AILSA CHANG, HOST:
In Colombia, President Gustavo Petro has promised to disarm the country's guerrilla groups through peace talks, but there's been almost no progress. And a fierce outbreak of fighting has forced tens of thousands of Colombians from their homes. John Otis reports. And a warning to listeners, you will hear gunfire in this story.
JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: The fighting began last month in Catatumbo, a remote area in northern Colombia that borders Venezuela.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED ELN REBEL: (Whistling).
OTIS: In this video obtained by NPR, guerrillas of the National Liberation Army, or ELN, are battling a rival rebel faction for control over fields of coca, the raw material for cocaine. Authorities say more than 40 people have been killed.
ELIZABETH DICKINSON: The ELN entered different communities across Catatumbo with a list of names.
OTIS: Elizabeth Dickinson, who tracks Colombia for the International Crisis Group, says many were civilians executed for allegedly collaborating with the ELN's enemies.
DICKINSON: They went house to house, looking for these individuals, took them to the street, in many cases assassinated them in front of their families.
(SOUNDBITE OF BABY CRYING)
OTIS: Amid the panic, 50,000 people have fled their homes. Some have crowded into this elementary school that's been converted into a shelter in the town of Tibu.
(SOUNDBITE OF BASKETBALL BOUNCING)
OTIS: Kids are playing basketball. Some of the adults are washing their clothes. Others are just resting on mattresses laid out on the gym floor.
They include Bernabe Polo, a coal miner who, along with his wife and two children, fled to avoid getting hit by stray bullets.
BERNABE POLO: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: "The fighting was really close to our house," he says. "We threw ourselves on the floor and stayed there all night."
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: Police and army troops are now patrolling Catatumbo. But this region has long been a stronghold of ELN guerrillas. The group first rose up as a Marxist insurgency in the 1960s. But these days, it mainly extorts businesses and traffics cocaine. That disgusts Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who is himself a former guerrilla fighter but disarmed 35 years ago.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT GUSTAVO PETRO: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: During a recent visit to Catatumbo, he said that, "the ELN claims to follow Karl Marx, but it seems to me they believe more in Pablo Escobar." Indeed, drug trafficking helps explain why, after more than 60 years of armed conflict, peace continues to elude Colombia. The violence briefly diminished after the country's largest guerrilla group, known as the FARC, disarmed in 2016, but the government failed to take control of coca fields and drug trafficking routes that were abandoned by the FARC. And now ELN rebels and a new generation of criminal groups are fighting over this territory.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: When he took office in 2022, Petro immediately opened talks with the ELN and other rebel factions to secure what he called total peace for Colombia.
DICKINSON: Initially, the government gave up way too much in these talks.
OTIS: But Dickinson, of the International Crisis Group, says Petro agreed to multiple ceasefires that hamstrung the army while giving the guerrillas time to regroup.
DICKINSON: A lot of frustration inside the ranks of the military that they were being - had their hands tied and are now being sent to sort of clean up the mess.
UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: Now the ELN peace talks have been suspended, and government troops are preparing to attack them. But the rebels can escape into Venezuela, which lies just a few miles from here. In fact, analysts say half of the ELN's 6,000 rebels live and train in Venezuela.
(CROSSTALK)
OTIS: In the meantime, families keep pouring into the shelters. Some of the displaced, like Victor Lopez and his pregnant wife, are Venezuelan migrants. They crossed the border four months ago to escape Venezuela's economic crisis.
VICTOR LOPEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: But now, Lopez laments, they've been forced to flee once again - this time by Colombia's guerrilla war. For NPR News, I'm John Otis in Tibu, Colombia. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
