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In 1962, as US economic aid began to pour into Colombia, and internal reforms began to be implemented by the Colombian government in order to more effectively harness that aid, a preliminary military assault upon the independent peasant zone of Marquetalia (one of several such zones) was made. The campaign was not successful and seemed to accomplish little except to prove the strength and determination of the peasant self-defense groups.

In 1964, the year after President Kennedy’s assassination, the Colombian government renewed its efforts to take Marquetalia and other similar peasant communities, which it now referred to as "independent republics" and considered to be a grave threat to national security. The example of armed peasant groups taking control of large pieces of the national territory, and establishing their own laws, government, and system of land use there, in utter disregard for the policies of the central government, was considered to be potentially destabilizing. Acts of resistance, not punished, could incite new acts of resistance in other parts of the country. Even if the "peasant republics" had no greater agenda, at the moment, than mere survival, survival, itself, had revolutionary implications. Of course, the Colombian government did not see the "independent republics" as being mainly defensive in purpose, they imagined that they were being consolidated by the PCC as bases from which to launch a Communist revolution throughout Colombia, and they therefore embraced the doctrine of "preventive counterinsurgency." The fire must be put out before it began!

"Operation Marquetalia", as the campaign against this remote rural zone of approximately 500 square kilometers in the Department of Tolima was designated, was part of a broader plan, "Plan LASO", which the United States military had helped Colombia to craft. ("LASO" stood for "Latin American Security Operation.") The US military also provided the Colombian army with training, advice, and equipment to carry out the operation. In late May, approximately 16,000 Colombian troops moved into action against the peasant zone, supported by bombers and helicopters, and armed with the latest strategies and techniques of counterinsurgency. At the time, the zone may have been occupied by about 4,000 peasants, backed by a small nucleus of hard-core fighters. The army bombed and strafed the zone, attempted to encircle and blockade it, and pushed into it with ground troops and airborne units. The peasants fought back fiercely, not only making the army pay for its successes, but also discomfiting the Colombian government politically by launching denunciations of the offensive which reached the international community, even prompting statements of solidarity from the likes of Jean Paul Sartre and Simone Beauvoir, as well as many other intellectuals, writers, journalists, activists, and political figures. For many observers, both inside and outside of Colombia, the battle raging in Marquetalia seemed less a necessary preventative, than an uncalled-for and unjust act of aggression, which had produced a kind of David versus Goliath struggle in which men and women who merely wanted to escape from injustice were not even being allowed to run away from it. "Operation Marquetalia", designed to last for three weeks, dragged on for over a year until the core of fighters which had been confronting the army there finally effected a strategic withdrawal to a new base in Riochiquito-Tierradentro, in the Department of Cauca, from which they continued to launch operations into Marquetalia. In the meantime, the guerrilla fighters from Marquetalia began to network extensively with other guerrilla fighters of both Liberal and Communist persuasion in the Departments of Tolima, Huila, Valle, and Cauca. By the end of 1965, they had formed a united guerrilla group known as el Bloque Sur ("the Southern Block"), and by the end of 1966, they had formed the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia), or the "Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia", which is today the largest and most effective guerrilla group in Colombia. Its outstanding leaders, in those formative days (and for many years to come), were Manuel Marulanda, aka Tiro Fijo ("Crack Shot") and Jacobo Arenas.

From their initial focus on defending their own lands against the incursions of landlords, and on preserving the integrity of the alternative political and social structures which they had developed during their period of withdrawal from the State, the guerrilla leadership now upped the ante, deciding to extend the struggle into other regions of Colombia, as well. Isolated and alone, rebellious peasant zones were vulnerable when confronted by the full power of the State. If more struggles could be ignited in more zones, the government would have less resources with which to fight any one. And eventually, if the peasant revolt were to become widespread enough, and to connect with other disaffected sectors of society, a successful revolution might even be precipitated, capable of overthrowing the government, and gaining power on the national level. With this end in sight, the FARC began to send guerrilla units throughout the country, gradually opening up fronts in many regions after winning widespread peasant support with a platform based on land reform. The government’s doctrine of "preventive counterinsurgency" had backfired, helping to catalyze a peasant self-defense strategy into outright revolution.

For strategists in both Washington and Bogota, the emergence of the FARC was a major challenge. It was a potent revolutionary movement genuinely rooted in the social history of Colombia, no mere invention of Soviet policy-makers; it resonated with the inhabitants of the Colombian countryside as no transplanted insurrection could. And yet, at the same time, it was also closely linked to the PCC, the Colombian Communist Party, which was, in turn, affiliated with the Communist International. (The Communist International was, of course, the international organization which transmitted the needs of Soviet foreign policy to the local Communist parties of many different lands.) Was the FARC controlled by the PCC - was it the "armed wing of the PCC", as some described it? And was it, therefore, a tool of Soviet foreign policy?

The relationship between the PCC and the FARC was complex - they were extremely close, but not synonymous. For example, at that moment in history, in the mid-1960s, the Soviet Union wished to downplay armed revolution in Latin America (it already had Communist Cuba on its side), and to orient local Communist parties towards doing political work which would expand their power and influence, without provoking levels of repression which they were not capable of withstanding. These local parties were to use the electoral process, labor groups and student groups to gradually widen their appeal, while avoiding violent confrontation. The USSR did not feel that the political conditions necessary for successful revolutions existed yet in Latin America - especially now that the Cuba Revolution had sneaked in "under the radar" (becoming Communist only after it had gained power), triggering a gigantic US counterinsurgency response which had increased the ability of Latin American militaries to counter guerrilla movements throughout the hemisphere. It is also possible that the USSR did not wish to overpressure the US in its own "backyard", now that it was beginning to have serious territorial and ideological problems with China as a result of the "Sino-Soviet split." Throughout this period in Latin America, Communist parties affiliated with the International, therefore, tended to avoid revolutionary activity, which meant that most guerrillas of the period tended to sprout from, or to establish connections with, pro-Chinese Maoist parties, or "Trotskyite" or "Guevarist" groups, which did believe in revolution. In the midst of this complex situation, the FARC rejected the pacific Soviet line. It refused to fall into place with someone else’s global strategy, or to sacrifice itself or the people it was fighting for for a perception formed outside of its own environment, and without intimate knowledge of its circumstances. In this regard, the FARC demonstrated some independence of both the PCC and the Soviet Union; and the PCC, not to lose its strongest asset, gave way. When it came to fighting or not fighting, the FARC called the shots.

On the other hand, many FARC leaders belonged to the PCC, and if there were clear divisions and signs of individuation, significant aspects of their strategy were still coordinated. Not synonymous, they were nonetheless symbiotic and complementary. They needed each other. The PCC, which had played a major role in helping to organize peasants in the Colombian countryside, needed the FARC to defend its gains and to widen its access to the peasantry. They also needed its military might as a bargaining tool. The FARC, for its part, needed the PCC’s ability to build support within the labor movement, and to develop contacts with other potentially-supportive urban sectors, if it was ever to grow beyond a rural-based peasant army and have a realistic hope of one day toppling the ruling class from power. The PCC’s ability to help the FARC in this way fluctuated according to the Colombian government’s response to its activities. As a political party, the PCC had historically alternated between being legal (in which case it was able to operate in the open and to sometimes accomplish a great deal), and being banned (in which case it was driven underground and forced to work under far more difficult circumstances, with a corresponding reduction in its effectiveness). In recent years, it has most often remained technically legal, but exposed to varying degrees of harassment, some of which have been so severe as to virtually it shut it down. As a proponent of organized labor, the PCC was exposed to similar swings in fortune. A brief description of the Colombian labor movement, and the PCC’s role in it, would be helpful at this point, since there are both real and potential connections between the guerrillas and radical labor.

The Colombian labor movement, which first erupted in the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1917, was initially guided by groups of foreign and Colombian anarchists and socialists. Its first major impact was registered in 1918, as a powerful wave of strikes rocked the Atlantic coastal region, especially affecting the transport sector, which was crucial to the operation of ports such as Barranquilla, Santa Marta, and Cartagena, and to the movement of commerce along the Magdalena River. There was also agitation against the United Fruit Company in the banana zone of Santa Marta. The Colombian government contained this first wave of strikes, and responded to it with legislation designed to curtail the power of organized labor. In 1924, a second wave of strikes struck the region. This time, the main targets were Tropical Oil, a US-owned company operating in the Department of Santander in the vicinity of the river port of Barranca; and the United Fruit Company, whose banana zone experienced its second major strike. By 1926, the Partido Socialista Revolucionaria (the "Revolutionary Socialist Party", or PSR) had emerged as the principal political organization of radical pro-labor forces in Colombia, and it was behind the huge strikes of 1927 against Tropical Oil and 1928 against United Fruit. As a result of the 1928 massacre in the banana zone, and the massive government crackdown which followed, the radical labor movement was temporarily disorganized and disoriented, and the PSR, which was also disrupted by internal arguments, began to unravel. In 1930, elements of the disintegrating PSR reconstituted themselves as the PCC.

The next major surge in organized labor activity occurred in the 1930s, during the era of Liberal populism inaugurated by President Alfonso Lopez Pumarejo. As part of its new populist direction, the Liberal Party lent its support to the formation of unions, and was generally sympathetic to the demands of workers, as long as they were not extreme or threatening to the State. During this time, a major federation of unions was created, the CTC, or Confederacion de Trabajadores de Colombia (the "Confederation of Colombian Workers"), which especially included unions affiliated with the Liberal Party, as well as unions affiliated with the PCC. Throughout this period of populist expansion, the PCC chose not to confront the Liberal Party, but to use that party’s tolerance towards it in order to work legally, and to rebuild its influence and connections. In 1944, Liberal and Communist unions both participated in massive demonstrations on behalf of President Lopez Pumarejo, who had been kidnapped by elements of the army attempting to stage a coup. The support of these workers, as well as the support of other sectors of society, helped lead to the restoration of civilian rule. Soon after, however, in 1945, Liberal interim president Alberto Lleras Camargo, who succeeded Lopez Pumarejo, sent in government troops to break up a strike that had been launched by the PCC-affiliated union which represented dock workers and transport workers along the Magdalena River. This action was a clear warning to the PCC that Populism and Communism were not the same, and that the Liberal Party was not going to allow the Communists to take over and use Liberal mediums for mobilizing the masses, for their own purposes.

In 1946, as Colombia returned to Conservative rule, the UTC (Union de Trabajadores de Colombia, or the "Union of Colombian Workers") was formed as a competitor and alternative to the CTC. The Catholic Church played a major role in the formation of this federation, whose purpose was to protect the basic rights of workers within the context of promoting harmony between Capital and Labor. As much as possible, the UTC sought to de-politicize the labor movement, to focus it on issues specifically related to the workplace, and to discourage it from engaging in strikes except as a last resort. The Conservative Party favored the UTC as a means of widening its appeal, of catching up with irreversible historical realities and wooing important elements of Colombia’s labor force away from the Liberal Party.

