On April 6, the Comuneros del Sur—dissidents of the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional, ELN) in Colombia’s Nariño Department—agreed to progressively disarm and replace 5,000 hectares of coca with other crops. This marks a significant step forward for President Gustavo Petro’s Total Peace policy. Although the immediate impacts are limited to communities in Nariño, this agreement demonstrates that High Commissioner for Peace Otty Patiño’s strategy of negotiating Total Peace with a territorial focus can produce tangible results.
By shifting negotiations from the national to the regional level and integrating local communities into the effort, the Total Peace approach signaled a meaningful evolution in how peace in Colombia was pursued. However, while promising, it also presents new challenges and raises questions about its effectiveness in delivering sustainable security to these areas.
Opening dialogue
After assuming power in August 2022, the Petro administration began to advance its Total Peace policy to foster peace agreements with politically motivated illegal armed groups and to demobilize criminal factions. Initially, the Colombian government invested significant political capital in peace talks with the ELN guerrillas, achieving the most critical progress that any Colombian government had made with this group. Despite these advances, the process has encountered numerous obstacles. In September 2023, Gabriel Yepes Mejía, alias “HH,” the Commander of the ELN’s Southwestern War Front, proposed a regional negotiation effort to the Colombian government to encompass its areas of control in Nariño. The government’s interaction with the Front triggered a national ELN peace talks crisis.
As tensions in the national ELN process increased, negotiations with the Comuneros del Sur advanced. In May 2024, the Comuneros del Sur separated from the ELN, and in July 2024, they began engaging directly with the Colombian government. The small group, consisting of between 200 and 300 members, joined peace talks, led by a Petro government negotiating team, with Carlos Erazo, a former M-19 guerrilla, at the helm. The team also initially included Afro-Colombian social leader Clemencia Carabalí, FONDOPAZ director Pablo Pardo, academic researcher Andrei Gómez, and feminist psychologist and politician Ángela María Robledo. Alias “HH” led the Comuneros del Sur delegation.
The Co-Construction for Territorial Peace Table
The Co-Construction for Territorial Peace Table was formally established in September 2024. A month prior, a threefold roadmap focused on de-escalating violence, implementing transformations in the area as talks evolved, and transitioning the Comuneros del Sur from combatants to civilians. Six working groups, operating on six separate issues, were created to advance the common goal of de-escalating violence. These groups address the following areas: humanitarian demining, returning the internally displaced population affected by armed confrontations that occurred a year and a half ago, searching for individuals believed to be missing, supporting boys, girls, and adolescents affected by the conflict and recruitment, strengthening peace for local ethnic groups and in the territories, and gender issues.
In February 2025, the parties established a protocol to eliminate explosives and other artifacts to minimize risks to the local population and the environment. This initiated the Comuneros’ progressive disarmament. To search for the disappeared, a delegation of eleven people was formed to work alongside the Unit for the Search of Missing Persons.
Territorial transformation efforts have aimed to move communities away from dependence on illegal economies and engage the state (at national, regional, and local levels) in addressing local communities’ challenges. The illegal economies in question include coca cultivation, cocaine processing, and illicit gold mining. These activities fuel violence and finance illegal armed groups. Up until April, these efforts focused on a range of issues: improving access to higher education and existing educational institutions, enhancing tertiary roads, providing heavy machinery, developing the rural economy, designating a mining district, offering health services, fostering a culture of peace, providing psychosocial support for victims, especially women, and improving security through humanitarian removal of anti-personnel mines programs.
Reconciling human activity with nature has been integrated into the territorial transformation, as cocaine production and illegal mining cause environmental damage. On April 5, 2025, according to Gloria Miranda Espitia–director of the government’s National Illicit Crops Substitution Program–the agreement with the Comuneros to voluntarily substitute 5,000 hectares of coca will be implemented by providing payments for eradication to replace the income that would have been derived from illicit crops in the first year. The goal is to replace one crop with another, transform the local productive base, and support farmers’ products so they can be integrated into markets.
The Samaniego, Barbacoas, and Ricaurte municipalities have been priorities since these areas account for 11 percent of the total coca grown in Nariño, aiming to make Samaniego free of coca by 2025. During a particularly symbolic point in the April agreement signing ceremony, the Comuneros voluntarily turned over 585 explosive devices to be destroyed.
