Fury over Colombia peace process failures

The Church’s work for a definitive end to Colombia’s 50-year internal conflict has hit a major bump in the road.

At a meeting of an indigenous rights commission, the Archbishop of Cali, Darío de Jesus Monsalve, accused the Colombian government led by Iván Duque of having “a spirit of vengeance” against the previous government, which began peace negotiations with the FARC guerrillas. 

Its “genocidal vengeance”, he said, would “completely dismember society” in territories “where subversive organisations had or have influence”. The archbishop also expressed frustration at the lack of progress in talks with the ELN guerrillas after agreement was secured with the larger FARC movement.

The background to the archbishop’s remark is the steadily rising toll of murders of community leaders, often indigenous or Afro-Colombians, by right-wing paramilitaries or dissident FARC fighters who have refused to surrender. On 8 July the Duque government recently rejected an ELN offer of a 90-day cease-fire and called for the ELN negotiators based in Havana to be handed over to the Colombian authorities.

Archbishop Monsalve’s remarks produced an unprecedented public statement from the apostolic nuncio, Archbishop Luis Mariano Montemayor, declaring that “this description of government policy does not correspond to the vision the Holy See has of the complex situation as regards the complete application of the 2016 peace agreements or the state of the contacts and conversations being maintained at various levels with the ELN”.  The nuncio also told the archbishop that “genocide” had strict definition in international law, and was not to be used lightly.

Praise for Archbishop Monsalve came from the Jesuit-backed human rights think tank CINEP, which published an article on its website describing him as a “peace-builder”.  A senior CINEP analyst told The Tablet that the archbishop was a committed pastor and that the nuncio had taken his words too literally.

“What word would you use to describe the 1000 human beings murdered or disappeared since the signing of the peace agreement?” he asked. In interviews with the press over last weekend the nuncio rowed back somewhat from his statement. “I am not angry with him,” he said.  “We are both working for peace. The Holy Father is very concerned that there should be peace in Colombia. That is the message he sent me here with,” he added.