Communism in Colombia
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The history of Communism in Colombia goes back as far as the 1920s and has its roots in the idealism of the Russian October Revolution. Today the guerrilla groups, self-proclaimed as communists, state that they want to seize state power in Colombia by violent means, and the organizations such as Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia the People's Army (FARC-EP) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) still continue their four decades old war with the United States backed Colombian government. Many social science experts around the world who have studied the historical events in Colombia suggest the influence and intervention, as in many other South American countries, of the United States of America and of the former Soviet Union to stop or enhance, given the case, of Communism in Colombia. Some important characters in the history of communism in Colombia are Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, Jaime Pardo Leal, Carlos Pizarro León-Gómez, Bernardo Jaramillo Ossa, and Jaime Bateman Cayón, among others. Many of these figures were persecuted or eventually assassinated under different circumstances. According to some critics, evidence of the involvement of members of the Colombian Army and of United States organizations like the CIA was present in several of the cases. Currently, violent Guerrilla leaders like the founder of the FARC, Jacobo Arenas, or his successor, Manuel Marulanda Velez, self-proclaimed as "Communists", are involved in kidnapping, drug smuggling, and the killing of many innocent Colombian people, destroying the possibilities of establishing a "Communist State" in Colombia that would turn in fact into a dictatorial narco-state, as has happened in the areas controlled by the FARC today. The popularity of these Guerrilla groups in Colombia is minimal, but they force by violent means peasants in the Colombian country side who are chronically underserved by successive Colombian governments to work for them as soldiers or to cultivate drugs.
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[edit] Historical Background
In July 1925 the Colombian government expelled Silvestre Savitsky for teaching and spreading the doctrine of Communism in Colombian society. There were several bombs found in February 1928 and the Communists were blamed for plotting to blow up various private and public buildings on May 1, 1928 which is celebrated as Labor Day. Several Communist leaders were blamed for the plot such as Tomás Uribe Márquez who visited Russia 18 months before the incident. Other popular communists who were arrested for involvement in the plot were María Cano and Torres Giraldo. After this incident the press released news about some similar types of incidents happening through out the country. This was the starting point in Colombian history of awareness of the Communists and their activities among the society and the government of Colombia.
[edit] The Banana Workers Massacre (1928-29)
Also known as the Santa Marta Massacre. The United Fruit Company (UFCO) was formed on March 30, 1899 in Boston, Massachusetts as a multi-national company to export fruit such as bananas and pineapples mainly from Latin American banana-growing countries to United States and Europe. The UFCO heavily influenced internal politics of the so-called banana republics in Latin America.
UFCO workers on banana plantations in Colombia organized a labor strike in December 1928. The national labor union leaders Carlos Mahecha and Maria Cano who traveled to the plantations to organize the strikes demanded that the workers be given written work contracts, that they be obligated to work no more than eight hours per day and six days per week, and that the company stop the use of “food coupons” or scrip. The union leaders were protesting at Santa Marta, the capital of the Magdalena department in the north of the country. The ruling Conservative government's President Miguel Abadia Mendez sent troops led by General Carlos Cortés Vargas to capture the strike leaders, to send them to the prison at Cartagena, and to send additional troops to protect the economic interests of the United Fruit Company. Many United States citizens working for the United Fruit Company lived in the area around Santa Marta and U.S. warships carrying troops were on the way to Colombia to protect U.S. citizens and property. The Colombian army also opened fire on people who gathered at the main plaza of the city Ciénaga to support the strikers.
The popular Liberal Party leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán used the term "La Masacre de las Bananeras" to raise opposition among Colombian society against the massacre. There were around 1,500 people killed by the troops. After the massacre reports from the scene told of human skeletons and skulls freely displayed with bunches of bananas. The Liberal Party press criticized the brutality of the methods used to break the strike by the United States influenced Colombian government.