Reintegration, Reconciliation, and Victims
The third aspect of the process involves demobilizing and reintegrating the Comuneros del Sur combatants into civilian life. This two-pronged approach simultaneously addresses both former combatants and victims. For the victims, it encompasses the right to the truth, transitional justice, and enhanced community security. For the Comuneros, it includes alternative legal guarantees to facilitate their integration into civilian life, transitional justice, and reintegration with access to education, healthcare, and psychosocial support. It is unclear, however, how this transitional justice process will unfold and whether it will be linked to the Peace Tribunal for the 2016 FARC peace accord.
The OAS Mission to Support the Peace Process in Colombia (MAPP/OEA), the Episcopal Conference of Colombia, and the Embassy of the Netherlands have supported the effort. The process involves ten municipalities in Nariño, where the Comuneros del Sur have been active for thirty years. So far, the process has led to seven key agreements: a bilateral ceasefire; a delegation to search for the disappeared; humanitarian demining efforts; procedures for destroying war materials; structured illicit crop substitution efforts; and initiatives to secure truth, memory, and the dignification of victims.
The process differs from previous and ongoing peace processes in Colombia which adhere to the model of negotiating, demobilizing, and finally implementing what has been agreed upon. In the case of the Comuneros, agreements are reached and implemented immediately. There is active participation from the three levels of government: national, regional, and local. Strategies are developed with the involvement of multiple national ministries and regional and local secretariats. According to the government’s chief negotiator for this process, Carlos Erazo, “It is agreed upon and done.”
An inclusive approach
If this approach holds, trust in the process will be fostered if the results of the efforts materialize quickly. A core goal is to ensure the inclusion of communities, victims, women, Indigenous peoples, and Afro-Colombians. However, individuals interviewed by WOLA indicate that civil society participation may not be as comprehensive as the negotiation team presents to the press.
While the gender commitments of the 2016 peace accord with the FARC have been mainly sidelined, they helped open doors for including a gender focus in the broader Total Peace agenda. In the Comuneros process, Ángela Robledo brings her “feminizing politics” vision to the negotiation table. The premise is that social, political, and economic transformation is impossible unless women can be protagonists and hold positions of power. Recognizing women’s roles and including cultural expressions in rebuilding a society affected by war is essential. Violence needs to be addressed at all levels, including domestic violence occurring in homes. Robledo adds that, as the combatants transition to civilian life, they need to let go of the patriarchal and machista culture of war to become proponents of peace.
The future of total peace
A potential obstacle that could derail the Comuneros del Sur’s plan to disarm within the next three months is the legal standing of their commander-in-chief, Gabriel Yepes Mejía, alias “HH.” He is currently wanted for extradition by the state of Texas for his role in trafficking cocaine to Central America and Mexico. On November 6, 2024, Colombia’s Attorney General’s Office issued a resolution lifting his arrest and extradition warrant. While the Supreme Court of Colombia greenlighted HH’s extradition to Texas, government negotiator Carlos Erazo affirmed that he did not expect this to derail the process, given that any extradition would require President Petro to sign off on it.
The Petro government has fifteen months remaining in office. Since its mandate began, it has opened nine negotiation tables with illegal armed groups and is simultaneously engaging in dialogue with four illegal armed groups and five organized criminal structures. This is the first of the nine processes in which an armed illicit group has agreed to disarm, relinquish weapons, and assist in substituting illegal economies with legal alternatives.
Two years ago, the most promising dialogue was with the much larger ELN, whose members number around 6,000. However, this was suspended in January 2025 after the guerrilla group launched a military offensive with human rights violations in the Catatumbo region, resulting in the internal displacement of 50,000 people and a regional humanitarian crisis. In the case of other efforts, some groups have fragmented, leading to a highly complex negotiation and security environment.
While the steps taken with Comuneros are promising, especially for the recipient communities, they raise a critical question: Can similar agreements with other groups be reached before Petro’s time in office runs out? If not, what actions will the Colombian government, alongside participating countries and organizations involved in these processes, take to ensure that the other initiatives reach a point of no return, preserving their viability into the next administration?
Ultimately, the success of these processes hinges on whether the illegal armed groups can build confidence that they will end violence against civilians, disengage from illicit activities, and pursue demobilization, reconciliation, and reintegration into Colombian society. If meaningful progress is made, the U.S. should consider supporting these agreements. Demobilizing illegal armed groups financed by illicit economies (including drugs), expanding state presence into ungoverned areas, and strengthening local institutions and markets would bolster security, benefiting both the region and U.S. interests in Colombia.
