The dirt roads into Catatumbo announce their rulers before any fighters appear. Guerrilla flags snap in the wind along mountain passes where Colombia’s state has effectively ceased to exist, replaced by the National Liberation Army—the country’s largest remaining insurgent force, which controls this oil-rich, coca-growing frontier with an authority the government in Bogotá can only envy.
Al Jazeera’s reporting team traveled deep into this contested borderland, escorted by ELN fighters to meet commanders who oversee what amounts to a parallel administration. Mobile phone service vanishes miles before reaching rebel territory—telecommunications companies refuse to pay the “taxes” armed groups demand for operating in zones they control.
The signs planted along roadsides deliver blunt verdicts on President Gustavo Petro’s signature policy initiative: “Total peace is a failure.”
Catatumbo stretches along Colombia’s border with Venezuela in Norte de Santander department, a region cursed by geography and resources. Oil reserves and coca plantations generate wealth that flows everywhere except to impoverished communities caught between competing armed factions. For decades, this frontier has been a killing ground where guerrillas, paramilitaries, drug traffickers and occasionally government forces battle for territorial dominance and access to smuggling routes.
The ELN maintains what commanders describe as a structured, organized presence that extends across the porous Venezuelan border. Their control is total in areas where Al Jazeera traveled—no evidence of military checkpoints, only rebel insignia marking jurisdiction. But that dominance came at a cost measured in January’s displacement of thousands of civilians when the ELN clashed with dissidents from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia who rejected the 2016 peace accords and continue operating independently.
That fighting was about control—specifically, access to border crossings that serve as arteries for moving cocaine out of Colombia and into international markets. Whoever holds Catatumbo holds leverage over billions of dollars in narcotics trafficking.
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Commander Ricardo and Commander Silvana agreed to meet Al Jazeera in a small house tucked into mountain folds, though they insisted on speed. Reconnaissance drones have been circling, they said, and attacks remain possible. Several fighters accompanied them, armed and watchful.
Asked about force strength, the commanders offered cryptic reassurance: “We are thousands, and not everyone is wearing their uniforms. Some are urban guerrillas.” The government estimates the ELN fields roughly 3,000 combatants, but commanders suggested the real number runs higher—an impossible claim to verify in territory where the state cannot operate freely.
Commander Ricardo, who oversees the region, expressed cautious openness to renewed negotiations despite clear frustration with Petro’s peace process. “The ELN has been battling for a political solution for 30 years with various difficulties,” he said. “We believed that with Petro, we would advance in the process. But that did not happen. There’s never been peace in Colombia. What we have is the peace of the graves.”
That bitter assessment captures the chasm between Petro’s ambitious rhetoric and the grinding reality of Colombia’s armed conflict. The leftist president campaigned on achieving “total peace” with all armed groups—a vision that would finally close chapters of violence stretching back six decades. But translating campaign promises into negotiated settlements has proven far more difficult than winning elections.
The ELN and government had been meeting in Mexico before talks collapsed over the Catatumbo violence. Bogotá suspended negotiations, accusing the rebels of violating ceasefire commitments. The ELN blamed government forces and rival armed groups for provoking confrontations.
Now, government officials say they’re ready to resume dialogue. Commander Ricardo offered conditional reciprocity: “If the accords we had in Mexico are still there, I believe our central command would agree it could open up the way for a political solution to this conflict.”
That “if” carries enormous weight. Peace negotiations in Colombia have historically foundered on implementation gaps—agreements signed in distant capitals that unravel when they encounter ground-level realities of territorial control, criminal economies, and armed groups with no incentive to disarm unless offered credible alternatives.
The ELN differs from the FARC, which largely demobilized after 2016 accords. The ELN is more ideologically coherent, more skeptical of government promises, and more integrated into local economies—including coca cultivation and extortion rackets that fund operations. Asking commanders to surrender those revenue streams requires offering something tangible in return, which Colombia’s weak state struggles to provide in remote regions like Catatumbo.