NATIONAL URBAN WAR FRONT COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF CAMILO TORRES RESTREPO NATIONAL LIBERATION ARMY
The FGUN editorial titled “Abril Insurgente y Popular”, dated April 2025 and issued by the Urban War Front of Colombia’s ELN, revives historical memory to justify and propagate its urban insurgency agenda under the banner of popular struggle. It intentionally draws a line from the 1948 assassination of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán through the 2021 protests to its present-day operations. This narrative constructs a continuous thread of popular betrayal and uprising, positioning the ELN as the inheritor of unresolved national grievances and the executor of revolutionary justice.
The editorial opens with an appeal to collective identity and historical trauma. It invokes the April 9, 1948 riots that followed Gaitán’s assassination as a foundational event for revolutionary memory, spotlighting the short-lived Barranca Commune as a moment of unfulfilled utopia. The text casts this moment as not just a rebellion but a moment of organized self-determination by workers, students, anarchists, and socialists who collectively formed a revolutionary council. The reference to the Commune mimics Soviet narratives of workers’ councils and revolutionary committees and indicates a deliberate ideological framing that draws from Marxist-Leninist revolutionary tradition.
The editorial builds a continuity that erases decades of political complexity and reframes mass protests as linear steps in a revolutionary continuum vy linking the 1948 uprising to the 2021 protests. The 2021 protests, sparked by unpopular tax reforms under President Iván Duque and marked by significant youth and urban participation, are repackaged as further proof of the people’s revolutionary impulse. The ELN editorial seizes this to promote the idea that any legitimate resistance must be class-led and rooted in popular assemblies, “first lines,” and urban resistance frameworks.
The editorial condemns President Gustavo Petro’s administration as a co-opted force, suggesting that the state—even under a former guerrilla—remains an oppressive structure that betrays popular movements. This is a strategic maneuver. It discredits left-leaning reformist politics and elevates revolutionary violence as the only authentic pathway to justice. The ELN casts Petro as an instrument of continuity, not rupture, aligning him with the historical liberal and conservative oligarchy it claims has always betrayed Colombia’s working class.
On page two, the editorial escalates its narrative by targeting the “systematic breach of agreements” in Colombia’s peace processes, asserting that betrayals of guerrilla movements and progressive reforms are not exceptions but the norm. It uses this claim to justify its refusal to demobilize or trust institutional processes. The piece accuses the state of manipulating agreements through violence and false promises, painting all prior and current peace efforts as deceitful tactics meant to neutralize popular resistance. This rhetoric borrows heavily from Leninist interpretations of state power, which hold that any engagement with bourgeois democracy inevitably results in counterrevolution.
The document weaponizes this narrative by condemning “progressive” elements who participate in institutional politics. It argues that such individuals wear the mask of the people while secretly working against them. This is an old insurgent tactic used to create divisions between reformists and revolutionaries, driving a wedge between legal political opposition and armed insurgency while seeking to monopolize legitimacy.
The closing paragraphs issue a call to recognize and revive historical resistance. The editorial romanticizes past uprisings and commits to continuing the struggle through armed confrontation. It brands the Colombian state as structurally violent, unjust, and irredeemable. This binary logic removes any space for democratic transformation or peaceful political evolution. It positions violence and insurgency not as one option, but as the only morally acceptable response to systemic injustice.
The editorial must be interpreted through the lens of insurgent information warfare. It constructs a populist revolutionary narrative designed to mobilize urban youth, discredit institutional leftism, and prepare the ideological ground for ongoing or upcoming ELN operations in Colombian cities. It retools history to serve present mobilization needs while promoting distrust of all peace frameworks. The explicit rejection of Petro and his “progressive” administration signals that the ELN views current reforms as a threat to its revolutionary monopoly, requiring renewed political warfare.
The timing of the message—April 2025—is likely not coincidental. It was released near the anniversary of Gaitán’s assassination and during the traditional protest cycle in Colombia. The editorial exploits this period to evoke heightened emotions and historical grievances, reframing them as recruitment drivers. The invocation of the “Poder Popular” and references to assemblies, first lines, and autonomous zones suggest a strategy aimed at activating urban cells or re-energizing disillusioned protest factions under the ELN banner.
The text blends historical revisionism, ideological propaganda, and strategic messaging into a single narrative product. It targets collective memory, distrust of state institutions, and frustration with unmet expectations under Petro’s presidency to argue that armed struggle remains legitimate and necessary. It uses cultural, emotional, and political references as weapons of influence, aiming to recode public perception of resistance through the lens of the ELN’s revolutionary myth.
