De la Espriella Dismantles What Is Left of Paz Total
COLOMBIA · SECURITY
Key Facts
- —The instruments Three Resoluciones Ejecutivas signed 9 September: 391, 390 and 389 of 2026.
- —Resolution 391 Revokes the entire government delegation to the ELN talks, headed by Vera Grabe and including María José Pizarro, Olga Lilia Silva and Iván Cepeda.
- —Resolution 390 Revokes the government representatives to the Espacio Sociojuridico with the Clan del Golfo, derogating Resolution 257 of 2024.
- —Resolution 389 Orders the closure of the temporary location zone in Valle del Guamúez, Putumayo, effective 30 September.
- —Who is there Around 99 members of the CNEB, a FARC dissident structure. A transition plan is due within five working days.
- —The stated reason An absence of conditions of trust and of verifiable genuine willingness for peace, citing ELN offensives in Catatumbo.
Petro spent four years building an architecture for talking to everyone at once. His successor has taken it apart in five weeks.
President Abelardo De la Espriella signed three executive resolutions on Wednesday revoking Colombia’s negotiating delegations to the ELN and the Clan del Golfo and ordering the closure of a designated location zone in Putumayo.
What Was Revoked
Resolución Ejecutiva 391 of 2026 removes the government’s entire delegation to the ELN dialogue table. It was headed by Vera Grabe and included María José Pizarro, Olga Lilia Silva and Iván Cepeda, among others.
Resolución Ejecutiva 390 revokes the government’s representatives to the Espacio Sociojurídico with the Clan del Golfo, also known as the Ejército Gaitanista de Colombia. Álvaro Jiménez Millán and four others lose their mandates, and Resolution 257 of 2024 is derogated.
Resolución Ejecutiva 389 orders the closure of the Zona para la Capacitación Integral y Ubicación Temporal in Valle del Guamúez, Putumayo, effective 30 September. Roughly 99 members of the Coordinadora Nacional Ejército Bolivariano, a FARC dissident structure, are located there. A transition plan is due within five working days.
These are executive resolutions rather than decrees. Several outlets have described them as decretos. The instruments themselves say resolución.
The Stated Grounds
The government’s justification is an absence of conditions of trust and of any verifiable genuine willingness for peace, citing ELN offensives in Catatumbo.
That formulation does two things at once. It closes the tables and it assigns the reason for closing them to the armed groups rather than to a change of policy in Bogotá.
Not the First Step
This is a continuation rather than an opening move. De la Espriella took office on 7 August and began unwinding the Paz Total framework in late August, when he announced the extradition of negotiators linked to FARC dissidents and Los Pachenca.
Paz Total was the organising idea of Gustavo Petro’s security policy: simultaneous negotiation with multiple armed and criminal structures, each at its own table, with legal architecture built around each one.
What replaces it has not been set out in comparable detail. The resolutions say what ends. They do not say what the state now does with the roughly 99 people in Putumayo after 30 September, beyond requiring a plan within a week.
The Political Setting
A new AtlasIntel poll for Bloomberg, published on 9 September, gives De la Espriella a 54 percent positive image one month into office. Fieldwork ran from 30 August to 3 September with 1,904 respondents and a margin of error of about 2 percent.
A president with a majority approval and a mandate built on security has considerable room to close negotiating tables. The constraint is not political. It is what happens on the ground in Catatumbo, Putumayo and the Bajo Cauca once the tables are gone.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What did De la Espriella sign?
Three executive resolutions on 9 September 2026: 391 revoking the ELN delegation, 390 revoking the Clan del Golfo representatives, and 389 closing the Putumayo location zone.
When does the Putumayo zone close?
30 September 2026. A transition plan is due within five working days.
How many people are in the zone?
Around 99 members of the Coordinadora Nacional Ejército Bolivariano, a FARC dissident structure.
What reason did the government give?
An absence of conditions of trust and of verifiable genuine willingness for peace, citing ELN offensives in Catatumbo.
How popular is the president?
An AtlasIntel poll for Bloomberg published 9 September gives him a 54 percent positive image, on fieldwork from 30 August to 3 September.
Sources: Infobae, El País Cali, LaFM, El Espectador, Semana.
This article was drafted with automated assistance and reviewed before publication. How we use AI · Report an error
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