ELN Police Station Takeover in Catatumbo as Colombia Captures ‘El Flaco’
COLOMBIA · SECURITY
Key Facts
- —The capture Troops and prosecutors’ investigators arrested ELN commander alias “El Flaco” in a pre-dawn raid on 10 September in La Sierra, Cauca.
- —His file He is accused of leading a commission of the Manuel Vásquez Castaño front and of forcibly recruiting minors in Cauca.
- —The takeover Hours later, residents of Guamalito, in Catatumbo, reported that presumed ELN fighters occupied the local police sub-station after its officers were evacuated.
- —The vacuum About 20 officers were pulled out after repeated attacks, including drone-dropped explosives, left the station practically destroyed; no army unit had arrived as of 11 September.
- —The context The incidents land days after President de la Espriella formally withdrew the government’s negotiators from the ELN peace table.
- —The message The president confirmed the capture and warned the guerrillas “will not have a minute of tranquility.”
On the same day Colombia’s government celebrated catching an ELN commander in the south, the guerrilla group was moving into an abandoned police station in the northeast. Both facts are true, and together they describe the war Colombia now has.
Colombia’s ELN conflict escalated on two fronts in a single 24-hour cycle: in the early hours of Thursday, 10 September, security forces captured alias “El Flaco,” a commander of the ELN’s Manuel Vásquez Castaño front, in Cauca — and by Friday morning, residents of Guamalito, a rural township in Catatumbo, were reporting an ELN police station takeover, with presumed guerrilla fighters occupying the sub-station after its officers withdrew.
The two events, separated by 600 kilometers, frame the same fact: five weeks into President Abelardo de la Espriella’s government, the ELN is simultaneously being hunted and expanding its territorial reach.
The Capture in Cauca
According to Semana, which first reported the operation citing army sources, the raid took place in the early hours of 10 September in the village of El Roble, in the municipality of La Sierra, in the southern department of Cauca. Troops of the National Army, coordinated with the CTI — the technical investigations corps of the Attorney General’s Office — arrested two men at a construction site, among them alias “El Flaco.”
Military sources describe him as the head of a commission of the Juan Carlos Chilhueso Pazzú company, part of the ELN’s Manuel Vásquez Castaño front, the guerrilla structure that dominates much of the Colombian Massif region where Cauca meets Nariño and Huila. He is accused of the forced recruitment of minors in Cauca, as well as extortion and kidnapping. His civilian name has not been made public.
President de la Espriella confirmed the capture himself on Thursday. “This morning, our Public Force, in coordination with the CTI of the Attorney General’s Office, captured two ELN narcoterrorists in La Sierra, Cauca, among them alias El Flaco,” he said, framing the raid within his government’s month-old offensive and repeating his signature warning that criminals “will not have a minute of tranquility.”
The Empty Station in Guamalito
The second event unfolded in Norte de Santander, the northeastern department that holds the Catatumbo region — a coca-growing corridor on the Venezuelan border that the ELN has fought over for years. Guamalito is a corregimiento, a rural township, of the municipality of El Carmen.
According to reporting by Blu Radio, carried by Infobae on 11 September, the National Police sub-station in Guamalito had been left practically destroyed after repeated guerrilla attacks, including explosives dropped by drones. The roughly 20 police officers stationed there were evacuated. Once they were gone, residents reported, presumed ELN members entered and took what was left of the installation.
The mayor of El Carmen, José Reinel Contreras, confirmed the community’s reports — and the vacuum. “Unfortunately, as of today we have no police, and the army has not yet arrived in the corregimiento of Guamalito,” he told Blu Radio. As of Friday morning there was no report of the sub-station being retaken or of a permanent military deployment to the township.
A War Without a Table
The timing is not incidental. The main peace talks between the government and the ELN had already been suspended since January 2025, after the guerrilla’s offensive in Catatumbo that year. On 9 September — one day before the Cauca raid — the de la Espriella government issued Resolution 391, formally revoking the appointments of its negotiators at the ELN dialogue table, including former lead negotiator Vera Grabe; a parallel Resolution 390 did the same for the conversation space with the Clan del Golfo, the country’s largest drug cartel. The Rio Times covered the dismantling of what was left of the “Total Peace” negotiating architecture earlier this week.
In practical terms, there is now no channel: no ceasefire, no table, no negotiators on the government side. What remains is the military line the new president promised during the campaign. August already brought the government’s first airstrike against the ELN in Catatumbo, and the region has kept producing incidents — including the seizure of three police officers on a Catatumbo road last month — part of what our security desk counted as four open fronts in a single week in early September.
Guamalito shows the limit of that line. Airstrikes and high-value captures degrade command structures, but territorial control is decided by presence — and in one township of El Carmen this week, presence is exactly what the state withdrew.
What to Watch
The immediate question is whether the army moves back into Guamalito, and how. Undoing the ELN police station takeover is militarily simple; holding a township where the guerrilla has already demonstrated drone strike capability is not. The mayor’s public plea for troops puts the defense ministry on the clock.
The second question is judicial. Alias “El Flaco” now faces the accusations attached to his name — above all the recruitment of minors, a war crime under international law that Colombian prosecutors have made a priority in ELN cases. What prosecutors can prove, and what his capture reveals about the Manuel Vásquez Castaño front’s finances, will say more about the state of the guerrilla than any single raid.
And the third question is political. De la Espriella has bet his government on the proposition that Colombia can fight the ELN without talking to it. Thursday gave him a trophy. Friday gave his critics a photograph of the opposite: a police station flying no flag at all.
More: Colombia news in English, every day from The Rio Times.
This article was produced by The Rio Times’ automated newsroom system. How we use AI · Report an error
Read More from The Rio Times