Today (July 19), the Colombian army dismantled two cocaine processing laboratories in Norte de Santander controlled by the ELN. The facilities were located in Cucuta and Pamlontia, and a total of 275 kilos of cocaine were recovered during the operation.
Five days earlier, the authorities uncovered two similar laboratories – one in Valle de Aburra operated by the Julio César Vargas Torres Substructure of the Clan del Golfo and the other an ELN lab in Tibu.
These seizures are the latest in a series of cocaine laboratories the army identified and dismantled in 2025. On June 9, a cocaine lab was discovered in La Mutis and on March 18, the army destroyed an ELN lab in Sardinata.
In February, the president’s office announced that the Ministry of Defense had destroyed 36 clandestine facilities for processing coca paste and nine laboratories for processing cocaine hydrochloride. As part of the operations, the army arrested 110 people and rescued 30 minors. The operations targeted the ELN and the 33rd Front.
All of these cocaine lab operations have taken place in one region – Catatumbo. Located on the border with Venezuela, the region is a nexus for trafficking networks that carry narcotics from Colombia into Venezuela and migrants in the other direction.
Catatumbo is one of the most strategic regions for the cocaine trade in Colombia, home to 30,000 hectares of coca plantations (12% of the total in the country).
Historically, the region was controlled by the EPL and the FARC. With the 2016 peace accords, the FARC demobilized and left a power vacuum, which was filled by the ELN. As certain FARC factions rearmed (especially the 33rd Front), competition grew for control of the region.
In 2019, FARC dissident groups and the ELN entered into a power-sharing arrangement, partly motivated by a desire to consolidate control of territory in the face of Clan del Golfo expansions. This agreement held until relatively recently.
With the decline of the FARC’s presence in the region, the ELN increasingly moved not only into control of the trafficking routes but also into cocaine processing, hence the large number of ELN-operated laboratories.
The focus of cocaine production in Catatumbo specifically is partly due to a process of “clustering,” wherein armed groups are increasingly staging coca production, processing, and trafficking in the same location as a way of reducing operational costs.
Following the start of the Gustavo Petro administration in Colombia, the ELN entered into negotiations as part of the “Paz Total” program, intended to negotiate demobilizations with Colombia’s largest criminal groups.
But these negotiations involved ceasefires that allowed the 33rd Front of the FARC dissidents to expand their territorial base in the region. This threatened the balance of power that had been previously acceptable to both parties.
In January of this year, the ELN launched a targeted campaign of attacks against FARC dissidents in eight different municipalities. The escalation of violence has created political pressure for the government to increase its presence in the region.
On June 30th, Admiral Francisco Cubides confirmed that 16,000 additional troops are being deployed across six critical regions, including Catatumbo. This is in addition to the 5,000 troops that had already been sent to the region in January.
As a result, there have been many more drug lab seizures in the past few months than we have seen previously.
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