Catatumbo crisis marginalises northeast Colombia communities

When National Liberation Army (ELN) guerillas launched an attack on the 33rd Front, a rival armed group in the region of Catatumbo, Presiden Gustavo Petro invoked emergency powers on January 21, permitting curfews and imposing other restrictions on civilians as the state military plunged into open conflict with the ELN. More than 5,000 soldiers were deployed to reinforce existing bases in Colombia’s northeastern department of Norte de Santander.

Local social movements have denounced the state’s militarised response and escalation of conflict as inconsistent with Petro’s Total Peace strategy. And as mass displacement strains a region already marked by deep fissures of systemic neglect and human rights violations, Catatumbo is hearing an old refrain. 

Through March, the conflict has affected 91,879 people. This is the largest mass displacement in recent Colombian history caused by a single event, with 56,091 people experiencing displacement and 27,381 people experiencing restricted movement within the Catatumbo region due to armed group activity. At least 80 people are known to have been killed, among them former guerrillas and a campesino leader. 

People have sought shelter in the Tibú and Ocaña municipalities, and the city of Cúcuta on the Venezuelan border, or fled the department entirely. 

A humanitarian convoy mobilised in February, with support ranging from the UN to local and grassroots organizations.

“Access has been very complicated because the ELN continues to be a very dominant force in the region,” Elizabeth Dickinson, senior analyst for Colombia at NGO think tank International Crisis Group, told FairPlanet.

The ELN and 33rd Front had established territorial agreements, until the latter gained social influence and political cache through agreements on land rights and infrastructure development amid peace negotiations with the state, threatening the ELN. “They’ve tried to influence which civil society organisations are able to participate in everything from humanitarian rallies to distribution,” Dickinson said of the ELN.

Air evacuations have been conducted for hundreds of people considered to be in imminent danger, including former guerrillas and social leaders.

“That was primarily demobilised fighters from the former FARC who were targeted explicitly by ELN,” Dickinson said, referring to signatories of the 2016 Peace Agreement between the state and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)–historically Colombia’s dominant leftist guerilla group. Under the agreement, the Colombian government committed to protect demobilised FARC guerrillas from retaliatory assassination.

Despite the swift militarisation, the same can’t be said for a civilian state presence or assurance of security for human rights defenders in Catatumbo.  

Compounding disenfranchisement

“The reactivation of clashes between organised armed groups in northeastern Colombia has forced thousands of civilians to flee their homes, exacerbating a decades-long humanitarian crisis,” Giovanni Rizzo, Colombia director for the Norwegian Refugee Council, stated in January.

Between the Andean mountain range, thick jungle and sprawling farm fields that spill east toward Venezuela and the oil-rich region of Lake Maracaibo, Catatumbo’s relative remoteness is not only geographic. 

Three successive Colombian governments have ignored demands for access to public services and a stronger civilian presence of the state in what was supposed to be a transition to peace. Similar crises have played out over the years. 

Even after the Peace Agreement was signed, displacement, kidnappings and massacres in the Catatumbo region continued. People have been left to deal with systemic poverty and the threat of various armed groups alone.

A small Indigenous community of less than 6,000 people known as the Barí, whose homelands stretch along the Catatumbo River, have endured multiple levels of colonial violence from the Colombian state and occupying armed groups. They have long reported attacks, human rights violations and disrespect of their territorial authority.

The United Nations Refugee Agency reports that Catatumbo’s humanitarian crisis has exposed the Barí to deepening food insecurity. Since January, the Ñatubaiyibari traditional authority has reported displacement, confinement, and landmines being planted on their territories by armed groups.

Barí communities in the Ñatubaiyibari and Catalaura reserves have called on international human rights organisations to recognise ongoing human rights abuses against their people. But wielding a small collective voice within a large crisis, their plea has remained on the margins.  

Armed groups have vied for power in Colombia’s northeast for decades, from the far-right paramilitary predecessors of the Clan del Golfo cartel, to the ELN and evolving groups of FARC dissidents. But according to Colombia’s Truth Commission, forced displacement across Norte de Santander has historically been overlooked. 

