On January 15, 2025, Miguel Ángel López, a funeral director in Tibú, was murdered with his wife and their 10-month-old baby while driving from Tibú to Cúcuta. Less than 24 hours later, four ex-combatants that had signed the 2016 Peace Deal in Havana between the Colombian government and the FARC were killed. Thousands of others have since fled in a conflict that has already claimed the lives of more than fifty people and displaced entire communities.
Iris Marín, Colombia’s Ombudsman, had warned the national government for years that violence was on the verge of flaring up in Colombia’s northeastern Catatumbo region. The last warning came on November 15, 2024, when her office issued a report about the imminent escalation of armed violence in Catatumbo between the 33rd Front of the Estado Mayor Central—a dissident faction of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-EP)—and the National Liberation Army (ELN). Her warnings went unheeded and civilians in the region, which borders Venezuela and is in the Norte de Santander department, are now facing the tragic consequences.
Violence in Catatumbo is reaching peaks that have not been seen in the region since the paramilitary incursions of the 2000s. Unfortunately, this situation was predictable. The surge in violence comes against the backdrop of failed peace negotiations, state complicity, and the battle for control over valuable territory linked to global drug and commodity circuits.
The State Responds to the Violence
The ELN assaults have devastated the area. On January 31, the Government of Norte de Santander released a bulletin that tallied 52 people murdered (among them five ex-combatants), 52,630 forcibly displaced, and 31,358 confined at home. The Office of the Inspector General (Procuraduría Nacional) has also warned about the unschooling of at least 46,000 children and adolescents in the region resulting from the armed confrontations between the ELN and the 33rd Front.
Videos circulating on social media have captured the horrific consequences of armed violence. Communities are escaping violence as best they can, through difficult roads, in small boats, or on motos. Teachers from remote areas are departing from their posts, leaving children unable to attend school. According to Marín’s speech to Congress, the crisis in Catatumbo is the largest forced displacement of people since 1997.
In response, Colombian President Gustavo Petro immediately suspended the peace negotiations with the ELN and called their actions war crimes. Vera Grabe, head of the government’s Peace Delegation, made clear that the negotiations will not resume until the “ELN decides to walk the path of peace.” The Defense Minister mobilized 1,158 additional soldiers and evacuated 638 people, including 17 social leaders and 32 ex-combatants.
The President also decreed a “state of inner turmoil” (Estado de conmoción interior) and “economic emergency,” which will enable him to bypass Congress and rule by decree on issues related to public safety and the mobilization of resources for a period of 90 days. This is the first time in history that both measures have been declared at once, and it has been 17 years since the last time the state of inner turmoil was decreed.
The Shortcomings of “Total Peace”
When Petro took office in 2022, the country’s peacebuilding efforts were at a crossroads. His predecessor, Iván Duque, was heavily criticized for his refusal to implement large parts of the 2016 Havana Peace deal. The failure to implement the peace deal, as well as austerity policies and state violence, generated a backlash that opened up political space for the emergence of the 2019 National Strikes and, eventually, Petro’s election.
Petro’s administration proposed “Total Peace” (Paz Total) as response to the internal armed conflict. As part of the agenda, the government has called for the full implementation of the 2016 peace accords and pushed for a whole slate of structural economic, legal, and land reforms. In parallel, the “Total Peace” also represents a shift from previous peace negotiations in that it includes non-state armed groups and criminal organizations. The core idea of Total Peace is to link territorial and citizen security with the de-structuring of all non-state armed groups: it aims at tackling the multiple and complex armed structures at once, including their power dynamics, ideologies, criminal enterprise, modus operandi, and so on.
The ELN—very strong in the Catatumbo region—was one of the first groups to enter the Total Peace negotiations. However, as the ELN changed its war tactics and territorial deployment in Arauca and Catatumbo, factional disagreements within the group led to tensions with the government of Petro.
Beyond the ELN, other sectors of society have critiqued Petro’s “Total Peace.” Above all, it is the conducting of overlapping processes and the merging of several armed groups of different natures that has drawn dissatisfaction. There is also the general sense that the plan lacks direction.
Most peasants in war-affected regions like Catatumbo are also skeptical of the peace talks because previous Colombian governments have failed to keep their word. They are currently witnessing a territorial expansion of armed groups and the continuation of extortion practices. Though peace talks initially achieved a pause in armed confrontations between the ELN and FARC-EP dissidents, during our last field visits to Catatumbo, we observed growing threats to 2016 peace signatories and to women involved in implementing the gender provisions of the agreement.
Against the backdrop of failed peace talks, violence is spreading across the country. The aggravation of armed violence is not only happening in the Catatumbo region. Armed confrontations between different groups also affect civilians in departments like Guaviare, Putumayo, Chocó, Cauca, and Arauca.
The Complex Geopolitical Landscape of Catatumbo
Catatumberas and catatumberos have shown incredible resistance to the violence affecting their communities. Yet, the return of a full-scale war—which never entirely disappeared—calls for a broader reflection on the global powers at play in the region and the search for control by the different armed factions.
What is happening in Catatumbo is not only a war between armed factions but the extermination of the region’s social fabric to consolidate the ELN’s control over the 33rd Front, the Gulf Clan, and the EPL guerrilla group. This situation takes place as Colombia enters its pre-election year, a period that often brings an uptick in violence against communities and social leaders. Furthermore, the lack of binational security strategies between Colombia and Venezuela, and the tense relations between both governments, have strengthened the ELN along their shared border.