[edit] The Liberal Revolution (1930-45)
The Liberals came into power in 1930 under the leadership of Enrique Olaya Herrera and the presidency of Alfonso López Pumarejo (1934–38). The people's uprising began after the UFCO banana workers massacre eventually brought the Liberals into power. The Colombian Communists also supported the Liberals and their social and economic issues brought into consideration by the government and acted positively. The Russian October Revolution was also greatly influenced to the victory of Liberals in Colombia.
There were many social reforms happened in their ruling period of 15 years and called it as “Revolution on the March”. The 1936 constitutional amendments gave the government to influence the privately owned economic interests. The rights of the labors were established such as 8 hours per day, 6 days per week and the pre-informed work strike. The Liberal government influenced by the communists thought the people's education is the most significant factor when taken into the consideration on every angle and they taken it into the government control from the influence of the Catholic church. The petroleum industry is the wealth of the Colombians and they have right to get the benefit and they decided to taken the industry into the government control also the Colombian people were given the first preference of the workers in the industry. The low cost housing projects were launched for the low income labor class people. The inter departmental custom barriers were put into the trading. The other important economic factor was land reforms. The government was taken the excess land from the private land owners and distributed among the poor peasant people which increases the economic level of them and also increased the production of the agricultural sector.
The social revolution of the Communist influenced Liberals in Colombia could last only around 15 years. The rich community of the country influenced by the United States and their intelligence agency CIA planned a conspiracy to overthrow the government. The second term of the president Alfonso López Pumarejo (1942–46) not completed due to the political pressure against him from several areas of the political field forced him to resigned his presidency. Then the beginning of the year 1946 the Conservatives came into power when the popular Jorge Eliécer Gaitán failed in his bid to become the Liberal party candidate, ran instead as an independent, thereby splitting the liberal vote and giving victory to Conservative candidate Mariano Ospina Perez (Mariano Ospina Perez 565,939 votes, Gabriel Turbay 441,199 votes, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán 358,957 votes).
[edit] The Bogotazo - 1948
After taking the state power from Liberals in 1946, the Conservatives began to turned back the social revolution into the pre-1930s with the advice and support from the United States. The popular Liberal Party leader Dr. Jorge Eliécer Gaitán who represents the left wing of the party led the National Left-wing Revolutionary Union or UNIR (Unión de Izquierda Revolucionaria) and they organized protest movements against the Conservatives reform policies which started a tension between the two parties.
The Jorge Gaitan was shot and killed about 01:15 p.m. on April 9, 1948 at Carrera Septima and Jimenez de Quesada in central Bogotá while the 9th Pan-American Conference started under the leadership of U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall. The conference was organized to achieve the two major goals, the first one was to fight against the Communism in the American continent and the second one was to form the Organization of American States (OAS) to strengthen the United States economic and political influence through out the region.
After the death of Dr. Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, riots were started in Bogotá, the angry mob killed his murderer Juan Roa Sierra and dragged his body in the streets of the way to presidential palace and hanged it publicly. The rioteers took control of all the national radio stations in the city of Bogotá and the announcements were delivered against the conservative government. There were some bridges also blown up and it caused lack of food supply into the city. The airfields at Honda, Cartago, Barrancabermeja and Turbo also took control by the people. The rioters' slogan was Yankee imperialism wants to convert us into military and economic colonies, and we must fight in defense of Colombian society.
[edit] Popular Communists of Colombia
[edit] Jorge Eliécer Gaitán
See main article : Jorge Eliécer Gaitán
Dr. Jorge Eliécer Gaitán was a politician and a leader of a populist movement in Colombia also a member of the Liberal Party's pro-communist faction and was born on January 23, 1898. He attained a degree in law in 1924 and later became a professor in the National University of Colombia. In 1926 he completed a doctorate in jurisprudence in Italy at the Royal University of Rome. He was assassinated during his campaign for Presidential in April 9, 1948.