In 1961, as the Alliance for Progress began to develop in Colombia, the CTC expelled its Communist unions in order to "cleanse its image", and to deny the PCC "cover" for its "subversive operations." In 1964, the PCC responded by forming its own labor grouping, the CSTC, or Confederacion Sindical de Trabajadores de Colombia ("Labor Confederation of Workers of Colombia), which grew steadily in numbers and influence in the ensuing years.

(More recently, in 1986, the CUT, or Confederacion Unitaria de Trabajadores - the Unity Confederation of Workers - was formed, bringing together Conservative, Liberal, Communist, and Independent unions dedicated to the issues of "labor rights, wages and conditions, and human rights." As of 2000, roughly 80% of Colombia’s unionized workers were affiliated with the CUT.)

Colombia’s labor movement has traditionally been most powerfully centered on the crucial transport sector of the Atlantic Coastal region and the Magdalena River (which is Colombia’s great internal waterway); on workers in the oil zone and banana zone; and later on industrial workers and public employees. It has been pointed out that the most important economic sector in Colombia for most of its history, and during the formative years of its labor movement, was coffee; and that coffee was not fertile terrain for the development of a labor movement. This was because, although there were great coffee haciendas which did provide strong opportunities for organizing, as the PCC discovered in Viota in the 1930s, a great deal of Colombia’s coffee production was carried out by independent peasants, who would bring their bultos de café (sacks of coffee) down on mules to the markets, purchase centers, railroad junctions, or river ports where they would receive payment for it. The coffee industry was not dominated by a few large landowners (as banana production was, for example, dominated by United Fruit); it was not primarily dependent upon wage-laborers, as were the oil and banana industries; and coffee producers were not concentrated in a single enclave, but rather, were spread out in many different regions in ways which did not foster unity and cohesion. All of this, some analysts speculate, prevented the coffee sector from serving as a major base for the development of the labor movement; which, in turn - since coffee was the leading product of the Colombian economy - prevented the Colombian labor movement from developing into the powerful social force it might have been. For those who had revolutionary visions for Colombia, the peasantry, motivated by their struggle to acquire and defend their land, were a far more promising agent for change than the traditional working class, motivated by its traditional concerns of wages and working conditions.

Of course, this insight ran against the grain of classic Marxist thought, with which the PCC was familiar. But by 1966, that classic line of thought had already been significantly amended by history - and the PCC was in tune with that.

According to Marx’s original idea, first promulgated in the mid-1800s, the capitalist class (consisting of the owners of the means of production) was in the process of creating the very forces which would destroy it. Powerful landowners in Europe had invested their profits into the birth of industry, and by "enclosing" large numbers of peasants (shutting them off of the land), driven them into the cities which commerce and industry had spawned, in order to work in factories as wage-laborers. In contrast to the wealthy capitalists, Marx referred to this new class of underpaid and overworked industrial workers as "the proletariat." Frequently they lived in the squalor of slums, subsisting in poverty without any form of job security (they had no unemployment insurance, and no workman’s compensation), while they spent their workdays exposed to unhealthy and dangerous conditions that slowly ground them down, and oftentimes killed them, as they fell victim to accidents or succumbed to diseases related to their environment. As the Industrial Revolution (as this proliferation of machines and factories, with its attendant social transformation, was called) grew in magnitude, so the ranks of the proletariat swelled: displaced peasants were soon joined by independent artisans and craftsmen who had been driven out of business by the output of the factories; while rival capitalists, driven into bankruptcy by more successful competitors, came next. Marx detested the abuses of the Industrial Revolution, but saw hope in its ruthless dynamics: for as the forces of unbridled competition and greed increased the numbers of impoverished proletarians, concentrating wealth more and more in the hands of a few successful capitalist entrepreneurs who exploited the rest of mankind in order to maximize their profits, so the balance of power would gradually shift from the capitalist class to the proletariat. The proletariat would come to vastly outnumber the capitalist class and to gain a potential force that not even the money of the capitalists, invested in the maintenance of the repressive apparatus of the military and police, and in institutions of collective manipulation and mind-control, such as the capitalist-owned Press and the capitalist-friendly Church with its doctrine of social passivity, could contain. All that was needed was for the proletariat to develop class consciousness - an awareness of its exploited position and its capacity to resist - for this potential power to be translated into revolutionary action, which would overthrow the capitalist class and its repressive State, and replace it with a worker’s government dedicated to a fair distribution of the "fruits of labor." In order to develop this class consciousness, Marx believed in political work, radical labor organizing, and social proselytizing. The workers must be led to understand that traditional political parties which represented elite interests would never truly serve them, only use them; that nationalism was nothing more than a manipulative tool meant to bond the oppressed to those who oppressed them within their own country; that religion was merely a drug - "the opiate of the masses" - used to condition the poor to passively accept their misery on the earth in hopes of an illusory reward after death; and that democratic institutions controlled by the elites would never allow the workers to take power by peaceful means (if the capitalists could not buy the elections, or steal them through fraud, they would invalidate the results by unleashing the army and police against the workers). Once consciousness had been raised and the workers had been united by Communist thinkers and organizers, and once they had sufficiently armed themselves or devised a plan for capturing or acquiring weapons, the call to revolt would be given. The proletariat would then rise up in arms, seize control of the means of production - the factories where the wealth of society was produced - and use this control to topple the capitalists from power. Since the defeated capitalists of one country would be likely to attempt to use other sympathetic countries, still controlled by capitalists, as bases from which to launch counterrevolutions against the new proletarian regime, Marx formulated the idea of the "dictatorship of the proletariat." He believed that the newly formed Communist workers’ State could not "expose" itself to the inevitable capitalist counterattack by allowing a democratic political process to exist during its initial period of vulnerability. Elections could be bought from abroad; and in an "open system", manipulation and disinformation could be used to undermine proletarian gains, while covert activities meant to organize a violent recapture of power could proliferate. Only after the capitalist system had been overthrown in every country, would the revolution of the proletariat be safe from counterattack, Marx theorized. At that time, he believed, the dictatorship could end; and in fact, he went so far as to speculate that the lack of a class enemy or artificially-created foreign enemy would make the State basically irrelevant, since its coercive and protective apparatuses would no longer be needed. This would lead to an eventual "withering away of the State", leaving in its wake a worker’s utopia where "each worked according to his ability and received according to his need."

It should be pointed out that Marxism, in spite of the prevailing mindset which currently condemns it on moral, as well as economic grounds, was actually conceived of as a compassionate response to terrible abuses which were later corrected by our own society, and by European societies, in non-Marxist ways. It provided many useful insights in its day, and pushed Western societies to humanize themselves through varied reforms, in order to defuse its threat. This having been said, Marxism also contained some very serious flaws, among them its overly materialist view of reality, which turned it into an enemy not only of frequently manipulative organized religions but also, in many cases, of spirituality itself. The passion of religion was now to be given to the idea of the workers’ revolution and the workers’ State, but these were no true substitute for Humanity’s quest for meaning in the Universe and for a deeply-felt connection with God. Equally damaging was Marxism’s "scientific" rigidity regarding the forces of history, its intractable dedication to violence and warfare as the only possible means to overcome the domination of repressive elites, its premature disillusionment with alternative possibilities for social change, and its concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat", which was eventually used to consolidate and justify repressive regimes in the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, and elsewhere.

As time went on, and the world entered the 20^th Century with Marx’s prophecies of a Communist revolution still unfulfilled, Marxist theory began to evolve. New thinkers and revolutionaries appeared to make sense of its impasse, and to give it new direction. Particularly important among these new adapters of Marxist theory was the Russian revolutionary, Vladimir Ilich Lenin. According to Lenin, and others of his persuasion, the revolution predicted by Marx had failed to materialize due to the fact that the capitalist class had made unexpected concessions to the working class in order to survive. It had allowed "trade unionism" to surface and even to flourish: labor movements which focused on economic rather than political issues, and did not aim to overthrow the capitalist system, but rather, to improve the situation of workers within that system. (The violent repression of revolutionary labor movements by police and soldiers helped to channel workers towards these unions of more limited scope.) At the same time as the capitalist class realized that some concessions to labor must be given up for the sake of political stability, the realization was also made by important capitalist figures, such as Henry Ford, that low wages limited the capitalist’s ability to sell his product. If workers received higher wages, they would be able to become consumers of the products they manufactured, which would expand the market for that product, enabling the capitalist to sell more. (This is, in fact, how Henry Ford turned the motorcar from a luxury item, available only to a few, into a mass consumer product and a driving force of American economic development.) According to Lenin, the new concessions given to the working class in Europe and America were made possible by a new surge of imperialism: the subjugation, domination and exploitation of foreign lands, which were either directly invaded and turned into colonies, or else pressured into allowing capitalist money and influence to penetrate them and turn them into appendages of the capitalist economy. It was pointed out that England had India, and much of Africa under its sway; that the French had vast holdings in Africa and Indochina; that the Dutch had the East Indies; that Germany had lately expanded into Africa; that Belgium had the Congo; and that the US had Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippines, and had effected a significant "neocolonial" penetration of large parts of Asia, and Latin America. From these lands, the capitalists drew many of the raw materials which they needed to expand and sustain their industrial growth - raw materials which they attained at unfairly low prices, enforced by their power. They also utilized these lands as captive markets for their goods, increasing their revenues, while inhibiting the development of native industries. Where necessary, the capitalist nations spearheaded the complete reorganization of preexisting economies and social structures in the colonies in order to make them better fit into their own system, even when such changes produced massive dislocations on the local level, increasing the vulnerability of millions, who lost the traditional safety nets which had previously protected them (safety nets such as land ownership, village organization, communal values and social networks). According to Lenin, the income generated from imperialism was used by the capitalist class of Europe and the United States to "bribe" its own working class with higher wages and better working conditions, to deter it from the revolution that Marx had predicted. Some Marxist analysts called this phenomenon the "exportation" or "externalization" of the proletariat. They theorized that class relations were now being internationalized: the core industrial countries, although not free of class distinctions, were no longer faced with revolution on account of them, and were beginning to assume a position towards the rest of the world (the periphery) which was very similar to the position which the capitalist class had once assumed towards the proletariat. Under these circumstances, Marx’s original idea that the "inevitable" Communist revolution would commence in the urban/industrial heartland of Europe had to be revised. Conditions for revolution were declining in the core, but increasing in the periphery. In the face of this shift, Lenin theorized that the Communist revolution which he and other Marxists still believed in would now no longer begin in the most developed countries, which had the largest urban populations and the largest concentrations of workers, but in less-developed countries exploited by the dynamic of imperialism. The new revolutionary theory which Lenin advocated was, therefore, to redirect revolutionary activity away from the "bought off" core, towards the "weakest links of the chain." This, conveniently, led him to envision Russia as the center of the revolution which Marx had predicted, and he energetically set himself to turning his own country, which was far behind Europe in terms of industrial development and the significance of its proletariat, into the cradle of the international Communist revolt. In 1917, aided by the exhaustion produced by the First World War, in which Russia was battered and humiliated by Germany in a hopeless war that seemed to have no end, until it finally became desperate for change, Lenin managed to carry out a successful Communist revolution, backed by factory workers, disaffected soldiers, and masses of poor peasants who were set against the land-hoarding nobles of the countryside. This role of peasants in the revolutionary struggle was something new - early Marxists had regarded the peasantry as a basically conservative, almost inert class, lacking the revolutionary spark of the proletariat. It was viewed as wed to tradition, as slow to accept change, as susceptible to manipulation by the elites and organized religion, as a force more likely to be reactionary than revolutionary. (When it did revolt, as it often did through history, its revolts were said to be nothing more than short-sighted responses to local injustice, without broader goals or visions.) In addition to this, the peasantry was dispersed, spread out over a large area, not concentrated in cities in the economic and political heartland of the nation, where its actions must prove decisive. It was perceived as being geographically tangential to the attainment of power. This, too, was said to mitigate against its use as a revolutionary instrument. Lenin, however, withdrew from these perceptions and prejudices, or at least began the movement away from them. He demonstrated the ability to be flexible with Marxist doctrine, to adapt it to changing developments and to local conditions without "destroying the religion of Marx", and to grant the peasantry a major role in the attainment of Communism. He grafted his own vision to Marx’s, giving rise to what would later be called "Marxism-Leninism." While many would abhor his militancy and harshness, seeking to lead Marxism down other paths (including towards the idea of creating democratic socialism without revolution), others would take inspiration from Lenin, and seek to spawn revolutions from within the expanded framework he had created.

