Jorge Enrique Botero

Correspondent

The newspaper La Jornada
Sunday, August 11, 2024, p. 18

Bogotá. For more than 24 hours, peasants from the departments of Meta and Guaviare, in southeastern Colombia, have been holding 60 soldiers belonging to the Omega Task Force who had been patrolling the area for several days.

They had captured 100 elements, but in the last few hours they released 40.

The farmers, organized into peasant guards, claim that the security forces are trying to impose a regime of absolute control over the region, monitoring the mobility of the population, as well as the transit of goods and supplies for livestock and rice crops.

Military sources said the military had stepped up its operations following serious allegations that Cancharino, commander of a structure of the Jorge Suárez Briceño Block, had summoned businessmen and merchants at the end of last July to notify them of an increase in the payment of taxes and extortion.

Throughout the day, the peasant guards, who wear uniforms and are equipped with sticks, surrounded the soldiers, until on Friday night they surrounded them, without a single shot being fired or any episode of violence occurringas he told by telephone to The Day a former regional leader of Guaviare.

While in San José, the capital of Guaviare, Governor Yeison Rojas met with military commanders and officials from the UN and OAS missions to secure the prompt release of the soldiers, uncertainty reigns in this capital over the effects that this new clash between the public forces and the civilian population may have on the peace talks between the government and the FARC dissidents, to whose bloc Jorge Suárez Briceño the army attributes the increase in extortion.

This has been a recurring theme throughout more than 10 months of stormy negotiations in which, according to analysts, there have been too many proposals and not enough executions. The guerrilla group, known as EMC, split three months ago, and the government suspended the ceasefire with important military structures that operate in the southwest of the country, in the departments of Cauca and Nariño, today the main battlefields of the endless confrontations that relentlessly pursue Colombia.