He started his political career in 1919 when participating to a protest movement against president Marco Fidel Suarez. He supported the banana workers strike in 1928-29 and criticized the human rights violations done by the Colombian army to please the U.S. business community and the U.S. government which rises his popularity through out the country as well as Latin America. He started the "Unión Izquierdista Revolucionaria" ("Leftist Revolutionary Union"), or UNIR in 1933 as a faction of a Liberal Party. He was selected as a mayor of Bogotá in June 1936 and organized several social development programs during the position holding of eight months time. He also held the positions as an Education Minister in 1940 and Labor Minister in 1943-44 under the Liberal Party rule.
At the early stages of the workers struggle that the Communist Party of Colombia (PCC) do not had very good understanding with him and each parties criticized themselves, but after the Liberal Party rule the communists understood his dedication and built a strong relationship with him. He became the leader of the Colombian Liberal Party in 1947 and his supporters gained the majority of the Colombian Congress. The Liberal Party decided to present him as a party's single candidate for late 1949 presidential elections.
He was killed on the day which the 9th Pan-American Conference started under the leadership of George Marshall the U.S. Secretary of Sate to fight against the communism in American continent and the forming of the Organization of American States (OAS). The Latin American Youth Congress also taking place at the capital Bogotá this day and the young Fidel Castro also participated to the event. Castro also had an appointment to meet Gaitan this day. His assassination caused for a riot in Bogotá known as Bogotazo (shaking Bogotá).
Some blamed the communists about his assassination but the killer Juan Roa Sierra also killed by the angry mob prevented further investigation of the murder. The United States intelligence agency CIA stated him as a dangerous political figure in Colombia of their official intelligence reports.
[edit] Jacobo Arenas
See main article : Jacobo Arenas
Jacobo Arenas (died August 10, 1990) was the "nom de guerre" of Luis Morantes, a founder and ideological leader of the FARC-EP ("Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia - Ejercito del Pueblo"). He spent most of his life involving himself in the activities of Marxist revolution in Colombia since the 1960s. During this time, he mostly lived in the mountains, jungles and remote villages, having to make several sacrifices and enduring hardships. He was also responsible for implementing socialism in a communist enclave called "Marquetalia Republic" at Tolima department Colombia, which was attacked and destroyed by the U.S. backed Colombian army in May 1964 and the offensive called "Operation Marquetalia" was the final phase of the Plan LAZO (Latin American Security Operation) of the John F. Kennedy government's plan to stopping of the communism in Latin America. He was also one of the FARC figures involved in the organization and creation of the Patriotic Union political party in 1985. He was fluent in several languages other than his native Spanish, including English and Russian. There are many communists inside and out side Latin America see his character as similar to Karl Marx, V.I. Lenin, Mao Zedong and Che Guevara.
After the fall of Marquetalia and the formation of the FARC in 1964 (He later wrote a book called "Diario de la resistencia de Marquetalia" or "Marquetalia Diary" in 1972, the book which includes a chronicle of the events of the fight between the guerrilla fighters and the soldiers of the Colombian army brigade), the ideas of Che Guevara and the Cuban revolution influenced Jacobo Arenas in his work as the ideological leader of the group. The death of Che Guevara in October 1967 was interpreted by the FARC as a display of revolutionary sacrifice, one that was held as an example by Jacobo Arenas and other guerrilla ideological figures. As an intellectual cadre, Arenas organized a largescale educational programs to educate the early FARC guerilla fighters, as most came from low income peasant families with limited previous educational background. He had studied Marxist-Leninist theory and with extensive knowledge of Communism he was able to improve the organization structure of the guerrilla group in order to better suit a revolutionary movement. An important subject that Jacobo Arenas taught to the FARC cadres was Anthropology, which intended to give them a suitable attitude for the "future socialist state of Colombia and the Communist world, which Karl Marx described is not a dream, it will become true one day". Anthropology was taught in lower to roughly equivalent to college level grades in FARC schools in different forms. Most of the guerillas study in lower level grades which taught this subject in a summarised form, but in the higher grades the teachings are very in depth.