In China, during the 1930s, Mao Tse-Tung built on Lenin’s insights, by actually elevating the peasantry into being the principal instrument of his revolutionary strategy. In China, given the size of its rural population compared to its urban population, and given the serious abuses of large-scale landowners in the countryside, who had alienated huge sectors of the peasantry, making them ripe for Communist agitation, this strategy made perfect sense. The enemy had also already proved his ability to repress and destroy Communist organizers in the cities, where his military and police apparatus was at its strongest. Mao’s long-term blueprint for gaining power was, therefore, to win the support of the peasantry; and to build mobile guerrilla units which could move invisibly through it, like "fish in the sea." The people would provide food, shelter, intelligence and scouting support for the guerrilla units, alerting them to the movements of the enemy, while concealing the guerrillas’ presence and intentions from the enemy. The guerrillas, in the zones under their influence, would have "eyes"; the army that sought to destroy them would be "blind." In this first phase of the war, the guerrillas would be politically on the offensive, expanding their influence and the invisible infrastructure of their control over ever larger sections of the country; but from the military point of view, they would be mainly on the defensive, unable to face the enemy in the open, or outside of the support structures of their peasant bases. Their goal would, instead, be to consolidate their domination of certain regions through a combination of popular reforms and selective terror directed against elements of the local ruling class (especially powerful landlords), and against informants who might betray them; to use these regions as bases from which to expand their political work to adjoining regions; and to perhaps carry out acts of sabotage, disruption, and selective terror against "class enemies" and agents of the State (such as the police, the military, and local government officials). These actions would eventually draw a major government response, in which case the guerrilla units would retreat back into the peasant zones which they already controlled, "luring" the army to follow them into deadly ambushes, which the guerrillas’ greater knowledge of local terrain, and its monopoly of information (thanks to peasant collaboration) would enable. Following the simple idea of "when the enemy advances, retreat - when he tires, attack - when he retreats, pursue", the Chinese Communist guerrillas followed a strategy of attempting to wound and demoralize the government army, to slowly bleed it and weaken it in innumerable small-scale conflicts, and to gradually bring increasing swaths of the Chinese countryside under Communist control. After a certain point, as the balance of power between the revolutionary armed forces and the government army began to shift, the guerrillas could form increasingly large mobile columns, engage the government army in major battles of maneuver and positional warfare, drive it back even further, and finally begin to employ a strategy of encircling the major cities which were still in government hands, from the countryside. At the last moment, as the Communist armies advanced on the cities from the rural zones which they controlled, urban supporters secretly recruited and prepared by Communist organizers, would rise up in arms, disorganizing the army’s defense from "behind the lines" as the peasant armies attacked from the front. (In cases, surrounded and cut off from supplies, the cities might even capitulate without a fight.)

In practice, Mao’s victory in China had some important twists and turns along the way. His fierce nationalist rival, Chiang Kai-Shek, gained the upper hand for some time, through a strategy of blockading the peasant zones with forts and garrisons, and attacking them with powerful armies backed by air power. Mao and his supporters were dislodged from their initial peasant base, and forced to retreat to a new base hundreds of miles away, in a military exodus known as the "Long March", which was subsequently glorified in Chinese Communist folklore as a symbol of their superhuman determination, and "the power of the will of the people to overcome all odds." Chiang’s advantage disappeared, however, as a result of the Japanese invasion of China in 1937. In this brutal theater of World War Two, Chiang’s conventional army could not stand up to the powerful forces of Imperial Japan, and he was forced to give ground, retreating deeper and deeper into the interior of his country. Meanwhile, Mao’s Communist guerrillas stayed behind. Able to hide among the people, and frequently without a visible profile to attack, they were able to survive where Chiang’s forces could not. Organizing guerrilla resistance behind the lines of the Japanese advance, they profited greatly from the wave of nationalism which the Japanese invasion had produced, which now lent them the aura of being nationalist heroes, and washed away the stigma of being divisive rebels, and "Reds", which Chiang had attempted to color them as. Even more importantly, the Communists took advantage of Chiang’s absence to fill in the vacuum which existed in large parts of the country from which his authority had been driven by the Japanese, in order to secretly construct the human networks and logistical bases from which they could renew their war against him once the Japanese had been defeated. Sure enough, as soon as the war against Japan was over, the war between the Communists and the Nationalists resumed. Bolstered by weapons and equipment surrendered by the Japanese, and by military aid from the Soviet Union, Mao succeeded in defeating the government of Chiang Kai-Shek by 1949, and in consolidating Communist power on Mainland China.

In spite of the anomalies which contributed to his triumph, Mao’s strategy became the basic creed for a new generation of "Third World revolutionaries" - fighters from the "peripheral nations" who, in many cases, opted to base their revolutionary strategy upon the peasantry, with the urban proletariat playing only a supporting role. Although the term "Maoist" came into vogue as a term for describing those guerrilla groups which chose to model their strategy after his, the truth of the matter is that most guerrilla groups in Africa, Asia, and Latin America which came from countries with a large rural population opted to follow a peasant-based strategy from the 1960s on. Only those that also established close political links with China, and which favored China in the Sino-Soviet split, earned the actual designation of "Maoist."

Although the preceding discussion may seem to have been a long digression from the revolution in Colombia, it has actually been essential in order to put the mindset, the goals, and the methods of the FARC into their proper historical perspective. A movement of peasant resistance generated by decades of abuse - a movement of peasant resistance which was deeply rooted in the Colombian experience - a movement of peasant resistance which was encouraged both by Liberal populism and by Communism, and which grew stronger during the chaos and insecurity of La Violencia, when previous traditions of self-defense were resurrected and amplified - became consciously connected to the international revolutionary history just described, with the genesis of the FARC. The FARC, once it emerged from the seemingly infinite panorama of conflict in Colombia, dedicated itself to the strategic goals of securing and expanding zones of control in the countryside, based upon the peasantry, which it sought to harness and, at the same time, was a part of; of punishing the army in ambushes, fought mainly within these zones, as it conducted raids, acts of sabotage, and political work outside of these zones; of gradually weakening the army, enabling it to launch more direct and aggressive threats against the government; of coordinating its attacks from the countryside with support activities carried on by sectors of the urban population, organized by its agents and by the PCC working with broad political fronts and coalitions; and finally, of overthrowing the Colombian government and creating a new revolutionary State, based to a large extent on Marxist principles (with a Colombian flavor). This new State would expropriate and nationalize many foreign companies (to prevent the remission of "excessive profits" to other lands), effect a radical nation-wide land reform program, and introduce a wide range of socialist features into the economy. It most certainly would not be friendly towards the United States government, as that government was then (1966), and is now (2006).

Throughout the 1960s, as revolutionary activity flared up and was put out throughout the Latin American continent, the FARC demonstrated its resilience and staying power. Among many fragile revolutions, its was the one that would not break. Perhaps if the Alliance for Progress’ carrot had been bigger, the counterinsurgency stick would not have failed. But the aid and the reforms that were meant to peacefully pull the rug out from underneath the feet of the revolutionaries, making the FARC irrelevant and unnecessary to the peasantry, were never able to accomplish their purpose. In 1961, Liberal President Alberto Lleras Camargo, coordinating his policies with the Alliance for Progress, signed a new agrarian reform act into law, and established INCORA (el Instituto Colombiano de la Reforma Agraria, or the Colombian Institute of Agrarian Reform) to oversee it. The goal was to lessen tensions in the countryside (and the appeal of the revolutionaries) by satisfying poor peasants’ desire for land. The heart of Lleras Camargo’s reform project was to distribute idle land to peasants in need of it. In most cases, INCORA would seek to purchase unused land from the major landowners, and then redistribute it to peasants via a parcelization program, which would require that the peasants pay INCORA back over a number of years. The land redistribution project was strongly opposed by the major landowners, however, who essentially stunted it; nor was it popular among many peasants, as the economic burden of acquiring land under the program was stressful, and frequently prohibitive. Faced with intense political resistance in the most desirable parts of the country, the government sought to satisfy the peasants’ demand for land, while bypassing the fierce opposition of the major landowners, by sponsoring large-scale "colonization" projects directed into the still sparsely-settled frontier regions of Colombia: places such as Caqueta and Putumayo. Politically, the strategy was prudent. It would not be obstructed by the land-holding elites, who would fight to the death to prevent the expropriation of their property, but who had no problem with government-sponsored colonization projects of poor peasants launched into the distant wilderness. The problem with the colonization projects, however, was that the cost of supplying the colonists and transporting them to the remote frontier regions where land was still available was high, and the cost of building up necessary infrastructure, such as roads and bridges, schools, and hospitals, was even higher. The huge cost of the colonization projects finally limited their scale, meaning that not enough peasants could be satisfied by means of them to defuse the revolutionary energy that was brewing in the countryside. Besides this, the relative lack of resources available for the colonization projects meant that those peasants who did participate in them frequently ended up with the feeling that they had, essentially, been deceived and, under the guise of being helped, been dumped in the middle of nowhere. In their new environments, they were often exposed to conditions of abject poverty, a lack of government services, greatly increased health risks, and extreme personal insecurity (due to the weakness of the State in these distant regions, which led to increased crime and violence). Paradoxically, all the State had accomplished was to provide the FARC with new opportunities for expansion. In the wake of these highly-flawed colonization projects, the guerrillas moved in. Here, they found many who were sympathetic to their cause. They filled the void left by the absence of the State, and provided law and order. They created courts to resolve disputes. They encouraged the peasants to pool resources, and generated rudimentary services to complement what the government had provided, and to take the place of what the government had neglected to provide. Because these areas were remote and hard to access, the government was not able to effectively respond to their take-over by the FARC. At the same time, while their remoteness provided greater security for the FARC as it attempted to consolidate new bases against the government, geography also diminished the strategic power of these new bases, which were too far removed from the centers of power to present an immediate threat to the government. Far more promising, from the FARC’s point of view, were its gains in Meta, a large and rugged Department astride Cundinamarca, the Department which is home to Bogota, the capital.

