Popular Liberation Army - Partial Demobilization

Partial Demobilization

By 1991, the EPL had rejoined peace talks with the administration of president César Gaviria and a total of some 2000 people affiliated to the guerrilla group demobilized, including both armed and unarmed members.

A smaller, dissident faction, sometimes calling itself "Ejército Popular de Liberación - Línea Disidente" (Popular Liberation Army - Dissident Line), under Francisco Caraballo disagreed with the demobilization, insisted on fighting and did not demobilize. Caraballo himself was eventually captured by Colombian authorities in 1994 and his faction continued guerrilla operations on a smaller scale.

Most of the demobilized guerrillas formed Esperanza, Paz y Libertad (Hope, Peace and Liberty), a political party, which claimed to defend the interests of workers and labor unions, especially around the Urabá area in the departments of Antioquia and Córdoba.

The FARC, the remaining EPL dissidents and the ELN considered Esperanza, Paz y Libertad and all the demobilized EPL to be "traitors" and paramilitary collaborators, initiating a series of attacks and assassination attempts against the former EPL members. Some of the ex-EPL members apparently would have eventually joined and participated, individually and allegedly without the support of the new political party, in paramilitary operations against the FARC and their former comrades.

In 1998, Human Rights Watch reported that the FARC had begun killing a number of ex-EPL members since 1991: "Investigators pinpoint 1991 as the year the FARC began to massacre perceived political rivals in the Esperanza political party formed by amnestied EPL guerrillas and their supporters. The FARC and its urban militias were believed responsible for 204 murders of Esperanza members and amnestied EPL guerrillas from 1991 to 1995." In a 1999 report, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) also held the FARC responsible for a number of massacres against Esperanza, Paz y Libertad members or sympathizers.

Human Rights Watch believed Caraballo's EPL faction to be responsible for a comparatively smaller number of deaths: "According to Esperanza, 348 of its members and amnestied EPL guerrillas were murdered between 1991 and the end of 1995. Of that number, they believe sixty-one were killed by the EPL under Caraballo’s command."