Throughout the life of Jacobo Arenas, before and after the formation of the FARC, he considered matters of high importance, including what Marxists usually call the "imperialist threat" that the United States of America allegedly represents to Latin America, in several ways. The major aspect of the threat would be the "economic Threat". According to the view of Arenas and others, as multinational investors from the United States began to take over local businesses, they initially gained some profits and benefits, but through them they later gradually increased their economic influence in a region located very close to the United States. Arenas stated that the United States has achieved the gaining of political influence in Latin America through its economic policies, which permits it to better control the regional economy. He also understood the problems relating to the women in Colombia as well as in Latin America, where socio-economic and educational defiencies exist, such as the issue of relatively limited coverage of available programs for free primary education and the generally expensive and restricted nature of higher education.
He played an important role in key FARC financial matters at this point. It is argued that he considered the example of North Korea as particularly useful. Kim Il Sung had participated in the Korean resistance against the Japanese Empire in the early 1920s, eventually managing to overcome them in 1945. Kim Il Sung thus established a socialist state of North Korea, which to several Western analysts was a sort of "Secret State" or "Stalinist State". The term "secret state" was introduced as a way of describing that North Korea's economy and military build-up was mostly done by its own strength with relatively limited help from outside (coming from the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, for example). This would mean that North Korea's survival throughout the Cold War demonstrated that a policy of "standing on its own feet" was the only way to adapt to changing situations in the outside world.
Arenas is credited with allegedly being the main figure behind the FARC's 1982 Seventh Guerrilla Conference and a contemporary "Strategic Plan", which would have outlined a series of goals and steps that would organize the FARC into an "Army of the People" (the initials "EP", Ejército del Pueblo, were adopted during this Conference) capable of potentially seizing power sometime in the 1990s, explicitly combining both the illegal and legal forms of struggle (organically implementing a traditional Marxist and Communist strategy termed "the combination of all forms of struggle"), as well as the political and the military aspects of their group. Many U.S. and other military experts argue that Manuel Marulanda Velez, as a veteran guerilla fighter and as an excellent commander for four decades, heads perhaps the most capable and dangerous Marxist guerilla organization in the world. Marulanda is very often referred to as "Sureshot" ("Tirofijo"), because of a reputation for using firearms very accurately during his earlier years as an insurgent. For some of those analysts, an allegedly problematic aspect in Marulanda's profile concerns the fact that he has limited educational background, due to the poor economic conditions that his family and many others had to face when growing up in rural Colombia. Jacobo Arenas, on the other hand, had political and ideological education as a communist intellectual, thus it is believed that he realized that FARC's initial status was not up to the necessary standards needed to properly fight a Colombian Army that could count on the aid of the United States from time to time.
Within the terms of a 1984 declaration of ceasefire with the Belisario Betancur government, the FARC officially formed the Patriotic Union (Colombia) (UP) in 1985. This political party was originally inspired and unofficially led by Manuel Marulanda's longtime friend and then FARC's second-in-command, Jacobo Arenas, who was also initially expected to run as the UP's presidential candidate for the 1986 presidential race, while still remaining an active FARC member in the meanwhile.
Arenas reached the conclusion that foreign relations must use different terms than those used in real life, day to day relations between individuals. The term "enemy" can be used to show a high level of policy differences between two countries, and the term "friend" to show the opposite (a low level). However, in this scenario, most of the individual citizens of two different countries wouldn't fit the previous framework of "friends" and "enemies", but rather they would simply tend to coexist in peace. Arenas would have explained this by using the following analogy: "the people of the world belong to different races, cultures, religions, with biological differences such as complexion of skin, hair and etc, height and weight, but the biological structure is same as all of them have red blood".
The history of U.S. positions and reactions regarding Jacobo Arenas and the FARC goes back to the year 1959 when it is allegedly that team of CIA agents landed near the Marquetalia area to execute an intelligence mission regarding the leftist guerillas present there. It is believed by FARC and its supporters that, from that day onwards, the CIA and U.S. Southern Command began preparing counteroperational plans to defeat guerillas in Colombia, including Jacobo Arenas and his FARC taught cadres. From the perspective of the previously mentioned sectors, it is possible to potentially view Colombia as a place where Socialist revolution will eventually triumph and the U.S. will lose their control and influence over the entire region of Latin America.