In 1967, Liberal President Carlos Lleras Restrepo, distressed by the manner in which Colombia’s land reform program - "the peaceful way to defeat the guerrillas" - had become bogged down in internal politics, decided to give the process one last major push. He initiated the creation of a peasant advocacy group, the Asociacion Nacional de Usuarios Campesinos (the National Association of Peasant Users), or ANUC, to increase pressure on conservative elements in society, with the hope of smashing through the political barricade against progress that was threatening to polarize Colombian society past the point of healing. While the government renewed its efforts to implement the obstructed land reform, the peasants brought together by ANUC began a campaign of grass-roots agitation against the landlords, mounting challenges against the properties of the powerful, and calling on INCORA to adjudicate. But Lleras Restrepo’s ploy, in the classic mold of Liberal populism, succeeded in awakening forces for change that would not abide by his limits, or stay within his vision. Quite soon, ANUC had developed a life of its own. It radicalized, and became a vehicle for peasants who wished to take more aggressive steps to acquire the land which they felt they deserved. Massive land invasions, intense political strife and violence ensued. For Conservatives, Lleras Restrepo had created an agrarian Frankenstein. Reform meant to fortify the system had become a force to destabilize it; a government tool meant to pacify had been captured by revolutionaries, and turned into an instrument of revolution. Conservative President Misael Pastrana, who succeeded Lleras Restrepo according to the Frente Nacional agreement, struck back against ANUC, the government’s escaped creation. ANUC split in two, the tamer wing returning to the fold in exchange for continued government support (which was necessary for legally acquiring land), while the other wing was beaten back by stern government measures, which included sending in the army to take control of areas beset by land disputes, using force to support the mass evictions of peasants who were deemed "squatters", and imposing long prison sentences on "illegal settlers." Additionally, there was a resurgence of the pajaros during this time - the notorious killers who had populated La Violencia, who seemed to strike at radical peasants in conflictive areas with utter impunity.

All of this turmoil and disappointment - for once again, State-inspired dreams of a real social transformation, spearheaded by far-reaching reforms, had only led to a sense of abandonment and renewed repression - was very damaging for the future of peace in Colombia. Poor peasants were likely to be more responsive to the guerrillas than ever, now that the great State project to help them had collapsed; while the ruling elites, Liberals included, were impressed by the difficulty of keeping reform from spiraling out of control, and becoming a mere forerunner to revolution. It was becoming harder, by the year, to play the card of the masses without getting burned.

How much did the Alliance for Progress contribute to the economic development and promotion of social justice in Colombia, when all is said and done? Its impact cannot be dismissed. Major improvements in agricultural productivity resulted. These improvements were largely the result of the creation of large-scale capitalist farms in the countryside (replete with modern equipment, improved seeds, new fertilizers, and substantial irrigation and pest-control systems), which came into being as many of the major landowners proved to be more accommodating to economic modernization than outside planners had expected. These planners had expected to encounter intractable landlords and an obstinate semi-feudal social system in the countryside, which must be broken down by political action and a massive program of land reform if agricultural productivity were to be increased. The adaptability of the landlords surprised and encouraged them. In fact, the increase in agricultural productivity which occurred in spite of the failure of a far-reaching agrarian reform program helped to deflate the push for such a program. On the other hand, the aid offered by the Alliance for Progress, although felt by diverse sectors in the economy, was most successfully utilized by those who were already well-endowed with resources, and best able to profit from the influx of foreign credit and technology. Thus, although there was an increase in agricultural productivity in the Colombian countryside as a result of the Alliance for Progress, that productivity was not necessarily connected to the sectors of society which most needed to improve their economic condition - in other words, not enough of it "trickled down" to the masses; nor was the need for a social safety net, which land ownership most frequently provides to the poor, addressed by these gains. Only a viable land reform could have accomplished that. These shortcomings, in the midst of some success, assured that the guerrillas would remain a powerful force in Colombia, at the same time as they led to two new developments: first, the beginning of a massive wave of immigration of unemployed and landless Colombians into Venezuela - a population flow which is in many ways useful to Venezuela, which has historically been affected by labor shortages, but which has also brought Venezuela enormous headaches in the present, as serious Colombian social problems have spilled over into its territory; and second, the beginning of the Colombian drug trade, as marijuana appeared, during the 1970s, as an answer to the poverty of multitudes of peasants left behind by conventional development. (Profits from marijuana were estimated to be about six times higher than those which could be earned from the cultivation of coffee.)

Throughout the 1970s, the FARC persisted and grew, while some other guerrilla organizations suffered serious setbacks. (More will be said about these competing guerrilla groups later.) The FARC’s ability to survive was proven, but its threat to the national government, in terms of actually having the ability to overthrow it, was also considered to be limited. It tended to be strongest in remote areas of the country, where its ability to hurt the government was diminished; and population dynamics were also subtly eroding its future. In 1938, 60% of the Colombian population lived and worked in the countryside. Violence in the countryside, leading to "internal displacement", as well as changes in the Colombian economy (including increased agricultural productivity, which enabled more people to live in the cities), had reduced this percentage significantly by the 1970s. (By 1984, statistics showed that only one third of the Colombian population was living and working in the Colombian countryside). These trends were not necessarily favorable to a rural, peasant-based revolutionary force, which still lacked important urban skills. Nonetheless, the very fact that the FARC could not be eradicated, and that its control over significant tracts of rural territory was deepening, made it a formidable enemy to the Colombian government. While there was some relief in the thought that the guerrillas, at that time, seemed incapable of decisively defeating the government, there was also considerable tension in the thought that neither could the government decisively defeat the guerrillas. "Distant thunder may pass by harmlessly, or bring lighting down onto your house."

During the 1960s and 1970s, the FARC, which was supported by peasant communities in its zones of influence and control, developed two primary methods of obtaining the financial resources which it needed to purchase weaponry, equipment and additional supplies, and to fund its operations. First of all, there was la vacuna ("the vaccine"), which was a "war tax" imposed upon large- and middle-sized landholders living in the areas which it dominated or was in a position to raid. If you paid the tax, it meant you were "vaccinated", and safe from the "disease" of being attacked by the FARC. Essentially, la vacuna was "protection money." Those who were not friendly towards the guerrillas considered la vacuna to be a form of extortion based on intimidation. Deeply resentful, many of these went on to privately organize and fund paramilitary units to keep the guerrillas away from their property. In cases where la vacuna was overused, the FARC made the mistake of alienating middle-class peasants as well as major landholders, planting the seeds of increased resistance to its operations and giving new impetus to the birth of right wing autodefensas (self-defense groups), which would proliferate in the 1990s.

The second main form of acquiring finance utilized by the FARC during this period was el secuestro ("kidnapping"). Over time, the guerrillas developed a tremendous expertise in kidnapping members of the upper class, and holding them prisoner until the ransom which they demanded had been paid. Although these operations were conducted as a form of business, with the kidnap victims being safely returned to their relatives upon the payment of the ransom, there was great risk involved. Kidnap victims who resisted might be killed; or victims might be gunned down in the heat of battle, if police or soldiers stumbled onto the guerrillas’ hiding place. Some captives died from the stressful conditions of their captivity, while almost all were severely traumatized by the experience. Critics of the guerrillas were especially incensed by the FARC’s refusal to set age limits for their kidnap targets. (Children as young as three- and five-years old were swept up by the guerrillas.) The FARC (which from 1997-2001 was responsible for 25% of all kidnappings in Colombia) defended its policy of kidnapping by emphasizing the class-nature of its actions, which were directed mainly against members of the elites, and could be considered to be a means of "getting back from the rich what they had already taken from the poor." On the other hand, critics still found this method of financing to be cruel, and pointed out that not all kidnap victims were actually wealthy. Overused, el secuestro once again alienated important sectors of the population from the FARC’s struggle, strengthened resistance to it, and impeded its political progress.

More recently, the FARC has developed a new dimension of el secuestro, known as el pescar ("fishing"). In this technique, the guerrillas will take control of an area filled with civilians, then inspect their "catch", letting the "ordinary people" go while seizing up anyone who seems to be wealthy as a kidnap victim. The "fishing operations" are most commonly set up on roads, which the guerrillas will temporarily block, creating a zone of captured traffic to assess. The inspection of potential kidnap victims may focus on details such as the kind of car they are driving, the kind of watch or jewelry they are wearing, their destination, and where they live (discerned by questioning, or by the inspection of documents in their possession). In cases, the guerrillas, today, are even said to cross-reference the IDs of civilians who have been swept up in their net with names maintained on a computerized data base. Individuals who meet the guerrillas’ criteria for kidnapping, referred to as "miracle catches", are taken away, while all the "small fish are thrown back into the sea." Once again, these operations illustrate the FARC’s tendency to accept political damage in the name of financial or military gain. It may yet prove to be a fatal weakness in their strategy.

With the money obtained through la vacuna and el secuestro, the FARC purchased weapons and equipment from a variety of sources, including Cuba, the Soviet Bloc, some Central American countries (especially during the 1980s), and the international and internal arms market. These purchases enhanced the FARC’s ability to fight throughout the 1960s and the 1970s.

In the 1980s, according to analysts, the FARC’s ability to finance itself was greatly amplified by its decision to become involved in the drug trade which was beginning to inundate Colombia. Marijuana had got the ball rolling, and cultivation was now moving on to la coca (cocaine) and towards la amapola (poppy/heroin). The guerrillas did not start this business, nor were they the only player in Colombia to get their hands into it. There were, first of all, the narcotraficantes (the drug traffickers), a powerful and resourceful criminal class; and soon, elements of the Colombian government and paramilitary death squads devoted to destroying the guerrillas would become involved, as well. Simply-speaking, drugs became a part of the social and political terrain in Colombia during this period, and the guerrillas were not to be left out. By protecting and taxing certain drug operations within the territory which they controlled, they greatly amplified their financial capacity during the 1980s and 1990s, leading to a corresponding increase in military effectiveness. (Much more will be said about the drug trade later in this article, in the section "Drugs, and the Changing Face of Conflict.") According to Thomas Marks, a counterinsurgency expert with links to the US military, the FARC had only about 2,000 guerrilla fighters operating in 15 Fronts, in 1982, before connecting itself to the economic potential of the drug boom. By 2002, powered by the new resources which the drug trade placed at its command, it had an estimated 15,000-20,000 fighters operating in 60 Fronts across the nation. It was also estimated that the FARC controlled 40-50% of Colombia, though Marks disputes this statistic which made it to the international press, insisting that the guerrillas have influence and the ability to operate in 40% of the country, which is not the same as actually controlling it. Whatever the case, a massive expansion in FARC power occurred during the 1980s and 1990s.

