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Jesús Santrich, the dogmatic FARC negotiator who betrayed the peace process

2021-05-21T14:16:05.934Z


The guerrilla was the shadow of Iván Márquez and escaped with him to create the Second Marquetalia, a dissidence in arms of the extinct FARC


Guerrilla, alleged drug trafficker and dissident who deviated from the peace agreement that he helped negotiate to retake arms. Jesús Santrich, 53, who died in Venezuela supposedly in a confrontation between armed gangs, will be remembered for the defiant “maybe, maybe, maybe”, with the rhythm of a ballad, with which he replied in 2012 when they asked him if he was willing to ask Sorry for the crimes of what were still called the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). By then, the negotiation between the Government of Juan Manuel Santos and the most powerful guerrilla in America was just beginning.

Seuxis Paucias Hernández Solarte - Santrich's legal name - was not only the FARC's “notary” for the peace process in the Havana talks, but also the uncomfortable man for the Colombian government negotiators.

"Together with Iván Márquez they put together an indissoluble and hard-line pairing in which Santrich said what Márquez did not dare or could not say because he was the main negotiator of the process," reminds EL PAÍS Marisol Gómez, a veteran journalist who covered so much the conflict armed as negotiation.

More information

  • Jesús Santrich, dissident FARC guerrilla, dies in an attack in Venezuela

  • Human Rights Watch denounces “aberrant abuses” by the Venezuelan Army on the border with Colombia

Santrich belonged to the Caribbean Bloc of the guerrillas, and those who knew him say that he lost his sight due to glaucoma that worsened when he was not treated. He was a native of Sucre, in the Colombian Caribbean, studied law and had a postgraduate degree in history, according to what he told the journalist Rafael Croda in the magazine

Proceso

. He was characterized by his sarcastic and offensive character. He was not part of the Secretariat, the highest level of the FARC, but after the disarmament of the guerrillas and the creation of the political party Fuerza Alternativa Revolucionaria del Común - recently renamed the Comunes - he managed to integrate the directive, above Márquez himself. “That is why it was unthinkable that he would remain in the peace process when Márquez left the process. It was not a surprise that she ran away to be with him, ”says Gómez.

Before he took up arms again, the bizarre and lengthy 'Santrich case' put the peace agreement to the test and strained Colombian institutions to the limit. The guerrilla spent a year in jail, requested in extradition by the United States, and was released by order of the transitional justice system before formally becoming a fugitive from justice.

Santrich claimed to be the victim of a "judicial set-up." The Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) ordered his release two years ago, applying the guarantee of non-extradition contemplated in the agreements due to lack of evidence. According to the Colombian Prosecutor's Office, he was part of a network that had been committing crimes since June 2017, a semester after the agreement was signed, and a New York court pointed out that he conspired to export 10 tons of cocaine. However, he never referred the bulk of the evidence to transitional justice. His release caused an institutional crisis that resulted in the resignation of the attorney general, Néstor Humberto Martínez, and the Minister of Justice, Gloria María Borrero.

After being released from prison, Santrich even assumed his seat in Congress, one of the ten guaranteed for the party heir to the defunct guerrilla in the peace agreement. His fleeting presence in the legislature caused a political earthquake in a previously polarized country. His case provided plenty of ammunition for critics of the pact, including President Iván Duque. On June 30, 2019, amid political friction, he abandoned his security scheme and disappeared in the Territorial Space for Training and Reincorporation (ETCR) of former combatants from Tierra Grata, a rural area in the department of Cesar, in the north. from the country.

Two months later, Colombia confirmed its worst fears. Iván Márquez, who was the chief negotiator of the FARC in Havana, reappeared at dawn on Thursday, August 29, 2019 in a video together with Santrich and other former guerrilla commanders to proclaim that they were taking up arms. "We announce to the world that the second Marquetalia has begun," says Márquez in that message, referring to the emblematic place where the FARC was born more than half a century ago. Although he assured that they were speaking from the Inírida River, in the Amazon region of southeastern Colombia, near the borders with Venezuela and Brazil, since then various observers and intelligence information indicated that the group of dissident ex-commanders was taking refuge in Venezuelan territory.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2021-05-21

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