Arenas is credited by analysts with helping to lay the foundation for the FARC's organizational structure and promoting its later development into what is usually considered as one of the strongest and longest lasting Marxist guerrilla movements in the world. To implement the policy of "standing steadily", he taught them in several areas, such as Anthropology, international military law and counter techniques for any changing situation.
The death of Jacobo Arenas on August 10, 1990 was considered a major blow to the FARC, as he was one of the persons responsible for transforming the FARC from a small guerilla force to a belligerent rebel army. After his death the FARC formed a mobile column named "Jacobo Arenas Front" to honor him.
[edit] Communist Organizations of Colombia
[edit] National Liberation Army (ELN)
See main article : National Liberation Army (Colombia)
The Ejército de Liberación Nacional (usually abbreviated to ELN), or National Liberation Army, is a revolutionary, Marxist, guerrilla group that has been operating in several regions of Colombia since 1964. The triumph of the Cuban revolution and the U.S. aided Colombian army's military offensive in Tolima department (Operation Marquetalia) causes the formation of the group, for objective of establishing a Cuban style socialist state in Colombia. The year 2005 it is estimated strength of the group between 4,000 to 5,000 armed fighters.
The group was originally founded by Cuban-trained Fabio Vásquez Castaño who along with his brother and other relatives initially held important positions within the organization. The outspoken Father Camilo Torres Restrepo (a well-known university professor of egalitarian and eventually Marxist leanings who was highly critical of Colombia's historically unfair income distribution, named after a revolutionary figure in Colombia's late colonial history), was attracted to the radical new ideas of Liberation Theology and joined the group with the intent of putting them into practice inside a revolutionary environment. Torres himself died shortly after joining the ELN during his first combat, but he remained as an important symbol both for the group as a whole and to other like-minded priests who gradually followed his example, most from relatively low positions in the Catholic Church's structure. After suffering both internal crisis and military defeat in the early 1970s, it was Father Manuel Pérez alias "El Cura Pérez" ("Pérez the Priest") from Spain, who eventually assumed joint-leadership of the group along with current leader Nicolás Rodríguez Bautista, alias "Gabino", and presided over the ELN as one of its most recognized figures from the late 1970s until he died of hepatitis in 1998.
It has been considered that Manuel Pérez had a large role in giving ultimate shape to the ELN's ideology, which has traditionally been considered as a mixture of Cuban revolutionary theory with extreme liberation theology, calling for a Christian and Communist solution to Colombia's problems of corruption, poverty, child prostitusion and political exclusion, through the use of guerrilla activity, conventional warfare and also what has been termed as terrorist action by the Colombian and U.S. governments. Observers have commented that, since the death of Manuel Pérez, the movement may arguably have begun to slowly lose focus regarding many of its earlier concerns, such as the necessary unity of revolutionary activity with Christian and social action, in order to win over the population to their cause. The ELN guerrillas were seriously crippled by the Anorí operation carried out by the Colombian military from 1973 to 1974, but managed to reconstitute themselves and escape destruction, in part due to the government of Alfonso López Michelsen allowing them to escape encirclement, hoping to initiate a peace process with the group. The ELN survived and managed to sustain itself through the extortion of private and foreign oil companies, including several of German origin, large-scale kidnapping and, to a lesser degree, with indirect profits from the drug trade.
Some sectors within the ELN have apparently been hit hard both by the AUC right wing paramilitaries and, more recently, the different military offensives initiated under the Uribe administration, which has been the basis for reductions in estimates of its currently available manpower. There were some instances that the joint forces of ELN and FARC attacked the paramilitary bases severely and gained control of their territory. There were some talks between the ELN and FARC began in year 2004 to form a political alliance against the president Alvaro Uribe's pro-U.S. administration.
