Following two weeks of escalating protests by local campesinos, two were killed as National Police troops opened fire June 23 at Ocaña in Colombia's Norte de Santander department. There were reports of injuries on both sides in similar clashes in recent days. At least 10,000 from the Catatumbo Valley have joined the protests that erupted on June 10, demanding the government declare the area an autonomous "campesino reserve zone," and halt the eradication of coca crops. Protesters claim that cocaleros have not been offered alternatives to provide for their families. Juan Carlos Quintero, vice president of the Catatumbo Campesino Association, said "we directly blame President Juan Manuel Santos" in the deaths, accusing him of having ordered the repression. Authorities said that protesters had set fire to the municipal building and the local prosecuter's office in Tibu, and also charged the FARC is involved in the campaign. The FARC, whose leader "Timochenko" is believed to be operating from the Catatumbo area, issued a statement calling on authorities to lower the level of violence. (Colombia Reports, AP, June 23)

Indigenous leaders in Colombia's Cauca department last month exchanged letters with FARC commander Rodrigo Londono AKA "Timochenko" AKA "Timoleón Jiménez" to discuss a face-to-face dialogue over guerilla aggression against native peoples. "Timochenko" wrote to indigenous leaders on May 13, appealing to them "to reach understandings that will allow us satisfactorily to advance towards our mutual goals of peace and social justice." He denied recent accusations by native leaders that  the FARC is complicit in the "genocide of the indigenous" of Cauca, and broached a personal meeting. The indigenous leaders reponded on May 16 with an open letter accepting the invitation to direct dialogue, but adding: "However, our communities want to see the dialogue does represent changes to our conditions; that you stop killing, accusing and dividing us." The letter protested the FARC's accusation that the indigenous leadership are a "counterinsurgency force."

Negotiators from Colombia's government and the FARC rebels on May 26 signed an agreement on agrarian reform, the first and reportedly the hardest of three issues that must be tackled before a final deal to end nearly 50 years of civil war. In a joint press conference, the two negotiating teams said they had reached full agreement on points including "access and use of land," "non-productive lands," "formalization of property," and the "agricultural frontier and protection of reserve zones." Accords were also announced on technical assistance and credit for poor farmers. The pact calls for creation of a "Lands for Peace Fund" into which millions of illegally held or underused hectares will be placed for eventual redistribution to landless peasants and displaced populations. The negotiators said the deal will lead to "radical transformations of Colombia's rural and agrarian reality with equality and democracy." The remaining two issues are political participation and drug trafficking. (Colombia Reports, LAT, El Colombiano, Colprensa, May 26)

Polemic billboards springing up around Colombia, sponsored by former vice president and potential 2014 presidential candidate, Francisco Santos, ask viewers to guess who killed more cops, deceased drug lord Pablo Escobar or FARC leader Ivan Marquez. One billboard in Medellín recently was bombarded with tomatoes by an angry group of citizens. Despite a pending order from the National Electoral Council to take the billboards down, Santos said he had no intention of doing so. "Don't come to me and say that we are using the pain of the victims," he said. "No, I know and I have worked with the victims," referring to his work for the Pais Libre foundation that defends the rights of kidnapping victims and their families.

The US Department of Justice on April 15 accused Guinea-Bissau's top military official, Gen. Antonio Indjai, of plotting a cocaine-for-weapons deal with Colombia's FARC rebels, according to court documents seen by Reuters.  The indictment, filed in district court in Manhattan, charges Indjai on four counts: "narco-terrorism conspiracy"; conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization; cocaine importation conspiracy; and conspiracy to acquire and transfer anti-aircraft missiles. The supposed deal came to light after Guinea-Bissau's former navy chief and six henchmen were arrested on the high seas by US forces.

"Pablo Catatumbo," commander of the FARC guerillas' feared Western Bloc, was picked up by a Red Cross helicopter in Colombia's southwestern town of Palmira April 6 to join fellow guerrilla leaders who are in Cuba meeting with the government to negotiate peace, according to local media. Neither the government nor the FARC have either confirmed or denied Catatumbo's trip. With the arrival of Catatumbo, the FARC delegation in Havana now includes three of the guerillas' seven-man secretariat. To allow the safe arrival of Catatumbo and five other rebel leaders in Palmira, the army temporarily suspended military operations in the department of Valle de Cauca, military intelligence sources told Caracol Radio. (Vanguardia Liberal, Bucaramanga, April 7; Colombia Reports, RCN Radio, April 6)

With a strike that lasted from Feb. 24 to March 8, tens of thousands of Colombian coffee growers took to the streets in towns and cities across the country, demanding relief for a sector hard hit by neoliberal policies—and ultimately claiming victory despite government intransigence and calumnies. The cafeteros refused to harvest beans, blocked traffic, and prevented beans from being loaded at port terminals, in a wave of actions across Colombia's highland coffee belt, stretching from Nariño in the south to Antioquia in the north.

One of the leaders of Colombia’s largest guerrilla group, the FARC, on Feb. 24 said that they are not a drug trafficking organization and though they have entered into peace negotiations with the government, they have not relinquished their aim to "take power." Rodrigo Granda, considered the FARC's foreign minister, told newspaper El Colombiano that the accusation that the FARC is nothing but a drug trafficking organization "is a shame." Referring to the four countries that have observed the peace process thus far, he said: "We are not drug traffickers, we are an organization with clear political policy ideas and for this reason the government is obliged to sit down and talk with us. Colombia would not sit down with a group of drug traffickers, Cuba would not sit as a guarantor with a group of drug traffickers, Venezuela and Chile would not sit down with a group of drug dealers, I don't think Norway has received a group of drug traffickers."