In the late 1990s, both the US and Colombian government received a severe jolt as a sudden increase in FARC effectiveness became evident as a result of some stunning guerrilla victories. In 1996, a company of 120 conscripted soldiers stationed at the military base of Las Delicias in the Department of Putumayo was overrun, losing half their number in battle, with the other half being captured. The FARC had, by this time, developed its own version of "Special Forces", which included sappers (landmine-clearers), air-defense teams (armed with powerful rifles, machine guns, and later, with shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles), and light artillery (mortars, and various forms of homemade bombs), as well as grenade-launchers. They may also have been equipped with goggles for night vision. These units were said to have received training from the FMLN (the guerrillas of El Salvador), who, in turn, were said to have received training from the highly-experienced guerrilla veterans of Vietnam. According to analysts, the FARC managed to slip infiltrators into the base, who made maps of it and even passed on video footage taken from the inside to the guerrillas. The guerrillas then built a full-scale replica of the base deep in the jungle, and practiced assaulting it in utter secrecy. Once prepared, a column of about 500 guerrillas, spearheaded by these Special Forces, moved in against the base. The outer perimeter was quickly penetrated, and the army’s sentries were picked off; sappers then cleared a path to the base, and the guerrillas surged in with assault rifles and explosive charges, wreaking havoc on the defenders. The defeat took the army by surprise: the aggressiveness, scale, and extreme competence of the attack had not been expected. The routine small-scale clash, of army patrol versus guerrilla ambushers, had been left behind for something bolder and more menacing.

In 1998, at El Billar in the Department of Caqueta, the guerrillas won another huge victory. This time, the soldiers they defeated were not mere conscripts, but 154 members of an elite Colombian unit, the 52^nd Counterguerrilla Battalion (52BCG) of the 3^rd Mobile Brigade. The unit appears to have moved forward against a staging area of guerrilla troops, believed to be massing for an attack against a nearby town. By some accounts, the guerrillas had planned a trap from the very beginning, while others believe that the guerrillas adapted to the army’s approach by reconfiguring and improvising a trap. Whatever the case, the elite unit was baited and drawn in against a guerrilla target, then encircled. A second guerrilla ring, studded with air-defense units, was thrown around this circle to prevent relief columns from reaching the trapped troops, as the FARC pounded and hunted down the soldiers enclosed within its "kill zone." By the time the battle had ended, 80 Colombian soldiers were dead and 43 captured. Something close to panic rippled through the halls of power in Bogota. Had the FARC finally grown powerful enough to pose a real threat to the survival of the national government?

According to analysts, the FARC was, indeed, determined to carry the war to the next level - if not to take power on the national level, at least to shake the confidence of the government enough to elicit major concessions from it, including, perhaps, the formal recognition and acceptance of FARC control over much of the nation’s territory. In that case, Colombia would, in essence, be divided into two, one part remaining under the authority of the government, one part being conceded to the guerrillas. For a time, the guerrillas’ string of successes continued. In August 1998, a military base cohabited by a company of army draftees and a unit of counter-narcotics police was overrun at Miraflores. In this engagement, Colombian security forces lost 30 men, with 50 wounded, and 100 captured by the guerrillas. But finally, the Colombian army was able to recover its poise, and to adjust to the FARC’s increased combat power and audacity. In 1999, powerful FARC offensives which even included thrusts towards Bogota were repelled, with heavy casualties inflicted on the FARC. In these battles, the FARC went so far as to utilize homemade armored vehicles, which were deemed primitive but effective. The army successfully knocked them out, and made the best of its own firepower and air support. These defeats did not end the intensity of the armed conflict. In October 2000, for example, the FARC succeeded in destroying a US-made Blackhawk helicopter with 22 Colombian soldiers aboard, which it detected attempting to make a landing inside "its territory." Nonetheless, the FARC was humbled by the defeats of 1999 into realizing that its attempt to shift from the phase of small-scale conflict, built upon ambushes and raids, to one of larger-scale confrontations against the army, was premature. The Colombian government and its armed forces were still too much for the guerrillas to overcome in this kind of fighting.

What the FARC is now left with is an extensive guerrilla army, capable of inflicting punishing blows against military and police forces that attempt to maneuver in its strongholds; and the capacity to wield strong mobile columns of 60 - 400 men, sometimes backed by highly-trained guerrilla "special forces", against select targets. This capacity, temporarily withheld, has not ceased to exist. It remains to be materialized when the FARC deems circumstances right. According to military analysts, the FARC’s strategy at this point in time consists of maintaining control of its peasant strongholds; and of gradually constructing "corridors of mobility", extending outwards from these zones, into new, strategically important parts of Colombia. "Corridors of mobility" refers to large tracts of country (and sometimes town) which have been, and are gradually being, brought under FARC influence, by means of political work, selective assassinations of uncooperative mayors and policemen, and the development of logistical support networks. Once consolidated, these corridors allow the guerrillas freedom of movement through enemy-held territory. FARC troops are able to pass through them, unobstructed, and many times undetected, on the way from their strongholds towards important targets; likewise, they are able to utilize the corridors to retire back to the safety of their strongholds, once their missions have been accomplished. For the guerrillas, the "corridors of mobility" are like highways cutting through the desert, like black rivers flowing through a white land, giving them access to targets they could never before have reached, and the potential to significantly elevate their strategic impact.

The FARC is definitely eyeing the possibility of beginning to threaten some of the more important urban areas of the nation from behind a closing ring of peasant zones, connected by "corridors of mobility." They are hoping, in the future, to be able to once again hit major targets with large mobile columns maneuvering through these corridors, while masking their true intentions with diversionary attacks and feints carried out by complementary guerrilla forces. They are hoping to one day develop the capacity to be able to blockade important towns and even cities, preventing all transport in and out, cutting off electricity and the water supply, while setting up ambushes of military units sent from the outside to relieve the defenders. They are also busy cultivating urban militias (milicias), recruited from poor urban youth, many of them under the age of 18. (In fact, all parties in the conflict in Colombia - guerrillas, paramilitaries, and the army - have been criticized by human rights groups for integrating "children" into their forces.) These milicias are not only "training grounds for future guerrillas", but are the basis for an armed urban presence which could theoretically be unleashed by the FARC in conjunction with assaults launched by peasant armies out of its "corridors of mobility."

As the FARC works on developing the human networks required to successfully implement this strategy, it continues to seek enhancing its military and technical capacities. It has recently been detected seeking training and advice from the IRA (the Irish Republican Army), which may be teaching it techniques of urban warfare, and advanced skills in the construction of land mines, and car bombs: all of which suggest an increased guerrilla interest in enhancing its potential to impact the urban environment. Additionally, the FARC has recently been detected attempting to buy 50-caliber anti-armor sniping rifles in the US. These powerful weapons, which can penetrate armor plating and even destroy aircraft, symbolize its desire to attain higher-level armaments which will make it more capable of meeting and defeating Colombian security forces in battle.

At this point in time, the FARC, ambitious as it is, is plagued by waves of paramilitary violence, which are disorganizing its peasant support network in many parts of the country by means of the intimidation, assassination and massacre of civilians. (The paramilitary phenomenon will be discussed later.) These same paramilitaries have also destroyed many FARC agents and potential sympathizers in civilian political groups in the cities, as well as important heads of the labor movement. These actions are curtailing the FARC’s ability to connect its military prowess to broader political movements (as the IRA was able to do through the Sinn Fein), and are short-circuiting the possibility that the FARC’s struggle might one day be transformed into a predominantly political one, backed by a revolutionary army, but not imposed by one. The FARC is already well-versed in the dangers of the "demobilized guerrilla", remembering the case of Guadalupe Salcedo and other Liberal guerrillas who put down their guns in the epoch of Rojas Pinilla, only to be assassinated when they came in from the monte. The same happened to M-19 chief Carlos Pizarro in 1990, when his response to an offer of amnesty and the chance to participate legally in politics turned out to be nothing more than a sophisticated trap. Like Zapata, Sandino, and Salcedo before him, he fell for the ideal of peace. Claimed by the violence he thought he had left behind, he was gunned down in cold blood on an Avianca jet. As some have said: "For the guerrilla, the olive branch is more deadly than the bullet." For this reason, veteran FARC commanders are not likely to accept any kind of negotiated settlement which involves them disarming and reintegrating into civilian society. Not unless, that is, they are so battered by the Colombian military that they feel they have no legs left to stand on (and surely not until the last of the wise old veterans, going back to the days of La Violencia, has passed away.) In fact, Colombia’s current president, Alvaro Uribe Velez, is attempting to do just that: to pound the guerrillas militarily until they are willing to crawl back to the negotiating table, and accept peace on his terms. After forty years of warfare, it is doubtful that he will succeed.

Nonetheless, enclosed within a circle of paramilitary fire, and with its image damaged by well-crafted propaganda, as well as by the consequences of its own actions, the FARC seems hemmed in these days, confined to the military aspects of its struggle without a clear way to gain mass political support. Frustration under these circumstances could lead it to impatience, and provoke it to take potentially disastrous risks; or drive it to increasingly desperate and callous tactics, such as an escalation in its kidnapping operations, or the deployment of urban car bombs, which could sink its already shaky image and destroy the ability of its military strength to transmit political results. Whether the FARC will be able to maintain its poise, and to salvage some shred of political savvy in the midst of an increasingly violent and lawless situation, remains to be seen.

One other development which the FARC does expect, at this time, and which it says it is preparing for, is the deployment of US troops in Colombia in the near future. US military advisers, soldiers, and "private security contractors" (aka mercenaries) are already present in Colombia, directing not only anti-narcotics operations, but also participating in counterinsurgency operations. However, the FARC is expecting this small "advance guard" of the US military to dramatically increase in size quite soon, as the US seeks to lend a helping hand to the Colombian government, which does not seem able to win the war on its own. Recognizing the military problem that would create, as the fighting capabilities of the US Army, Air Force, Marines, and Special Forces far surpass those of the Colombian army, the FARC nonetheless sees the political benefits which such an intervention could bring to it. For, as previously mentioned, Colombia has had a troubled historical relationship with the US, going back to the loss of Panama in 1903 and the massacre of Colombian workers on the banana plantations of the United Fruit Company in 1928. Many Colombians are very sensitive to the presence of the US in their country, in any form, and their nationalistic spirit would be inflamed by the arrival of American troops to fight fellow Colombians. They would interpret the intervention, even if it were well-meaning, as a disguised effort at eventual domination; they would not listen as faithfully as US television audiences to the noble-sounding words of a US president, but would rather look behind words such as "freedom" and "democracy" for other, less flattering motives; look for the shape of the gun behind the curtain. "What is it he really wants? Our oil? Our coal? Our cocaine?" (See "Conspiracy Theory: Colombia.") This reaction, properly harnessed by the FARC, could vastly amplify its limited political appeal, turn it into a symbol of nationalist resistance against the "foreign invader", and elevate it into a genuine threat to attain national power, if the US intervention could be weathered and outlasted. It is interesting to note that the central concept of Che Guevara’s ill-fated guerrilla expedition into Bolivia in 1967 was the idea that, if he could mount a strong enough challenge against the existing Bolivian regime, the US military would have to intervene on its behalf, inciting huge waves of anti-American sentiment which would envelope the guerrilla movement in a kind of nationalist aura and endow it with extraordinary political power. In that campaign, the key to the US quelling the Guevarist revolution was not to intervene directly, but rather, to train, arm, and advise Bolivian army units so that they could defeat Guevara by themselves.