The peace moves started during the early days of the Álvaro Uribe Vélez government but eventually were severed, neither party being fully trusting of the other. Only recently, in mid-2004, have the ELN and the government began to make a small series of moves that, with the announced mediation of the Vicente Fox government of Mexico, may potentially lead to another round of at least exploratory talks. The second half of the year 2005 the governments of Cuba and Venezuela announced that they would provide facilities for the peace talks between the two parties.
[edit] Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People's Army (FARC-EP)
See main article : Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
The Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo ("Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People's Army", or FARC-EP) is the Colombia's oldest, largest, most capable and well equipped marxist guerrilla group which was established in 1964, after the U.S. supported Colombian army's massive military offensive named "Operation Marquetalia" launched to destroy the communist enclave called as "Marquetalia Republic". The FARC's force strength is usually estimated to be at around 18,000 to 20,000 men in 2005, and more than 80 fronts are organized into seven main operational regions and the “block” is the name given to each FARC military command inside each "main operational region". Their ultimate goal is to increase the force strength up to 30,000 to launch a large scale military offensive throughout the country to capture the state power for the purpose of establishing a socialist state like Cuba. They also maintain a presence in approximately 35 to 40% of Colombia's territory, mostly in the jungles of the southeast and the plains at the base of the Andes mountains. The FARC-EP is classified as a terrorist group by the United States and their supporting countries.
The history behind the formation of the organization was roughly from 1949 to 1964, during the "La Violencia" period of Colombian history, the FARC's precursor was a small Communist guerrilla band which usually engaged in "hit and run" warfare against their enemies and members of local Colombian security forces, when not implementing necessary activities for its self-defense from rival irregular groups. The group answered only to representatives of the Colombian Communist Party (PCC), which provided political cadres, recruits and small donations as support. Because of the period's political turmoil, the Colombian government initially was unaware of the activities of this group of rebels. Towards the end of the period the group had settled in the Marquetalia area inside the Tolima department together with some of the fighters' family members, continuing to weapons and occasionally establishing a form of defensive perimeter. The construction of a form of primitive "commune" was attempted in practice, trying to organize an autonomous settlement under collective Communist ideals, combining military concerns with daily activities. After the May 1964 Colombian Army attack, most the rebels in Marquetalia scattered, soon gathering under a new "Southern Bloc" (Bloque Sur) guerrilla unit, which reinitiated "hit and run" attacks and once again implemented a more offensive posture. In 1966, the FARC was formally created as a slightly enlargened guerrilla entity (estimated at a total of 350 members divided in six guerrilla fronts) that continued to engage in this type of operations, additionally placing a greater political emphasis in openly revolutionary aims. In hope of negotiating a peace settlement, on November 7, 1998, President Andrés Pastrana Arango granted FARC a 42,000 km² safe haven, centered around the San Vicente del Caguan settlement, which was the FARC-EP condition for beginning peace talks. The peace process with the government continued at a slow pace for three years during which the BBC and other news organizations reported that the FARC-EP also used the safe haven to import arms, export drugs, recruit minors, and build up their military. After a series of high-profile actions, including the kidnapping of presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt (who was traveling in guerrilla territory) and other political figures, Pastrana ended the peace talks in February 2002 and ordered the armed forces to start retaking the FARC-controlled zone after a 48-hour respite that had been previously agreed to with the rebel group.
After these developments, eventually many U.S. and other military experts considered that the FARC's Manuel Marulanda Velez, as a veteran guerilla fighter and as an efficient commander for four decades, was able to lead perhaps the most capable and dangerous Marxist guerilla organization in the world. Marulanda is very often referred to as "Sureshot" ("Tirofijo"), because of a reputation for using firearms very accurately during his earlier years as an insurgent. For some of those analysts, an allegedly problematic aspect in Marulanda's profile concerns the fact that he has limited educational background, due to the poor economic conditions that his family and many others had to face when growing up in rural Colombia. Jacobo Arenas, on the other hand, as the FARC's main ideologue, had political and ideological education as a communist intellectual, thus it is believed that he realized that FARC's initial status was not up to the necessary standards needed to properly fight a Colombian Army that could count on the aid of the United States from time to time.
