.

Once the table has been set up in the Venezuelan capital, the first cycle of negotiations will take place this week, starting this Tuesday until next Saturday. The head of the Government delegation is the jurist Armando Novoa García, while that of the Second Marquetalia is Walter Mendoza, another veteran leader of the extinct FARC. Cuba, Norway and Venezuela itself are the guarantor countries of the process, which joins the dialogues with the guerrilla of the National Liberation Army (ELN) and with the other large group of dissidents that deviated from the peace agreement, the self-proclaimed State Mayor Central (EMC), which has ended up dividing – the factions headed by Iván Mordisco have broken off dialogue with the Government.

“This peace process is part of the efforts to carry out democratic changes and reforms for the benefit of the population, from the perspective of a political solution and the construction of peace, with priority in the territories,” says the agreement for the formal start of the table signed at the beginning of the month by the Peace Commissioner, Otty Patiño, and Márquez himself, who has been presumed dead on more than one occasion.

In that document, also signed in Caracas, the Government “registers as positive” the Second Marquetalia demonstrations in which it has rejected withholdings for economic purposes (as referred to in the kidnapping) and proposes to prioritize dialogue with businessmen, ranchers and merchants, as well as protecting the environment. Correspondingly, the Government “will adopt measures to strengthen the de-escalation of the conflict” in the areas where the Second Marquetalia – Bolivarian Army is present, as the decimated armed group that is also present on the other side of the porous border with Venezuela now calls itself. .

The fit of dissidents into total peace has been problematic from the first moment. The Mordisco and Márquez currents were consolidated as the most noticeable, a kind of large umbrellas. Both engaged in a war to the death against each other, in which several leaders fell into confusing confrontations and attacks on the border with Venezuela, including Gentil Duarte, who had been the most visible face of the EMC, and Márquez’s main lieutenants: Romaña. , El Paisa and Jesús Santrich —as the leader of the Second Marquetalia himself recognized this Monday—.

One of the big doubts surrounding the legal framework of the Petro Government’s peace policy has always been whether the groups that deserted or never accepted the previous process with the FARC should be considered criminal organizations whose only way out was to submit to the law or They deserve political treatment, like that received by the ELN, the last guerrilla in arms. This point is especially problematic in the case of the Second Marquetalia, since the peace agreement states that it cannot be negotiated again with repeat offenders. “The main obstacle has to do with the impediments for those who signed the 2016 peace agreement. How will they be treated by justice? It is an issue that will affect a large part of the group’s leadership, such as Iván Márquez or Walter Mendoza,” anticipates an analysis by the Ideas for Peace Foundation (FIP).

The origin of the Second Marquetalia – named after the place where the old FARC was born – dates back to the moment when Luciano Marín, the real name of Iván Márquez, announced in August 2019 that he was taking up arms together with other commanders who had stopped By then they had already departed from their commitments to the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, the transitional justice system that emerged from the peace agreement. Although there was never a rout of signatories, as was initially feared, the fire of dissidence has been fueled by new dynamics of forced recruitment, often of minors.

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