“Perhaps because of this reality, very remarkable social leaders have emerged from the region, and there are very strong and recognised civil society organisations in Catatumbo,” Camilo Vargas Betancourt, Colombia campaigner at Amnesty International, told FairPlanet.

Across Norte de Santander, long considered the deadliest department for Colombian human rights defenders and community leaders, the risks are great.

Members of prominent organizations like campesinx groups Catatumbo Social Integration Committee (CISCA) and the Catatumbo Peasant Association (ASCAMCAT), and the Luis Carlos Pérez Lawyers Collective (CCALCP), are threatened, targeted for surveillance and assassination, and stigmatized as supporting armed groups.

Over the years, activists in Catatumbo’s social movements have opposed extractivism and private sector development in coal mining, fossil fuels, and palm plantations for harming the region’s biodiversity and ways of life, and fuelling corruption. 

Now, the biggest industry fueling armed groups in the region is again under fire. 

Norte de Santander is an agricultural region experiencing high levels of poverty, with 56.3% of Colombians surviving on roughly $80USD per month. Many farmers are dependent on growing coca that criminalises them and finances the armed groups that keep the region in a chokehold. 

As part of the 2016 Peace Agreement, the Colombian government created voluntary crop substitution programmes to help workers and land-owners transition into a legal economy, but they have not been widely adopted.

The United Nations Human Rights Council has reported that programmes in Norte de Santander have been unsuccessful for nearly a decade due to a lack of financing and state implementation, a lack of security in the affected areas, and extortion by armed groups.

Tibú, one of the municipalities to which thousands of people have been displaced, remains dependent on coca, with approximately 52 percent of the department’s plantations. 

Tibú was targeted by the Colombian army in the forced eradication campaigns of Plan Colombia under former conservative Colombian President Andres Pastrana and his successor Alvaro Uribe.

Thousands of acres of coca fields were besieged by manual destruction and aerial glyphosate spraying—favoured tactics in the U.S. funded “War on Drugs” and anti-communist counterinsurgency. This indiscriminate approach destroyed entire livelihoods, triggered mass protests, escalated violence against civilians, and deepened disenfranchisement.

While Colombia banned glyphosate spraying in 2015, aerial fumigation was renewed under Iván Duque’s government, under pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump in his first term. 

Petro halted these programs in 2023, relieving pressure on farmers, Betancourt explained. “However, this occurred amid an economic crisis caused by an oversupply of coca leaf.” 

“Although this was an opportunity to develop economic alternatives, unfortunately the State’s response to this crisis was slow and uncoordinated,” Betancourt said. “Today, the coca economy is once again expanding and violence has reached unprecedented levels.”

Aiming to cut regional financing to armed groups, Petro announced in early March that farmers will be paid roughly equivalent to $313USD per month to participate in voluntary crop substitution programmes. 

But communities where precarity has been the norm are under even greater pressure from the humanitarian crisis. 

Activists have a vigilant eye on the scars of past state violence in Norte de Santander. The appointment of former air force general Pedro Sánchez as Colombia’s new Defence Minister in February–a post held by civilians since 1991–has proven controversial. Sánchez is advocating for increased militarisation in the northeast and continued U.S. military aid as Colombia weighs an arms deal on F-16s. 

With armed clashes continuing through February, Petro was criticised for statements on Catatumbo region’s social organisations being proliferated with arms and subordinated to armed groups. Activists have denounced this position as reminiscent of former right-wing governments.

Sánchez’ appointment has isolated and stigmatised the region’s leftist social movement, according to CISCA. “All these practices are typical and expected from right-wing governors, we did not expect them from your government,” they stated.

“This public stigmatisation reinforces the narrative that has historically sought to criminalise social struggles, legitimising the persecution against those who seek to build a country in peace and with social justice,” the José Alvear Restrepo lawyers collective wrote.

With Trump doubling down on an old drug war playbook for Colombia, and Petro already folding to Trump’s executive order to deport Colombians, Catatumbo is now in a critical moment that threatens to deepen social divides. 

*** Colombian organisations contacted for comment by FairPlanet did not respond in time for publication.