Seuxis Pausias Hernández Solarte, more commonly known as Jesús Santrich (31 July 1967 – 17 May 2021), was a guerrilla leader of the

Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People's Army (, FARC–EP or FARC) was a Marxist–Leninist Guerrilla warfare, guerrilla group involved in the continuing Colombian conflict starting in 1964. The FARC-EP was officially founded in ...

–People's Army (FARC–EP). He was a member of the

Chamber of Representatives of Colombia The Chamber of Representatives (Spanish: ''Cámara de Representantes'') is the lower house of the Congress of Colombia. It has 172 members elected to four-year terms. Electoral system According to the Colombian Constitution, the Chamber of ...

until August 2019 and was the FARC's delegate in the

Colombian peace process The Colombian peace process refers to the negotiations between the Government of Colombia under President Juan Manuel Santos and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC–EP) aimed at ending the decades-long Colombian conflict. Th ...

Havana Havana (; ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center.Communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

youth organization as a teenager and studied Social Sciences at the University of Atlántico. He was wanted by the US Government on allegations of

drug trafficking A drug is any chemical substance other than a nutrient or an essential dietary ingredient, which, when administered to a living organism, produces a biological effect. Consumption of drugs can be via inhalation, injection, smoking, ingestion, ...

, carried out six months after the peace process. A

Truth Commission A truth commission, also known as a truth and reconciliation commission or truth and justice commission, is an official body tasked with discovering and revealing past wrongdoing by a government (or, depending on the circumstances, non-state ac ...

report released in 2022 showed that the charges against Jesús Santrich and his arrest were a plot by the

DEA The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is a United States federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Justice tasked with combating illicit drug trafficking and distribution within the U.S. It is the lead agency for domes ...

and Colombian Attorney General Néstor Humberto Martínez to jeopardize the

, incite the FARC to take up arms again, and send a message to the public that the peace agreement had failed.

Death

Santrich was assassinated on 17 May 2021 during a shooting in

Venezuela Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many Federal Dependencies of Venezuela, islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It com ...

. Five other people died in the incident. Following his death several versions were put forward by the media on who was responsible, with some blaming mercenaries, the

Venezuelan National Guard The Bolivarian National Guard of Venezuela ( - GNB), is a gendarmerie component of the National Bolivarian Armed Forces of Venezuela, National Armed Forces of Venezuela. The national guard can serve as gendarmerie, perform civil defense roles, or ...

and the FARC blaming Colombian commandos illegally operating in Venezuela.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Santrich, Jesús Members of FARC 1967 births 2021 deaths Members of the Chamber of Representatives of Colombia Deaths by firearm in Venezuela Colombian people murdered abroad