Petro lifts State of Exception in northeast Colombia

Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro lifted the State of Exception that was declared in northeast Colombia in response to a guerrilla offensive that displaced thousands in January.

The decree that declared the State of Exception suspended key constitutional liberties in the Catatumbo region and allowed the government to respond to the crisis without congressional interference for three months.

The president could have asked Congress to extend the emergency measures for another three months, but decided to only maintain “exceptional measures to disengage families dependent on illicit crop cultivation.”

These exceptional measures include a crop substitution program, which would allow farmers in Catatumbo, a notorious coca growing region, access to the legal economy.

This would in turn cut funds for guerrilla group ELN, whose offensive all but expelled rival guerrilla group EMBF from the region and its drug trafficking routes to the Caribbean coast and Venezuela.

The offensive killed more than 80 people, including community leaders and demobilized members of guerrilla group FARC, whose former comrades formed the EMBF.

The State of Exception sought to free emergency funds to deal with displaced victims the ELN offensive, and to promote the integration to the legal economy in the region that has depended on drug trafficking since the 1990’s.

At the same time, the National Army was deployed to combat the guerrillas, which appears to have had little effect.