Secretary Rubio Visits Central America. Fighting Among Colombian Guerillas.
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This message comes from Carvana. Sell your car the convenient way. Enter your license plate or VIN, answer a few questions, and get a real offer in seconds. Go to Carvana.com today. Today on State of the World, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio's inaugural international trip through Central America. And in Colombia, fierce fighting between rival guerrilla factions.

You're listening to State of the World from NPR, the day's most vital international stories, up close, where they're happening. It's Wednesday, February 5th. I'm Christine Arismath. This week, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is making a five-country sweep through Central America. The trip's been somewhat overshadowed by the fallout over the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID.

NPR's State Department correspondent Michelle Kellerman is traveling with Rubio and they're in Guatemala. She spoke to NPR's Juana Summers about Rubio's press conference with the Guatemalan president. President Bernardo Arevalo says he agreed to increase by 40 percent the deportation flights from the U.S. You know, Guatemala has been accepting back

those Guatemalans who are in the U.S. illegally and being deported back home. And Rubio praised Guatemala for the way that they're reintegrating these deportees. He also announced some plans in the works to build infrastructure in Guatemala to start looking at building a couple of ports and some roads. So migration and trade were really the central themes here. And by the way,

Rubio called it an impactful visit, and he joked that there was a sign of just how impactful. There was an earthquake overnight that woke him up, and he said that he had actually never experienced one before. Okay, I want to turn to a different topic because the news about USAID has been a big issue here in the States, but I'm curious what you've been hearing from the people that you've been meeting in the region. What have they had to say about that?

Yeah, I mean, there was a statement last night that said they're all going to be put on leave Friday and they have to be gone in 30 days. And USAID officials are really shell-shocked by that. I mean, one U.S. official told me that it feels like there's an evacuation from a war zone underway, but USAID staff...

are being treated as the aggressors. There are about 200 USAID staffers at the embassy here in Guatemala. Most of them are locally hired employees, so Guatemalans who oversee the aid programs here. There are also some foreign service officers, and they really don't know what's in store for them. Rubio said that there will be exceptions for programs that are in the national interest.

And, you know, he said it was USAID's fault that it had to be done this way. Take a listen to how he put it. On USAID, unfortunately, we did not get the same level of cooperation. In fact, we had individuals, even after the orders were issued, that were still trying to push payments through.

in contravention and in direct insubordination. And so now we've had to do it in the opposite direction. It's not the way we wanted to do it initially, but it is the way we will have to do it now. This is Secretary Rubio's first overseas trip. Five countries in total take stock of the trip and hole. What do you think he's achieved with it?

Well, I mean, his whole message is that this is a sign that American leadership in the hemisphere is back, that this region has been ignored too long and will get more attention. Migration, as I said, was really key. He went to see a flight of migrants being deported from Panama to Colombia. Those are people who were stopped in Panama before they could make their way to the U.S. Here in Guatemala, he's going to be talking to local authorities who are cooperating with ICE on those Guatemalans deported from the U.S. And

In El Salvador, he talked about the president's offer to take back migrant gang members and criminals. The El Salvadoran president even suggested that the U.S. could send U.S. citizens who are criminals to outsource, you know, jails to El Salvador. The other big issue, of course, was the Panama Canal. He was—that's where he started, in Panama—

and President Trump wants the Panama Canal back. Rubio said he raised some concerns about the Panama Canal with Panama's president, but Panama's president says, you know, control over the canal is not up for discussion. That's NPR's State Department correspondent Michelle Kellerman speaking to NPR's Juana Summers. Now to Colombia. There, President Gustavo Petro has promised to disarm the country's guerrilla groups through peace talks.

But there's been almost no progress. And now, an outbreak of fighting is forcing tens of thousands of Colombians from their homes. NPR's John Otis has the story. And a warning to listeners, you will hear the sound of gunfire in this piece. The fighting began last month in Catatumbo, a remote area in northern Colombia that borders Venezuela.

In this video obtained by NPR, guerrillas of the National Liberation Army, or ELN, are battling a rival rebel faction for control over fields of coca, the raw material for cocaine. Authorities say more than 40 people have been killed. The ELN entered different communities across Catatumbo with a list of names.

Elizabeth Dickinson, who tracks Colombia for the International Crisis Group, says many were civilians executed for allegedly collaborating with the ELN's enemies. They went house to house looking for these individuals, took them to the street, in many cases assassinated them in front of their families.

Amid the panic, 50,000 people have fled their homes. Some have crowded into this elementary school that's been converted into a shelter in the town of Tibu. Kids are playing basketball. Some of the adults are washing their clothes. Others are just resting on mattresses laid out on the gym floor.

They include Bernabe Polo, a coal miner who, along with his wife and two children, fled to avoid getting hit by stray bullets.

The fighting was really close to our house, he says. We threw ourselves on the floor and stayed there all night. Police and army troops are now patrolling Catatumbo, but this region has long been a stronghold of ELN guerrillas.

The group first rose up as a Marxist insurgency in the 1960s, but these days it mainly extorts businesses and traffics cocaine. That disgusts Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who is himself a former guerrilla fighter but disarmed 35 years ago. Carlos Marx, in whom they say they believe.

During a recent visit to Catatumbo, he said that the ELN claims to follow Karl Marx, but it seems to me they believe more in Pablo Escobar. Indeed, drug trafficking helps explain why, after more than 60 years of armed conflict, peace continues to elude Colombia.

The violence briefly diminished after the country's largest guerrilla group, known as the FARC, disarmed in 2016. But the government failed to take control of coca fields and drug trafficking routes that were abandoned by the FARC. And now, ELN rebels and a new generation of criminal groups are fighting over this territory.

When he took office in 2022, Petro immediately opened talks with the ELN and other rebel factions to secure what he called total peace for Colombia. Initially, the government gave up way too much in these talks.

But Dickinson of the International Crisis Group says Petro agreed to multiple ceasefires that hamstrung the army while giving the guerrillas time to regroup. A lot of frustration inside the ranks of the military that they were being, had their hands tied and are now being sent to sort of clean up the mess.

Now the ELN peace talks have been suspended and government troops are preparing to attack them. But the rebels can escape into Venezuela, which lies just a few miles from here. In fact, analysts say half of the ELN's 6,000 rebels live and train in Venezuela. They don't have a telephone number.

In the meantime, families keep pouring into the shelters. Some of the displaced, like Victor Lopez and his pregnant wife, are Venezuelan migrants. They crossed the border four months ago to escape Venezuela's economic crisis. But now, Lopez laments, they've been forced to flee once again, this time by Colombia's guerrilla war. For NPR News, I'm John Otis in Tibu, Colombia.

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