BOGOTA, Colombia — Approximately 100 Colombian guerrilla dissidents laid down their weapons Thursday in a formal ceremony, marking a significant step in their gradual transition back to civilian life under an ongoing peace process with President Gustavo Petro’s government.
Wearing military-style camouflage uniforms, members of the National Coordinating Committee of the Bolivarian Army placed their arms on a table during the ceremony held in the department of Putumayo, a region that shares a border with Ecuador. The group is a breakaway faction of the now-defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, commonly known as FARC.
With their weapons surrendered, the former fighters will move into a temporary resettlement zone where authorities plan to help them gradually reintegrate into civilian society. According to a government statement, the dissidents “will have their freedom restricted and will be under the control and supervision” of officials during this period.
The group’s leader, Geovany Andrés Rojas, addressed the ceremony remotely from jail, where he has been held since being captured last year while the group was already engaged in peace negotiations. “We laid down the iron rifle because we understand that words are a more powerful weapon,” he said.
Rojas was arrested in connection with an Interpol Red Notice related to drug trafficking charges in the United States. He acknowledged Thursday that his capture shook the confidence of rank-and-file members but said it did not derail the broader peace dialogue.
President Petro, himself a former rebel and Colombia’s first progressive president, has been pursuing negotiations with various dissident factions as part of his flagship “total peace” initiative, which runs simultaneous peace talks with multiple armed groups. That broader effort has largely fallen short of its goals.
The dissident groups are made up of factions that rejected the landmark peace agreement signed a decade ago between the Colombian government and FARC, which was once considered Latin America’s oldest guerrilla organization. A 2025 report by the Ideas for Peace Foundation, a think tank focused on Colombia’s internal conflict, estimates the country still has approximately 27,000 illegally armed group members.
Just last week, President Petro put a monitoring system in place for the temporary relocation zone and ordered a halt to offensive military and special police operations so the dissidents could safely enter the designated area.
