FARC (The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia)

Abstract

Abstract The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarios de Colombia, or FARC) is the largest guerrilla army in Latin America and has waged a military campaign against the Colombian state since 1964. The tactics involved in their guerrilla war have ranged from the defense of isolated rural communities from military assaults, ambushes of military and police patrols, and militarily complex offensives destroying entire military bases, to the planting of landmines to protect coca crops or militarily sensitive areas. Since the mid‐1960s FARC has expanded from a few hundred combatants in a few departments to a military presence in more than half of the country and approximately 20 000 combatants by 2002. As of this writing their numbers have declined from this height to estimates of 8000–9000 combatants. Neither the end of the cold war, the demobilization of guerrilla armies in Central America nor the relative democratization of the Colombian state with the 1991 constitution have led FARC to give up its armed struggle. FARC's commitment to take power to establish a socialist society remains an officially stated goal. However, a specific political and social agenda short of a socialist revolution has been clear for some time. In different failed peace processes during the 1990s and 2000s FARC has demanded agrarian reform that eliminates large landholdings, the earmarking of 50 percent of the national budget toward welfare, education, health, and housing, a moratorium on the foreign debt, alternative development in the “war against drugs,” and the substantial reduction in the size of the Colombian armed forces (Kline 2007: 72–73). In almost five decades of war its military strategies have thus far been unable to bring these reforms about, let alone take national power.