Jose Goitia for The New York Times
By SIMON ROMERO
Published: September 9, 2007
HAVANA — Dinner with the guerrillas was a civilized affair. A
chauffeured Mercedes, courtesy of Cuba's government, delivered guests to
the villa where the leaders of one of Colombia's most resilient rebel
groups often stay when they are in town.
Francisco Galán, a former seminarian with a long white beard, poured
glasses of Añejo de Caldas rum and distributed cigarettes from a pack of
Marlboro Lights. Before sitting down to a meal of red snapper, a treat
commonly reserved for visitors with hard currency, Pablo Beltrán, the
lead negotiator for the National Liberation Army, or E.L.N., offered a
toast: "To Cuba."
To Cuba: a fitting tribute to a nation that nurtured the insurgency from
its origins here in the 1960s and has since become something of a refuge
for the aging rebels, who occasionally come here for medical care.
It is also, paradoxically, the place where the revolutionaries are
trying to peacefully end their movement after decades of violent
struggle against a string of pro-American governments. This is one of
the only places where the E.L.N. feels safe enough to engage in
cease-fire talks with Colombia's government.
"Havana is a place where things move in slow motion in comparison with
other cities," said Mr. Beltrán, 53, who went from university studies in
petroleum engineering to bombing oil pipelines and kidnapping employees
of foreign energy companies. "It's the perfect place to negotiate with
tranquillity and contemplate what comes next."
In this largely threadbare city, away from the threat of assassination
or even random crime, the relative luxury the E.L.N.'s leaders
experience speaks volumes about how much has changed in Colombia and
Cuba — and perhaps how much they themselves have changed. Relations
between Colombia, led by a conservative government, and Cuba are warming
despite their very different political philosophies.
And after years of isolation and conflict, the rebels seem content, once
the day's negotiations have ended, to visit this city's jazz clubs or
stroll along the seawall without having to look over their shoulders.
The E.L.N.'s leaders, including Mr. Beltrán and Mr. Galán, are mainly
men in their 50s who have spent their adult lives entangled in war, in
mountain encampments or in prison cells. Mr. Galán, whose real name is
Gerardo Antonio Bermúdez, travels here from Medellín, where he has been
living since his recent release from prison.
Mr. Beltrán, who was born Israel Ramírez Pineda, travels from rebel
camps in the border region between Venezuela and Colombia. Juan Carlos
Cuéllar, another E.L.N. commander at the negotiating table, comes on
furlough from his prison cell on the outskirts of Medellín.
The E.L.N. came together when priests intoxicated with the ideas of
liberation theology allied with Colombians who had studied in Havana in
the early years of Mr. Castro's revolution. Together they pledged to
dislodge Colombia's moneyed elite.
The E.L.N.'s current leader, Nicolás Rodríguez, who uses the nom de
guerre Gabino, joined the group in the mid-1960s as a teenage peasant.
The group emerged as a favorite of Mr. Castro's among foreign guerrilla
movements, along with the insurgency in Bolivia that Che Guevara was
guiding at the time of his death in 1967.
For years afterward, Cuba did what it could to help export its
revolution to Colombia, including allowing the rebels to use Cuba as a
listening post. The E.L.N. was decimated by counterinsurgency forces in
the 1970s, but it regrouped by focusing attacks on foreign-owned oil
infrastructure.
In more recent years, Cuba took on a different supporting role, as
battles with right-wing paramilitaries and other leftist rebels eroded
the E.L.N.'s strength. And Colombia, which broke off diplomatic
relations in the early 1980s over Mr. Castro's support for rebel groups,
changed its stance with Cuba. President Álvaro Uribe of Colombia, the
Bush administration's closest ally in South America, has improved ties
with Cuba, and the two countries have been in talks over how to lower
trade barriers.
The E.L.N.'s commanders now visit less for ideological reasons than for
practical ones. They are sometimes clandestinely flown here for medical
treatment. Manuel Pérez, the Spanish-born priest who preceded Mr.
Rodríguez as the E.L.N.'s leader, was reportedly treated here for
complications from hepatitis before his death in 1998 at age 54.
And then there are the various rounds of cease-fire talks. For those,
Cuba has offered to act as host, but has also provided the rebels with
the villa in El Laguito, a gated area with pre-revolution homes
meticulously preserved for use by foreign dignitaries.
So far, peace remains a distant goal. The recent talks ended late last
month on a note of bitter discord. The E.L.N. rejected a proposal for
its leaders to be transferred outside Colombia. (Another round of talks
has been taking place in Venezuela this week, but details have not been
made public.) Cuba's future role as a base for talks, meanwhile, remains
uncertain.
And so the E.L.N. soldiers on. It is not Colombia's largest rebel group,
a distinction that belongs to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia. Nor is it especially active, having avoided in recent years
actions like its 1999 hijacking of an Avianca jet.
The group, branded as terrorists by the United States, still finances
itself through extortion and kidnappings, holding an estimated 200
captives, and says it has 5,000 members; private military analysts say
that may be an exaggeration.
"The E.L.N. is neither at war nor at peace," said León Valencia, a
former E.L.N. commander who writes on security issues in Bogotá.
So much of the commanders' lives is lived in a gray zone: for those
still wanted by Colombian authorities, orders for their arrest are
suspended to allow them to travel to the negotiations.
Havana may be the only place where the rebels escape the feeling of
limbo. Here, they can almost be regular visitors. Besides visiting jazz
clubs, they sometimes stroll the streets of Old Havana, where the
background chatter in Russian no longer belongs to Soviet advisers, but
to sunburned beach enthusiasts.
Sometimes, after dining in their villa, the guerrillas walk around the
nearby lake, lined with mansions that once belonged to Cuba's elite. On
occasion, the Colombian government's negotiators, who stay in the same
complex, have the same idea and the two delegations bump into each other.
"We greet each other cordially," said Mr. Beltrán, "before getting on
our way."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/world/americas/09havana.html
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