The governor of the department of Caqueta, Luis Francisco Ruiz, has just made a serious accusation involving the dissident FARC groups known as the General Staff of the Blocks and Front, led by Alexander Diaz Mendoza, alias “Calarca Cordoba.” Despite the fact that this illegal armed group is in dialogue with the government of Gustavo Petro, the most recent irregularity they have committed is the threat to forcibly recruit five minor siblings.
Governor Ruiz recounted the story to President Petro in a letter, requesting assistance. The children are the offspring of a couple who had been kidnapped and sentenced to death by the armed group. Before falling into the hands of the illegal armed group, the couple hid their children in the jungle. The group led by alias ‘Calarcá’ could not execute the couple because they managed to escape and reached a military unit stationed on the banks of the Caguan River.
Five children at high risk
“Their six children, aged between 3 and 18, were left vulnerable and at high risk of facing possible retaliation,” the governor wrote to President Petro. He also requested help to extract the children, although their exact location is unknown. For Ruiz, it is also important to activate protection routes to ensure the physical and psychological integrity of the minors, as well as the accompaniment of authorities to transfer them to a safe place.
The parents of the children are under the protection of the authorities, but their children remain hidden in the jungle, fearing they will fall into the hands of alias “Calarca’s” structures, who have threatened to forcibly recruit them if their parents do not return to captivity. According to the governor, this family’s case illustrates what is happening in Caqueta. Criminals have located all the families and exert social and territorial pressure.
But this is just one of the crimes committed by the armed group of alias “Calarca” while sitting at the negotiating table with the Government. In the department of Caqueta alone (they also operate in Meta, Guaviare, and Putumayo, and are attempting to expand into Huila and Tolima), they have murdered police officers and soldiers, harassed police stations, planted explosives to extort merchants, and forced the civilian population to join the peasant militias.
Capture order against ‘Calarca’ could be reactivated
Governor Ruiz has stated that in his first year in office, he filed more than a hundred reports about how alias “Calarca’s” structures violated the partial agreements of the negotiation table, and instead, they have strengthened and expanded. Due to his reports, the armed structure of “Calarcá” attempted an attack with explosives on one of the paternal houses of his wife in the rural area of the municipality of Cartagena del Chaira.
The case of alias “Calarca” is becoming increasingly problematic for President Petro’s government, as this past weekend, Attorney General Luz Adriana Camargo confirmed the authenticity of the information contained in the computers and cell phones of “Calarca,” seized when he was captured in mid-2024 on a road in Antioquia, although he was shortly thereafter released.
The information found on the electronic devices would expose alliances between the criminal organization of “Calarca” and high-ranking government officials. This statement by Camargo and the pressure from various sectors of society could lead to the reactivation of the arrest warrant against the leader of this organization, something that is reportedly already being discussed at the Casa de Nariño.