The FARC-EP ideologue Jacobo Arenas was allegedly the main figure behind the FARC's 1982 Seventh Guerrilla Conference and a contemporary "Strategic Plan", which would have outlined a series of goals and steps that would organize the FARC into an "Army of the People" (the initials "EP", Ejército del Pueblo, were adopted during this Conference) capable of potentially seizing power sometime in the 1990s, explicitly combining both the illegal and legal forms of struggle (organically implementing a traditional Marxist and Communist strategy termed "the combination of all forms of struggle"), as well as the political and the military aspects of their group. The guidance of Jacobo Arenas and Manuel Marulanda Velez or "Sureshot" ("Tirofijo"), the Seventh Guerrilla Conference was a turning point in the FARC's struggle, as it provided them with the opportunity to finetune their policies and plans in order for them to build their desired socialist state in the future. The FARC's Conferences, as seen by Marxists and Leninists, can be interpreted as similar to the International conferences previously held in Europe with the participation of Karl Marx, Fredrick Engels, V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky.
According to internal regulations, every member of the FARC-EP's military forces has to take a vow in which they formally assume the compromise of fighting to establish "social justice" in Colombia. It is considered by FARC members that the necessary path to achieve this goal is through Marxism and Leninism, additionally influenced by the ideas of the Cuban Revolution and Che Guevara. The symbol in the center of the FARC-EP flag is a book and two rifles in the middle of a map of Colombia, which transmits the message "learn and fight for Colombia", as a sign of the importance ideological education has for the FARC-EP. The three colors in the background are yellow, blue and red, common to the flags of Ecuador, Venezuela and Colombia in northern Latin America. These colors also indicate the region's shared past and identity under Bolivar's Greater Colombia. The FARC as an organization also reserves a place for women fighters. According to the FARC, they invite all the Colombian women to join in what they consider as their struggle against the injustices of society. In May 1964, there were only two female fighters in the FARC's precursor rebel group, but now it is believed by some analysts that women may make up a third of the FARC's fighters. Internal FARC regulations state that the status of women in FARC is considered to be equal to that of men, and that women can be present in all units, from small squads to entire fronts. Women usually are not grouped together in specific units, as was the case in other countries, and they can also participate in all military operations.
After the end of the 1980s, the FARC has widely adopted as its most reliable weapon the Russian made AK-47 assault rifle. The AK-47 rifle is famous wordwide as employed by members of the Vietnamese guerrillas, when they were fighting the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and the United States Army. According to many guerillas, the AK-47 is easy to use, as sometimes it can be hidden in water or mud, and after a cleaning it usually works without any trouble (such as ammunition jamming). The Spetsnaz was seen as an example by FARC, which tried to adapt some of its methods and activities to suit its different conditions. Historically, the existence of Spetsnaz ("special operation forces" in Russian) units in the USSR infantry came to be widely known in the 1980s. The history of the Spetsnaz goes back to World War II, as partisans played a significant role inside Nazi controlled territories in the occupied Soviet Union, and later they changed their name to Spetsnaz. According to military experts, the Spetsnaz could be considered as the best elite force in world during the existence of the Soviet Union. It is rumored that sometimes NATO members in Western Europe were terrorized when they heard news of Spetsnaz infiltrations in their own countries. NATO forces were always highly aware about the existence of Spetsnaz infiltrations and sometimes kept barriers to check on the vehicles and people in Western European countries in order to identify spies and foreign operatives. The Spetsnaz was neglected by the Russian government after the fall of the Soviet Union, though now the new Russian president Vladimir Putin has regrouped all the Spetsnaz units and raised their salaries.
