Ernesto Rojas, a commander of the Colombian rebel group Segunda Marquetalia, sits during an interview in the Colombian Pacific jungle, Colombia, July 25, 2024.
COLOMBIA’S PACIFIC JUNGLE – Amid the oppressive heat and humidity of Colombia’s remote jungle, guerrillas armed with machine guns and rifles sneak through the undergrowth and patrol along a river, where their presence ensures control of key transportation routes for the cocaine they seize.
The Segunda Marquetalia group was founded in 2019 by opposition members of the now-demobilized Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). They claim the government has not respected the terms of a 2016 peace agreement that ended FARC’s involvement in Colombia’s long conflict. They are demanding further concessions before they will hand over their weapons.
Segunda Marquetalia remains true to the Marxist ideals that inspired the FARC’s founding in 1964, such as land redistribution. Many of Segunda Marquetalia’s leaders are long-time FARC veterans, now over 60 years old. Some fighters in a camp visited by Reuters – the first time the group has allowed a media outlet to visit one of its camps – still wear symbols such as a bracelet with an image of Che Guevara that have long been associated with Latin American rebel groups.
But times have changed in other ways too. Many of the ordinary people, some of them still teenagers, have mobile phones. A generator in the camp in southwest Colombia supplies power to a satellite internet connection that allows them to video call their families.
The 1,700-member Segunda Marquetalia is one of the few remaining rebel groups currently in talks with Colombia’s first leftist president, Gustavo Petro, as he seeks to negotiate new peace deals before his term ends in 2026. Although these talks have stalled overall, the government is optimistic that an agreement with Segunda Marquetalia could be possible, ending the group’s involvement in the six-decade-long armed conflict that has claimed at least 450,000 lives.
But Segunda Marquetalia’s chief negotiator told Reuters the rebels wanted to see significant progress on social investment before they would talk about handing over their weapons – one of the government’s key demands. “That’s what we want: to reach agreements and sign a peace treaty,” said chief negotiator Walter Mendoza, whose real name is Jose Vicente Lesmes, during an interview in a wooden village house with a tin roof several hours from the camp. “But two years is very little and the resistance to Petro’s government is enormous.”
Mendoza, who is 67 and has served with the rebels for four decades, said investing in long-neglected parts of the country was a priority for the guerrillas before they would give up arms. “Right now, neither arms nor demobilization are on the table,” said Mendoza, wearing a keffiyeh scarf and camouflage pants. He said they wanted to build roads, schools and clinics first, as well as provide electricity to Colombia’s most remote regions. “First things first – transformation of (rural) areas, concrete steps.”
“The immutable limits are: no demobilization or surrender of weapons in advance,” said Mendoza.
Mendoza ordered a group of guerrillas to show Reuters journalists a camp in Segunda Marquetalia, which took four hours to get there by motorized canoe, four-by-four and on foot.
The rebels said an extensive supply network brings food and fuel to the camp by boat or vehicle. The fighters subsist mainly on staple foods such as rice, potatoes, noodles, beef and chicken.
The next rural community is extremely poor. Some residents grow coca, the raw material for cocaine, and small crops such as bananas. Signs celebrating the rebels are displayed on dilapidated buildings.
On a makeshift parade ground, about 50 rebels in military uniforms stood at attention, armed with M16 and AK-47 rifles. Many of the rebels are grizzled veterans, but some fighters are only 16 years old.
Colombia’s rebel groups and criminal gangs regularly forcibly recruit young people – including some women – or lure them with promises of economic opportunity or political struggle to control large swathes of territory crucial to drug trafficking and illegal gold mining. Security sources say these areas are the armed groups’ main sources of funding. Mendoza denied that the group was directly linked to drug trafficking, but acknowledged that it collects taxes on drug trafficking profits in the areas it controls.
Since its founding, the Segunda Marquetalia has avoided direct confrontations with the armed forces, but is fighting with other armed groups for territory and control of illegal industries, government sources say.
Mendoza also confirmed that the Segunda Marquetalia has a presence in Venezuela, a “buffer zone” that gives commanders space to manage political, logistical and financial issues. Colombian government officials have frequently accused the guerrillas of evading military offensives by seeking refuge in Venezuela with the permission of President Nicolás Maduro. Caracas denies this.
Armando Novoa, the government’s chief negotiator in the Segunda Marquetalia talks, told Reuters that two years was enough time to agree and implement an agreement with the group, but acknowledged that there were still “enormous difficulties and obstacles.” The government said that handing over the group’s weapons was a key element of the negotiations.
“I don’t know whether it is a red line or not, but for us it is of course a central aspect of the negotiations,” he said.
The government agrees that poverty must be fought and investments made in health care and education, said Novoa. But for this development to happen, “the violence of illegal weapons must be ended.”
Eduardo Pizarro, a former ambassador and victim representative in the FARC talks, said the group’s refusal to give up its weapons was destroying the possibility of successful peace negotiations. “Holding on to the weapons is absolutely untenable, it completely poisons the credibility of the process,” he said.