Will the US, temporarily directed by leaders who are not known to be masters of the indirect approach, discard the proven effectiveness of subtlety? That, also, is an unknown. However, if America does choose to become directly involved in Colombia on a large scale, as it was previously involved in Vietnam and as it is currently involved in Iraq, the FARC is not the only armed group that it will have to contend with. There is also the ELN.

The ELN: Another Guerrilla Group

The ELN, or Ejercito Nacional de Liberacion (National Liberation Army), was born in the early 1960s as an "adoring response" to the Cuban Revolution. Colombian students and intellectuals who were inspired by Fidel Castro’s triumph over the Batista dictatorship in 1959 - by his nationalization of US-owned sugar mills and strong stand against "Yankee Imperialism", by his rhetoric on behalf of the poor, by his rejection of capitalism, and implementation of a socialist economy - traveled to Cuba in the early 1960s to seek political connections and military training. Among these students was Fabio Vazquez Castan~o, a member of the JMRL, or Juventud del Movimiento Revolucionario Liberal (Revolutionary Liberal Movement Youth). Another founding member of the ELN was Victor Medina Moron, a former member of the regional PCC in the Department of Santander. Other participants included former members of a failed guerrilla group known as MOEC, el Movimiento Obrero Estudiantil Campesino (the Worker-Student-Peasant Movement), which had attempted to link up with Liberal guerrillas/bandits operating in the Departments of Cauca and Vichada in the early 1960s, and essentially been decimated.

In Cuba, the would-be revolutionaries received sound political advice, important material support, expert training in the art of guerrilla warfare, and animo ("spirit"): for in Cuba was embodied the possibility of carrying out a successful revolution and creating a new socialist society from "out of the depths of the capitalist nightmare which the iron fist of Yanqui imperialism has imposed upon Latin America" (this is how they saw things in the haze of hope, creativity, and passion which colored the early days of the Cuban Revolution, if one was a leftist). For Latin American revolutionaries of that time, Cuba was like a miracle that proved the existence of God, inspired faith, and imparted the courage to act. They were youths, in every sense of the word.

Central to the Cuban mystique in those early days was the charismatic and ambitious presence of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, co-architect of the Cuban Revolution, and probably its most radical force. Guevara was actually a native of Argentina, a medical student and later doctor whose initial goals were to find a cure for allergies, and to treat and provide both medical and emotional support to lepers. Also an avid wanderer who could not withstand his own adventurous spirit, he traveled all about South America on his motorbike, leaving behind the comfort of his bourgeois background to confront (without intending to) the poverty and injustice which tormented his continent. Looking deeply into its eyes, he became a changed man. The asthma which afflicted him, and taught him the meaning of suffering in spite of the comfortable circumstances in which he had grown up, became connected to the powerful impressions created by his motorcycle journey through the mountains, deserts, towns and countryside of South America. In 1954, Guevara’s emotional drift towards political activism was ignited by the fact that he happened to be residing in Guatemala - hanging out with friends, surviving by doing odd jobs, searching for meaning and direction in life - at the very moment that General Castillo Armas, backed by the CIA and the United Fruit Company, launched a military coup against the democratically-elected, leftist government of Jacobo Arbenz. Suddenly, Guevara found himself in the midst of a period of violent repression which was aimed at dismantling the Guatemalan workers’ movement and putting an end to the agrarian reform which Arbenz had attempted to implement, by expropriating unused (reserve) lands held by the United Fruit Company, in order to distribute them to poor peasants. (At that time, Allen Dulles, a former member of United Fruit’s Board of Directors, was Director of the CIA, and his brother, John Foster Dulles, was US Secretary of State. This confluence of nepotism, naked self-interest, and military power was shocking to Latin American sensibilities, reinforcing the radical perspective that US pretensions of morality were purely hypocritical and disposable, and would be betrayed before they would be allowed to inhibit the true North American objectives of profit and domination. What happened in Guatemala convinced a whole generation of Latin American leftists, Guevara included, that their societies were not at liberty to be anything but appendages of US business interests and political decisions.) Guevara, briefly participating in futile militia activity on behalf of the toppled Guatemalan government, was forced to go into hiding and leave the country. Before he left, he must have heard Arbenz’s capitulation speech on the radio: "Someday, the dark forces that oppress the downtrodden colonial world will be beaten." Someday. Che determined to achieve someday in his own lifetime. Ending up in Mexico, the radicalized drifter synchronistically encountered Fidel Castro and a small nucleus of Cuban fighters who were preparing to sail back to Cuba, from exile, aboard a yacht known as the Granma, in order to begin a revolution against Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Che joined them in training under the guidance of Colonel Alberto Bayo, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), and became Bayo’s star pupil, standing out for his intelligence, alertness, and motivation. In 1956, Che accompanied the Cuban revolutionaries as the expedition’s doctor, but soon became its most effective military leader, directing the decisive battle against Santa Clara in 1958, which opened the way for the fall of Havana, and the installation of the revolutionary regime, in January 1959.

Unavoidably, Che’s keen intelligence and charisma catapulted him into a prominent role in Castro’s new government. Che, by now a committed Communist, was one of the main forces behind the government’s open move towards Marxism. Serving in various posts devoted to the economic and industrial development of Cuba via socialist means, he also established an international reputation on the basis of wide-sweeping diplomatic tours, eventually acquiring something like "rock star status" throughout much of the Western world, where 60s youth was in a period of exploring solidarity, and romanticizing revolution in the "Third World"; posters of Che would, in fact, become one of the most popular artifacts of leftist pop culture, earning Che a place on many walls, next to photos of John Lennon, Mick Jaegger and Jimi Hendrix.

Meanwhile, in the real world of revolution, Che began to encounter problems. His economic work for the Cuban government was hampered by inexperience (he was a brilliant man, but not a trained economist), and by an excess of idealism (he wished to implement an economy based upon the new man which he envisioned socialism would create, before that new man had yet been born, thereby overemphasizing volunteerism and moral incentives in the workplace). In cases bypassing pragmatic solutions for what he perceived to be ethical ones, which were ahead of their times or perhaps beyond human nature, he contributed to the disarray of the Cuban economy. In recognition of his limitations, he withdrew from his positions of formal power in the Cuban economy to concentrate more and more upon the idea of fostering revolutionary activity in other "oppressed countries." This objective was fed by a genuine sense of solidarity and internationalism which flowed through his veins; by a deep emotional desire to "liberate" his own country, Argentina, where he would no longer be in the bittersweet and oftentimes awkward position of being a beloved foreigner; and also by the realization that the revolution in Cuba, if not provided cover by other successful revolutions throughout the region, would remain isolated and exposed, too small to ever truly acquire political or economic independence. Just as Cuba had formerly been an appendage of the US, so Che could not help but see that it was now becoming highly dependent upon the Soviet Union. The Soviets now bought the sugar that the US was boycotting. The Soviets kept the Cuban economy afloat, allowing Castro’s economic experiment to survive in the face of hemispheric ostracism. They trained and armed the Cuban military. Soviet global power provided the ring of protection which inhibited the US from directly assaulting the vulnerable island, just 90 miles off its shore. In return for all these things, the Soviets expected absolute loyalty from Cuba. But Che, cursed as usual by his revolutionary idealism, could not comply. He found the Soviet Union’s relation towards the Third World to be too self-interested, too much driven by its own economic and political objectives instead of by real solidarity. He chided the USSR for this in public places. He also brushed aside Soviet objections to the use of armed revolutionary force in Latin America as a practical tool for achieving political change in the 1960s. As previously stated, the Soviets believed, at that particular moment of history, that Latin America was not yet ripe for revolution, and that Communist parties in the region should therefore concentrate on doing political work, and cooperating with other leftist and even centrist parties, in order to develop a larger mass appeal and create the potential for more fruitful action in the future. For Che, the Soviets were still prisoners of the concept of "Socialism in one country," which had first been championed by Stalin in the 1920s, after Lenin’s death. They had abandoned the earlier ideas of Marx, who believed that the proletarian revolution must be worldwide: that a single socialist nation could not exist for long in the middle of a sea of capitalist enemies. Perhaps, Che thought, the concept of "socialism in one country" might work for the Soviet Union, which had vast amounts of resources at its disposal - a veritable continent - and also controlled a buffer zone of satellite states in Eastern Europe to shelter it from the capitalist nations of the West. Cuba, however, was small and alone in the midst of a region dominated by the United States. It needed supporting revolutions to shield itself, a network of diplomatic empathy and economic cooperation if it were to thrive as a truly autonomous State. For the Soviets, these attitudes turned Che into an unreliable maverick, and many were not afraid to label him an "adventurist" and even a "Trotskyite." (Trotsky, before he was forced into exile, and Bukharin, before he was purged, were Stalin’s chief rivals for assuming power in the Soviet Union after the death of Lenin; Trotsky, like Che, was an ardent believer in world revolution, and remained a powerful symbol of Communist resistance to the Stalinist "betrayal of Communism", until he was assassinated in Mexico in 1940.) Che’s growing rift with the USSR (while remaining a firm enemy of the United States), created serious tensions in his relationship with Fidel Castro. Castro, as supreme leader of the Cuban revolutionary government, could not risk alienating the superpower that sustained him in the face of North American hostility, and felt compelled to tolerate the Soviets’ many faults in order to maintain the indispensable bond between the two nations. Che, a free spirit and a loose cannon, was starting to become a liability to him. Acutely sensitive to the damage his conscience was causing his cherished comrade (for there was great affection between Fidel and Che, although it was laced with a tinge of rivalry), and also most certainly pressured by officials close to Fidel, Che finally left Cuba altogether to pursue his dream of fomenting new revolutions in new places. He could be true to himself, avoiding the compromises he hated, without destroying a friend and a truly significant historical creation which he had participated in making.