Most of the FARC's notable multi-front attacks occurred between 1996 and 1998, attacks which prompted the Colombian military to pause to restructure itself, while Samper administration decided to abandon many isolated rural outposts and to create fortified strongholds closer to department capitals. Similar FARC operations were carried out even after that period, up to the year 2000, though less frequently, due to the increasing gradual adaptation of the Colombian military to such tactics after heavy internal reforms were made, and later on after additional U.S. aid for the government's security forces began to arrive. President Uribe launched a new offensive against the FARC, with U.S. aid and support, divided into two elements: a general security strategy known as "democratic security" (announced 2003), and a new military operation known as Plan Patriota (2004 to date), using about 18,000 soldiers in an attack against the FARC's historical heartland in the south/southeast of Colombia, meant to kill or capture its main leaders. In early 2005, the FARC launched what has been interpreted as their active response to Alvaro Uribe's security strategy and to Plan Patriota, apparently adopting a new style of operations, in particular near the southwest of Colombia. The FARC allegedly would have previously implemented what was later called "Plan Resistencia" in order to endure Plan Patriota's continuing effects, by withdrawing into the jungle and executing a temporary halt in its larger scale attacks. The FARC-EP believe that Plan Patriota has been a failure, as mentioned in some of their communiqués.
According to the FARC-EP and its supporters, a U.S. intelligence team would have landed in Marquetalia in 1959, producing a report about the area's Communist activities. From the FARC's perspective, a triangle made up of the CIA, the Pentagon and the U.S. Southern Command have been working to stop their activities since that date. They point out that one of the main U.S. strategies in the Colombian war and worldwide is psychological warfare, which intends to use various methods to cultivate fear among the leftist rebels. The CIA's psychological warfare department would thus have been behind an alleged use of Napalm bombs in Marquetalia during May 1964. Other U.S. strategies have been implemented since then which, as interpreted and claimed by the FARC, would have been a failure. The U.S. Army's 7th Special Forces Group - headquartered at Fort Bragg, NC. 7th Group has responsibility for Latin and South America (Ref: United States Army Special Forces). High ranking military officers from the U.S. Southern Command have visited Colombia regularly to check up on the state of the situation and, allegedly, also to revise existing counter narcotics and military plans. The U.S. military intelligence unit stationed in Colombia would have to send daily situation reports to the Pentagon and to the U.S. Southern Command, including among them reports on the activities of all the armed groups existing in Colombia. The U.S. Congress increased the caps for military and civilian contractors in Colombia to 800 and 600 in 2004, both up from 400 each. It is a common claim by the FARC and by sectors close to it that the U.S. is considering to increase its direct involvement in the Colombian war to levels seen in Vietnam, though there is no consensus among analysts as to that claim. U.S. military experts and advisors have been analyzing military activities in Iraq and in Afghanistan, suggesting the implementation of any lessons learned in Colombia, and vice versa.
[edit] See also
- Colombian Communist Party
- Manuel Marulanda
- Marquetalia Republic
- Military History of the FARC-EP
- Jorge Eliécer Gaitán
- Jacobo Arenas
- National Liberation Army (ELN)
- Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-EP)
- Socio-economic Structure of the FARC-EP
[edit] External links
[edit] References
- Dance of the Millions: Military Rule and the Social Revolution in Colombia : 1930-1956, Vernon L. Fluharty, ISBN 0-8371-8368-5, 1975
- Blood and Fire: La Violencia in Antioquia, Colombia, 1946-1953, Mary Roldan, Duke University Press, ISBN 0-8223-2918-2, 2002
- Diario de la resistencia de Marquetalia, Jacobo Arenas, Ediciones Abejón Mono, 1972
- Killing Peace: Colombia's Conflict and the Failure of U.S. Intervention, Garry M. Leech, Information Network of the Americas (INOTA), ISBN 0-9720384-0-X, 2002
- War in Colombia: Made in U.S.A., edited by Rebeca Toledo, Teresa Gutierrez, Sara Flounders and Andy McInerney, ISBN 0-9656916-9-1, 2003
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