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Colombian guerrilla teams no longer use Venezuela as a convenient hideout for their country’s armed forces.
Instead, they are now deeply rooted in Venezuela, socially, politically and economically, and are authentic binational guerrilla groups.
After years of fieldwork and dozens of interviews in Colombia and Venezuela, InSight Crime presented its investigation, “Colombian-Venezuelan Guerrillas: How Colombia’s War Migrated to Venezuela,” on October 3.
A panel of experts organized through InSight Crime and moderated by Javier Mayorca, a journalist specializing in security issues in Venezuela, discussed the implications of the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional – ELN) and dissidents from the now-defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Venezuela. Colombia. (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – FARC), known as the former FARC mafia, now operates as binational teams in Colombia and Venezuela.
SEE ALSO: Venezuela: A Mafia State?
InSight Crime co-director Jeremy McDermott explained that Colombian guerrillas first came to Venezuela to hide or retreat under the government of former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010).
Now, those teams have controlled to reflect the corrupt governance models they use in Colombia in Venezuelan territory, social, economic and political relations, McDermott said.
Similar cases have been observed with ex-FARC mafia groups. But while they expanded into Venezuelan territory, they did not have the same success as the ELN.
“The moment Marquetalia was born in Venezuela, and Venezuela may just be his grave,” McDermott said, referring to one of the largest mafia factions of the ex-FARC.
María Victoria Llorente, executive director of the Ideas for the Ángeles Paz Foundation (FIP), said that the rupture of the stellar angels between Colombia and Venezuelos Ángeles in 2018 favored the expansion of the teams in Venezuelos Ángeles, allowing them to function as “customs”. authorities” at the border.
Llorente also noted that relations between the teams and the governments of Colombia and Venezuela have other connotations. While in Colombia they are rebel teams, in Venezuela they are state allies.
InSight Crime’s investigation revealed a relationship between teams like the ELN and the Venezuelan government that, while new, can be described as symbiotic, McDermott explained.
“In Venezuela they are paramilitaries; in Colombia, guerrillas,” he said.
On Venezuelan soil, teams undermine economies and, like armies allied with President Nicolás Maduro’s regime, also oppress the political opposition. They provide security services, administer justice and distribute food.
SEE ALSO: Venezuela’s Cocaine Revolution
As Llorente pointed out, this is necessarily problematic for the Venezuelan regime, which has demonstrated its ability to tailor its appointments with illegal teams. The Colombian government’s proposed peace talks with binational guerrilla teams will most likely result in increased foreign scrutiny of their relations, which may lead to an immediate shift in their relations with the Venezuelan government.
“That’s what happened with the mega-gangs,” Llorente said, referring to the earlier role of some Venezuelan gangs as allies.
These teams operate on both sides of the Colombian-Venezuelan border and are aware of the calls for peace from Colombia’s new president, Gustavo Petro.
For Luis Trejos, a professor at the Universidad del Norte, it is about “analyzing the territories in an otheriada way”, because the teams face another war bureaucracy in Colombia and Venezuela, and in the border region.
It is conceivable that the ELN will not join the talks, which would lead it to “institutionalize” in Venezuela, depending on the agreements eventually reached with the government or decisions of the ELN’s own factions, Trejos said.
Although there have already been formal negotiations between the teams and the government, the ELN does not agree with the peace talks. “Pablito and Antonio [Garcia] are in Venezuela, but they see peace differently,” Trejos said.
Added to this is the volatile alliance bureaucracy that the Venezuelan regime can forge with paramilitary equipment. McDermott said Maduro should update an alliance with one illegal organization with another when necessary. This instability may mean that any peace negotiations with binational teams may only take years.
“Elements of the ex-FARC and ELN almost achieved general peace,” McDermott said.
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