Total Peace

The Petro government opened exploratory contact with the Pachinko back in August, 2022, looking for a past total submission to justice deal instead of a straight fight.

Remember Petro gets an office and he's like, he ran on total peace and he ran promising that he was going to give these people a good talking to, and they're going to lay down their arms and go and become carpenters and plumbers and shopkeepers and whatever.

But the actual resolution, so he talks to these people saying, look, we're going to negotiate with you.

Okay.

And nobody ever built the legal framework to answer the basic question a criminal organization asks before it disarms.

What do we actually get? What happens to us? Sentencing? Benefits? None of it existed on paper.

So the government just says, total peace.

I'm going to negotiate with you.

So I want to touch upon really quickly about four things.

So first was a total failure of, or a backfire, if you will, of the total peace plan, which basically was a security paradigm aimed at simultaneously negotiating with different cartels and illegal armed groups across In practice, what happened in the past four years, these illegal armed groups were able to expand territorial control.

There was a severe spike in extortion, violence, and really just record coca cultivation during the past four years.

Second, during the Petro years, we saw a lot of institutional fights, and what I would say Petro's presidency was defined by friction in fighting, in terms of friction with institutions, with the judiciary, with Washington, and really just combined with a lot of economic stagnation that eroded what I would say is public patience, if you will.

Excuse

me.

With the end of Petro's total peace framework, armed groups in Colombia face a choice right now between Voluntary submission to the justice system or confrontation with the government.

In the past, these groups have facing military pressure.