Before Che’s departure for Africa in 1965 to assist African guerrillas fighting in the Congo, he had already attempted to pursue his dream of planting the seeds of revolution in other lands, working as a military planner behind the scenes with Fidel’s consent, and in spite of the Soviet Union’s displeasure. During this time, in the early 1960s, Che’s ideas, which were embraced, lauded and further diffused by French intellectual Regis Debray, represented the leading edge of Latin American guerrilla theory: his concepts of guerrilla war, explained in his memoirs, in various articles and speeches, and later consolidated into a manual, were given a special credibility due to his spectacular personal performance in the Cuban Revolution. His confidence was also hard to resist. Apart from numerous detailed and sound suggestions regarding guerrilla tactics, weaponry, equipment, communication, and politicization, which were of great value to the potential revolutionary, he offered to prospective guerrillas a bold new strategic doctrine, known as el foquismo - or the use of the revolutionary foco (center). According to Che’s new doctrine, extrapolated from his interpretation of the Cuban experience, it was not always necessary that the subjective conditions for a revolution exist (that is, that the people had already developed class consciousness and been properly organized) in order for a successful revolution to be launched. As long as the objective conditions for a revolution existed, he theorized - as long as the people were victimized by an unjust social structure and lived in poverty, and as long as they were repressed by a political system that was committed to the perpetuation of injustice - a determined group of well-trained guerrillas, injected into the environment, could awaken the people, and generate the subjective conditions necessary for the revolution to succeed. The mere presence of the guerrillas, embodying the spirit of resistance and offering the hope of change, could dramatize, to the people, the depths of their oppression and break through the numbness of their resignation to their dormant will to be free. In this way, the guerrillas would act as a revolutionary spark, igniting the sleeping potential of the masses, winning its trust through sacrifice and teaching it to fight back. Years of patient, methodical organizational groundwork - years in which millions would remain oppressed - years filled, like a cage, with those who were not yet able to be saved - years with more dying, with the present nailed to the cross of the future- could be bypassed, the revolution could be rescued from tomorrow and given to today. Foquismo was a shortcut to the future, a dream come true for the impatient, the tormented and the compassionate. As Che, in his writings on Guerrilla Warfare, put it dryly, almost in an innuendo, that would commit a generation: "It is not always necessary to wait until all the conditions for revolution exist: the insurrectional focus can create them."

From his offices in Havana, Che sought to put el foquismo into practice in the early 1960s. In 1963, he attempted to inject a foco into Peru. There, the badly-repressed descendants of the Incas lived under bitter conditions of exploitation and poverty, and, in fact, some very valuable political work had already been done in the region of the intended foco by Hugo Blanco, a radical Peruvian peasant organizer who was not a part of the project planned in Havana. The would-be guerrilla force, which sought to connect with the human base Blanco had unwittingly prepared for it, was destroyed by inexperience. It was infiltrated, and met by Peruvian security forces at Puerto Maldonado, where it was shot to pieces while attempting to cross a river. Among the dead was Peru’s award-winning poet-turned-guerrilla, Javier Heraud.

In that same year, 1963, another foquista movement engineered from Havana was shattered. This time it happened in Argentina, Che’s homeland, as Argentine journalist- turned-guerrilla Jorge Ricardo Masetti and his small band of armed men, were discovered, engaged, and destroyed, bit by bit, by Argentine security forces. Masetti himself simply disappeared into the wilderness, defeated by Nature, never to be heard from again. As one fellow journalist wrote: "He just vanished into the jungle, into the rain and into time. In some unknown spot the body of ‘Commander Segundo’ holds a rusty gun."

These defeats hinted at a crucial weakness of el foquismo, but did not prove it: which was that the guerrilla nucleus, injected into an environment not yet emotionally ready or intellectually prepared to receive it, would, until it could persuade the people to join it in body and soul, be operating under conditions of extreme vulnerability, exposed to the full force of military pursuit without the developed network of support which typically shelters the guerrilla and enables him to survive that pursuit. For a time, the fish would be without a sea. Che, who lost a friend in Masetti, may have felt the sting of being behind a desk while his protégé died, and felt the need to put his own life on the line to put his theory to a conclusive test; or perhaps he thought that he, himself, was needed to "get it right." Disillusioned by the military and cultural circumstances which he encountered in the Congo - never really able to interface with his allies there or to have the impact he desired - Che withdrew towards the end of 1965, and prepared to launch a new revolutionary venture, this time in the jungles of Bolivia. By late 1966, disguised as a bourgeois bureaucrat (properly equipped with false documents manufactured by Cuban intelligence), Che was ready to infiltrate Bolivia and begin the installation of a guerrilla foco which he hoped would change the course of history.

The Cuban Revolution, from which Che, the revolutionary icon, emerged, had first taken hold in a rugged mountain range known as the Sierra Maestra, where the peasants were receptive and the government was hampered by the terrain. For years, Che had been dreaming of turning the Andes into "the Sierra Maestra of South America." He had said it, and deepened his commitment to it by putting it on paper. He was, in other words, dreaming of initiating a "continental revolution", a Communist version of Simon Bolivar’s gigantic 19^th -century revolt which liberated Latin America from Spain. This time, the colonial power to be "overthrown" was the US, which Che and many other Latin American radicals believed was behind the unjust oligarchies and repressive dictatorships which reigned over the nations of their continent. Che’s plan was to enter Bolivia with a core of well-trained Cuban fighters (he brought 16); to link up with locally recruited Bolivian fighters, supplied to him by the local Communist Party (he received 29); to incorporate other international fighters, as well (he was joined by 3 Peruvians, and a female East German agent); to set up a base camp in a remote jungle region of Bolivia (he chose Nancahuazu in the region of Santa Cruz); to train and physically condition his guerrilla troops, as they explored the terrain and prepared to initiate operations; to begin to reach out to the local peasantry and recruit new fighters; to also recruit new fighters from, and enhance supply and finance networks through, Bolivian cities and mining districts; to initiate combat operations against Bolivian security forces; to follow the path of growth and expansion experienced by the Cuban Revolution; and to eventually threaten the Bolivian government so seriously, that direct United States military intervention would be required to prevent him from taking over the country. (As the US had sent marines to Santo Domingo as recently as 1965 in order to "restore order" there, Che was sure they would also send troops against him.) As previously explained, North American intervention was expected to provoke a huge nationalist backlash throughout Latin America, elevating the political importance of Che’s revolutionary movement and endowing it with a patriotic appeal that would vastly enhance its ability to recruit new fighters, as well as giving impetus to the formation of new guerrilla focos throughout the continent. Since the US was simultaneously fighting a major war in Vietnam, Che expected that this escalation of the struggle would "overload its repressive capacities", and finally cause a breakdown in its ability to "maintain its Empire." As Che himself said, "let there be two, three, many Vietnams." The "Third World" was going to gang tackle the giant.

Unfortunately for Che, however, his grand plan was never able to emerge from the fragility of its opening stages. This was the deadly flaw of el foquismo. There were blunders committed by his urban support team, which was uncovered and dismantled as a result, leaving him pretty much stranded in an isolated part of Bolivia where his friends could not reach him, and the peasants were slow to warm up to him. His well- constructed and well-stocked base camp was approached too closely by security forces, and he was forced to give battle prematurely, winning the first engagement decisively, but exposing himself before he was ready to operate. He had no choice but to abandon his camp, losing valuable equipment and sensitive information in the process. From then on, his guerrilla column wandered about the jungle, winning military engagements, but failing to obtain significant support from the peasants, who would not trust strangers so quickly, nor so easily cross the cultural divide which separated Cubans from indigenous Bolivians. Conditions degenerated still further when the guerrilla column split in two, then failed to effect a reunion, leaving its strength divided. Productive strategy was replaced by days spent by the two halves vainly searching for each other. Finally, indirect US assistance to the Bolivian government, which included the provision of military equipment, the training of new Bolivian Ranger units, and the sharing of intelligence information gathered by plane and satellite, raised the fighting capacity of the Bolivian security forces to the point where they could handle Che’s guerrilla forces on their own. On August 31, 1967, the smaller of the two guerrilla columns was destroyed in an army ambush. On October 8, 1967, Che’s column was trapped at Quebrada del Yuro, and except for a small group of survivors who were able to escape, annihilated. Che himself was wounded and captured. After some hours of interrogation, and rudimentary medical attention, he was executed early in the afternoon of October 9, then reported dead as "a result of combat." El foquismo, given one last opportunity to prove itself in the hands of its creator, died with Che, leaving many Latin American revolutionaries traumatized and at a loss. Some even retracted from the concept of the rural guerrilla altogether, and, like the Tupamaros of Uruguay, began to experiment with the idea of the urban guerrilla. Discredited, now, as a theorist, Che lived on as an example of revolutionary conviction, idealism and sincerity, admired, for those qualities, even by those who disagreed with him and killed him. He had passed from the realm of the living and the flawed, into the realm of those who die for their beliefs. He had apologized to Javier Heraud, to Jorge Masetti, and to the infinite masses he could not save, by becoming a martyr. As a ghost, Che continued to fight and to lead: new generations of revolutionaries who abandoned his methods, became his troops. Even the Bolivian peasants who did not rise up to join him when he was among them, pray to him now beside photos of his life-like, bullet-ridden corpse with its beautiful eyes staring into space. "Little soul of Che, please help me in my time of need, please grant me this miracle…"

In 1964, however, as the ELN was just being born in Colombia, Che and his theory of the foco insurrecional were still very much alive, and in their prime. Fabio Vazquez Castano, Victor Medina Moron and others who had been inspired by the Cuban example and trained by Cuban fighters in Cuba, moved into the countryside in the Department of Santander in that year to begin to organize their revolution against the Colombian government. Their attempts to form links with the FARC at this time failed, as the FARC, which was connected to the PCC, distrusted the new guerrilla entity. Nonetheless, the revolutionaries did succeed in linking up with some former Liberal guerrillas who had fighting experience, a knowledge of the terrain, and some connections in the region. The ELN, which was spawned from the foquista movement, and created in the spirit of foquismo, was lucky to be able to inject itself into a region that already had a history and tradition of armed peasants and combat; a region which was endowed with a psychology alert to repression, and fully motivated to fight back when threatened. This does not mean that the locals rushed to join the ELN as soon as it appeared in their midst. But they understood where it was coming from, and did not shut it out; there was a certain shared culture that made collaboration plausible. No doubt, this is what saved the ELN from becoming just another failed foco, just another fragile match with its tiny flash of newborn light unable to stand up to the wind of reality. In January 1965, the ELN engaged in its first military action, the taking of the town of Simacota, which really amounted to nothing more than the appearance of a few guerrilla fighters in the surprised plaza in order to distribute copies of their revolutionary manifesto. Other small-scale and basically unimpressive actions followed. The guerrilla group had made itself known, but had little demonstrable power and seemed to lack a significant political base. That is, until, it was able to effect its extraordinary connection with a charismatic young priest turned radical, el padre (Father) Camilo Torres Restrepo.

For Latin America, ever since the very first step a Spanish conquistador took upon its shore, the Roman Catholic faith had been a cultural force of tremendous power, and those who served it had, consequently, been endowed with a special power, which was traditionally utilized to justify and fortify the elites, but which occasionally, when it was given with political awareness to the poor, became revolutionary.