Since the 2016 Havana Peace Agreements, the ELN has expanded its power. In 2020, Fundación Ideas para la Paz published a report warning about the guerrilla group's growing influence in Venezuelan territory related to smuggling, illegal mining, and recruitment. The research center argued that the diplomatic crisis and border closure, which lasted until 2022, strengthened the guerilla’s presence across the border.
Catatumbo is a highly volatile region with deeply entrenched social and political problems. Though framings of the conflict often focus on the border as a lawless place, the region’s issues are exacerbated by the international criminalization of drug use, linked locally to the extensive regional cultivation of coca, and by land dispossession driven by the oil and coal industry. In recent years, Mexican drug cartels and other armed groups have expanded their presence due to the power vacuum left by the disarmament of the FARC-EP in 2016. Most of the region’s territory is now dominated by armed groups that exercise their own laws. Much of this fight is over the control of coca crops and trafficking routes.
Despite well-intentioned structural changes included in the 2016 peace agreement’s provisions for the substitution of illicit crops, hectares of coca cultivation have increased since the peace deal. Though a lot of peasants have tried to transition towards other crops, the reality is that the guerrillas “are still in charge.”
All of this has led to a situation in which the area is home to high levels of human rights violations like human and sexual trafficking, forced recruitment of children for armed groups, and selective killings, among others. Catatumbo also has very high rates of feminicides, which has led women peace signatories, in particular, to feel deeply demoralized in the face of the slow pace of reforms and the ongoing nature of the violence.
A Call for Transnational Solidarity
With the recrudescence of violence during this first month of 2025, our conversations with social leaders and activists were oriented toward one word: “zozobra," a term used in many war-affected regions in Colombia that expresses a profound feeling of anxiety in the face of violence, insecurity, and uncertainty. That is what is felt in Catatumbo these days: a groundless feeling, or the complete loss of quietude in the face of constant violence. This is a long-standing feeling that we naively thought would transform into healing—yet militarization is persisting.
Historically, the response of the Colombian state in Catatumbo has oscillated between glaring negligence in social and educational terms and a heavily militarized presence. However, as several feminist scholars and activists have argued, “militarized peace” will only increase insecurities, make humanitarian protection more complex, and escalate violent conflicts. This echoes the call of many grassroots organizations: Alianza Ancestral y Comunal del Catatumbo has voiced the need for protection and communal security, with an “effective presence” of the state, understood as infrastructural and socioeconomic development instead of militarization.
In their public statement, Madres del Catatumbo por la Paz, a women’s organization advocating for peacebuilding and human rights defense in the region, claims: “We continue to dream with peace. Not because it is easy, but because it is the only thing we have left.” They also ask for international support to hear their voices and support their struggle for life and peace. Under the slogan “We don’t raise children for war,” they have relentlessly worked in the prevention of forced recruitment of children and advocated for the political participation of women in the region. Currently, they are mobilizing relief efforts and protecting their members from attacks.
The call for international support brings to the foreground a key question: how can transnational solidarity be mobilized in times of emergency to prevent further violence and put their voices first?
A crucial step of transnational solidarity is accountability. Violence in Catatumbo is a globalized violence that is sustained through the international criminalization of drug use, disputes between neighboring states, profits from drug trafficking by armed groups, the sexual exploitation of national and migrant women as a form of territorial control, the state’s unleashing of femicides, and land dispossession in the name of “progress” for oil, coal, and palm oil. From this perspective, what is happening in Catatumbo is not isolated from political and economic decisions taken at national and international levels.
Accordingly, there is a need for collective pressure on our respective governments to force the ELN to respect humanitarian law, cease the attacks on civilians, and allow humanitarian aid to reach populations in Catatumbo. People can also express their solidarity by contributing to organizations dealing with emergency responses in the region. More work must be done to support local responses from civil society in the region’s major city, Cúcuta, which has organized multiple humanitarian actions to attend to forcibly displaced people arriving from Catatumbo.
Transnational solidarity implies above all else that affected populations are not forgotten. We cannot stop talking about Catatumbo. As the leaders of ASCAMCAT, the Catatumbo peasant association, have clearly stated: “the Catatumbo region cannot bear any more suffering.”
Adriana M. Pérez Rodríguez is a Colombian feminist researcher. She is a PhD candidate at the Women & Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto and a Harney Fellow in the R.F. Harney Program in Ethnic, Immigration, and Pluralism Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy. She is also co-founder and ex-director of the Observatorio de Asuntos de Género de Norte de Santander. Her research interests include transnational feminism, NGOisation and human rights, border studies, and Latin American feminist movements.
Priscyll Anctil Avoine is a researcher in Feminist Security Studies and an Assistant Professor at the Department of War Studies, Swedish Defence University. Her research focuses on women’s political militancy in leftist insurgencies and in peace processes. She is the co-author of the graphic novel Militanciafeminista post-lucha armada de las farianas (2024) with Zulay Carolina Rueda. Priscyll is also actively involved in the activities of Fundación Lüvo, a feminist and antiracist collective working on nonviolence.
