Humberto De la Calle, the chief government negotiator who brokered Colombia's historic 2016 peace agreement with FARC guerrillas, delivered a scathing assessment of President Gustavo Petro's signature "Total Peace" initiative, calling the administration's efforts "mediocre" and warning that the government has lost control of former conflict zones.
In an interview with El Tiempo, De la Calle—whose credentials as a peace advocate are unimpeachable—argued that Petro campaigned as a reformist in the tradition of liberal president Alfonso López Pumarejo but has instead governed more like Venezuela's Hugo Chávez. The critique carries particular weight coming from within Colombia's peace movement rather than from traditional conservative opponents.
De la Calle's central concern focuses on the government's failure to establish territorial control in regions vacated by FARC following the 2016 demobilization. "The state has not arrived in these territories," he said, pointing to the resurgence of armed groups including ELN guerrillas, drug trafficking organizations, and FARC dissidents who rejected the peace accord.
The "Total Peace" strategy, announced with considerable fanfare when Petro took office in 2022, aimed to negotiate ceasefires with all armed groups simultaneously—a more ambitious approach than the painstaking, years-long FARC negotiations. De la Calle suggests this ambition has proven unrealistic. Multiple ceasefire agreements have collapsed, violence has surged in several departments, and the administration appears to lack the institutional capacity to implement peace accords even when groups agree to negotiate.
The former negotiator also criticized what he characterized as the government's ideological approach to peacebuilding. While the FARC process focused on concrete mechanisms—rural development programs, political participation for former combatants, transitional justice—Petro's team has emphasized broader revolutionary rhetoric that De la Calle believes substitutes for practical governance.
