For Gómez-Suárez, if Colombia’s battle is regional, then the answer needs to be too.
He attracts a distinction between his strategy to the Comuneros and the best way the Colombian authorities beforehand negotiated peace with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), as soon as the biggest insurgent group within the nation.
In 2016, underneath then-President Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia signed a historic peace take care of the FARC that promised rural reforms and improvement in alternate for the nationwide demobilisation of the group’s fighters.
The negotiations that led as much as the deal, nevertheless, had been fraught — and a few components of the FARC splintered off into dissident teams moderately than comply with the phrases.
Gómez-Suárez argued his region-specific strategy could possibly be extra environment friendly.
“With earlier agreements, particularly that with the FARC guerrillas, there was this concept that nothing is about till all the pieces is agreed, which implied that the events would solely start implementation after a closing doc was signed,” Gómez-Suárez mentioned.
“Our case is spectacular as a result of typically we’ve even applied earlier than agreements are formally reached.”
He identified that the Comuneros proposed a unilateral ceasefire even earlier than their first assembly with the federal government’s delegates, as an indication of excellent religion.
Since then, the events have signed two agreements and plan to start the Comuneros’ transition to civilian life earlier than the following presidential elections in 2026.
The first agreement contains 4 factors, together with a definitive bilateral ceasefire, the gradual destruction of the group’s weapons and a collaborative programme to take away land mines all through Nariño.
The second establishes security ensures for the Crimson Cross, a humanitarian nonprofit, to function within the Comuneros’ territory.
As well as, the deal requires the creation of a group composed of Comuneros members who might be educated and tasked with trying to find individuals who have gone lacking in the course of the battle.
In return, the federal government has pledged funding for establishing roads, aqueducts, colleges and universities within the territory, to assist deal with poverty and infrastructure shortcomings in Nariño.
