The FARC Faces the Empire

Abstract

Introduction: The Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarios de ColombiaEjercito del Pueblo (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army-FARC-EP) is the most powerful and successful guerrilla army in the world confronting neoliberal regimes and their U.S. backers. It is the dominant political force in over 50 percent of the country's municipalities, fielding a guerrilla army of approximately 18,000 mostly peasant fighters. In addition, it has urban militia units in most major cities and towns and hundreds of thousands of sympathizers throughout the country. Led by Manuel Marulanda, it has been battling the Colombian oligarchy and its authoritarian two-party political system for over three decades. The FARC emerged in 1964 from a peasant movement that had sought five years earlier to establish rural self-governing communities in Marquetalia. The military invaded the peasant communities, destroying their villages and razing their crops. The peasants regrouped and, under the leadership of Marulanda, formed the nucleus of what is today the FARC. The FARC, which retains fraternal relations with the Colombian Communist party, has built its support by supporting agrarian reform (redistribution of land), nationalism (opposition to foreign control of strategic sectors of the economy), democratization (the end of the Liberal-Conservative monopoly of political power), and human rights (the dismantling of the military-landlord-controlled paramilitary groups that terrorize the countryside and the cities). It has taken a principled position against the narco-capitalist politicians and military officials. It protects cocagrowing peasants and taxes the dealers who purchase the leaf in their zones of influence. Contrary to the U.S. State Department propaganda, however, the FARC neither produces nor sells coca or drugs, as the present president of Colombia, Andres Pastrana, admits. From early 1998 to the end of 1999, the FARC has extended its field of operations and the size and scope of those operations: military confron-