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Amid intensifying state repression, Colombia’s ELN imposes an ‘armed strike’
OLIVER DODD reports on the National Liberation Army's general strike backed up with guns
Masks are only used during photos as ELN militants leave the armed ranks after a period of three years and move on to various roles in social movements, trade unions and their communities

FOR 72 hours in February, transport and industry across Colombia was severely impaired as militants lent the weight of their weapons to anti-neoliberal protesters.

Causing massive damage to capitalist accumulation, uniquely, the ELN’s aim was to persuade Colombia’s government and dominant classes to negotiate not with the insurgents themselves but with the labour movement.

Conceiving itself as an “armed resistance” rather than as a traditional, formal guerilla army oriented to taking power militarily, the ELN is not a typical armed socialist movement.

Nicolas Rodriguez Bautista, the leading figure of the group, joined the ELN at 14 from a peasant background and has spent almost his entire life as a militant
Huge protests against neoliberalism have rocked Colombia since 2019
Photo released to mark International Womens Day 2020 by the ELN women’s section
The ELN’s mediator of peace negotiations, Juan Carlos Cuellar, an urban-based activist affiliated with Colombia’s labour movement, was arrested in December 2019
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