In the very beginning, of course, the Cross was used as a moral justification for the unsheathing of the sword. "God" was used, by Spanish adventurers, to mask their naked desire for plunder and power: heathen Indians who stood in the way of the spread of the Christian faith must die, so that the souls of their descendants might be "saved" by the religion imposed by their conquerors. As Eduardo Galeano describes the strange formula of malice, thinly coated with benevolence, by which men with vastly superior weapons were able to bear their crimes, as they pillaged and yoked a continent to their appetites: "…before each military action the captains of the conquest were required to read to the Indians, without an interpreter but before a notary public, a long and rhetorical Requerimiento exhorting them to adopt the holy Catholic faith: ‘If you do not, or if you maliciously delay in so doing, I certify that with God’s help I will advance powerfully against you and make war on you and wherever and however I am able, and will subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and of their majesties and take your women and children to be slaves, and as such I will sell and dispose of them as their majesties may order, and I will take your possessions and do you all the harm and damage that I can.’ " (Open Veins of Latin America, p. 23.) As African natives later said of the Europeans who came to colonize them in the 19^th Century: "When you first came, we had the land and you had the Bible. Now we have the Bible, and you have the land." Throughout the Americas, the defeated Native cultures were politically and economically mastered, and harnessed for the enrichment of Spain (by institutions such as slavery, the encomienda, and the mita). Socially, culturally, and spiritually, they were likewise hurled into an abyss; their way of life was disorganized, in cases eradicated, their religions were repressed. Not only were the barbaric features of some indigenous faiths (such as the human sacrifice practiced by the Aztecs) outlawed, but other utterly innocent and uplifting aspects of Native spirituality were also assaulted, and driven underground by the ferocious intolerance of the Inquisition. In 1562, in one classic episode reminiscent of the Nazi book-burnings of 1933, Bishop Diego de Landa ordered hundreds of Maya manuscripts seized in the Yucatan and cast into a giant bonfire "because they contained nothing in which there was not to be seen superstition and lies of the Devil." Confused, bewildered by the unsustainable velocity of the collapse of their inner and outer universe, by the strangeness and loneliness of having to persist in el mundo al reves, "the upside-down world"; wounded by the terrible inferiority complex which was driven into their hearts by the sight of their burning temples, their broken armies lying vanquished on the ground, their raped women coming home with swollen bellies, turned into new citadels of the enemy; their inner lives thrown into utter turmoil; feeling "let down" by their Gods, who could not stop the Spanish armies, nor ward off the apocalypse of plagues that seemed to fall from Heaven upon their heads as soon as the Spaniards came, the Native population of the Americas was desperate for something to redeem it, for something to console it. In the ruins of everything it had believed in and lived for, it was ripe for a rebirth of hope. Paradoxically, it was the Catholic Church, the excuse of those who had come to conquer, which would provide that hope.

The message of hope that the Catholic Church brought to the subjected Native peoples of Latin America was not utterly hypocritical, because, working within the Church there were not only manipulators and fanatics, but also true men of faith and compassion whose sincerity touched the battered peoples they encountered. There were friars like Bartolome de las Casas, who passionately argued on behalf of the Indians, insisting that they had souls after all, and that they therefore ought to be protected against slavery and treated as subjects of Spain, rather than mere beasts of labor. (His efforts helped lead to the abolition of Indian slavery, although the Indians continued to be exploited by feudal institutions, while Africans were imported to take their place as slaves.) There were also men like Jose de Acosta, who raged against de Landa and all those like him for disrespecting the achievements of Native culture, and uncritically treating any trace of Native spirituality, philosophy, or science which they came across as "sorcery" which must be expunged from the history of humanity. Besides figures such as de las Casas and Acosta, there were multitudes of hard-working, earnest priests and church-workers who felt tenderness and genuine love for the indigenous people their countrymen had so shamefully mistreated (although this love was frequently tainted by cultural bias and a strong degree of paternalism). For a pain-filled people, Catholic images of the tragic, suffering Jesus, lover of the poor, and of the Virgin Mary, goddess of infinite tenderness and acceptance, forever grieving over the bloody body of her unjustly murdered son, were powerful icons of solidarity and consolation in the midst of a great collective nightmare. "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted," were words that reached the heart of their despair. In addition to this natural resonance between the Catholic faith and the deeply-hurt soul of Native Latin America, the Church’s flexibility regarding some aspects of its doctrine and appearance led, over time, to a strange fusion of Christian and indigenous beliefs, which preserved the outer forms and rituals of the Christian faith, while allowing Native peoples to inject some of the substance of their original spiritual beliefs into those forms and rituals. This process, known as el sincretismo (syncretism), was a kind of spiritual compromise which allowed the Church in Latin America to retain social control of religion, and to keep the power of religion in their hands, while facilitating the emotional access of subjugated Native peoples to that religion, which might otherwise have seemed too alien to fully commit themselves to. The classic case of syncretism in Latin America is the phenomenon of la Virgen de Guadalupe (the "Virgin of Guadalupe"), who was actually an "indianization" of the Virgin Mary, which allowed the conquered descendants of the Aztecs to worship her with a special enthusiasm and sense of familiarity, finally breaking down the ice that had existed between them and the Church of their conquerors. (According to legend, a baptized Aztec peasant, Juan Diego Cuauhtlahtoatzin, while passing by Tepeyac Hill, where a shrine to the Aztec goddess Tonantzin had once stood, came upon the apparition of an Indian woman shining with light and radiance. She told him that she was the Virgin Mary, and that she wished for a temple to be built for her upon this hill. She urged him to bring her message to the Bishop; but the sight of the humble peasant did not impress this religious authority enough to believe in the apparition, and he therefore demanded that Juan Diego bring him some form of proof. Feeling unworthy of the task he had been given, and wishing to escape from it, Juan Diego subsequently attempted to avoid the Virgin by changing the route of his daily path. But she came down from Tepeyac hill and gently chastised him, urging him not to give up. She then gave him the sign which the Bishop required: on the hill, Juan Diego found many roses blooming where before, there had been only cacti and mesquite. Picking some, and bundling them up in his mantle, he hastily returned to the Bishop. When he opened up the mantle to let the fresh roses fall out at the Bishop’s feet, everyone present was stunned to behold not only the roses, but also the image of la Virgen de Guadalupe, which had become supernaturally emblazoned upon the garment. The Bishop relented, and the temple the Virgin wanted was built. The Catholic hierarchy and bureaucracy gave in to the aberration, legitimized and sanctioned Juan Diego’s discovery, and accepted la Virgin de Guadalupe as a special manifestation assumed by the Virgin Mary in order to win the trust and devotion of the Aztec people. For Church leaders, it did not really matter if the first Aztec worshippers in the new temple at Tepeyac believed that Mary was really Tonantzin, coming back to stand beside them in their misfortune by adopting a form they would not be kept away from. The Bishop had got the Indians into the Church, by letting them give Mary a dark face. Within a few generations, their absorption by Christianity would be complete.) Thanks to the new faith’s special appeal to the oppressed and the afflicted - and thanks to the powerful concession of syncretism, which allowed Natives (and later Africans) to preserve important elements of their own faiths within the new one - the Catholic Church survived indigenous efforts, such as the Taki Onqoy revival of 1560s Peru, to overthrow it, and gradually consolidated its position as the singular spiritual resource of Latin America (only in more recent times has this monopoly been challenged by the rise of alternative, "evangelical" Christian sects).

The Church, however, remained a being of two faces in its new stronghold. It was at the same time a source of hope and spiritual renewal for millions of people living in hardship, and a bastion of the rich and the powerful, propagating elite control of society by preaching passivity to the masses. Resignation, fatalism, the surrender of the earth to the unjust so that a greater reward in Heaven might be attained by those who did not stain their souls by fighting back, were promoted. Biblical quotes were used as shields to defend the strong, by indoctrinating the weak to remain weak - to destroy the strength of the people’s valor with the strength of their endurance:

"Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven… Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth." (Matthew 5: 3, 5)

"Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." (Matthew 5: 38-39)

"Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy.

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven; for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans do the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." (Matthew 5: 43-48)

"For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." (Matthew 6: 14-15)

When only revolution seemed possible to right an earthly wrong, the barricade of the commandment, given by God to Moses, was erected in the path of the will to be free: "Thou shalt not kill." (Exodus 20: 13) While the spirit of revolution was given a new place, Heaven, and a new time, after one’s death, to defuse its earthly impetus: "So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen." (Matthew 20: 16) El mundo al reves was to be righted by God on the other side of a long and exploited life. There the powerful would finally fall, the cruel would finally be humbled, the rich would be damned, the revolution would triumph. All one had to do to attain justice was to live according to the Christian virtues, especially acquiescence. Justice was not dead, it was merely hidden behind the mask of one savage day. Patience was the weapon that would set one free.

While this mindset helped millions to psychologically survive the impotence thrust upon them by the superior power of the elites, it drove others who were more active and combative, or perhaps only less demoralized, into fits of rage. Like Marx, who called religion the "opiate of the masses", they saw the Catholic Church as one gigantic apparatus of brainwashing, designed to mentally enslave the multitudes so that they would not rise up to challenge their oppressors. They saw the Church as the ideological complement to the repressive police and militaries wielded by the elites, and an even more effective instrument of domination that guns and bullets, because it did not leave a trail of blood in the street, or leave the fields filled with the dead and no one left to tend them: it stole the mind, but spared the body to serve. In Biblical terms, it might be said: "How can one enter into a strong man’s house, and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man? and then he will spoil the house." (Matthew 12: 29) By binding the mind of the masses with religion, the elites were able to break into the house of the people and to steal everything of value.

In addition to this perception of the Church as the ideological prop of egotistic elites (both before and after the Bolivarian wars of independence), the Church, throughout much of Latin American history, was also a major landholder. The huge concentration of wealth which it gathered into its hands over time outraged the religious sensibilities of many, just as it had outraged Europeans in the 16^th Century, when figures such as Martin Luther arose to unleash the Protestant Reformation. It also had serious economic and social consequences. In the same way that landless peasants grew resentful of the accumulation of vast properties in the hands of the hacendados - properties from which they were excluded - so the hoarding of land by the Church became a major aggravation for those who were struggling to feed their families. The confluence of these two negative perceptions - that of the Church as a mental bulwark of the rich, which had betrayed its duty to the poor, and that of the Church as a hoarder of wealth, whose abundance was impoverishing the masses - produced radical consequences at various moments in Latin American history, most notably during the Mexican Revolution (beginning 1910) and the Cuban Revolution (which assumed power in1959). In the case of Mexico, the clash with the Church came to a head in the 1920s as several anti-clerical provisions in the revolutionary Constitution began to be enforced by the State, in its effort to diminish Church influence in the realm of politics and education. The attack was not against religion itself, but against a rival internal source of power. It nonetheless sparked a furious backlash known as the Cristero Rebellion, a kind of civil war characterized by a surprising brutality. In one instance, a Cristero army accompanied by priests dynamited the train between Mexico City and Guadalajara, killing over one hundred passengers, in the name of bringing God back into the center of Mexican life. Later, compromises between Church and State were made, but into the 1930s, in many parts of Mexico, organized religion was still looked upon with intense suspicion as a potential instrument of right-wing subversion, and the number of priests allowed to practice their craft was severely restricted. All through this period, the Mexican people continued to pray to Jesus, the Virgin, and the spirits of the dead, to light their candles, to worship and maintain their faith. Once again, the struggle was not about religion: it was about the institution of the Catholic Church and its relation to the State.

In Cuba, after Castro came to power, the Church was subjected to similar efforts of containment. Religion was cut back, like jungle growth, to open up the path to a future that was to be built upon the rational principles of socialism. But this was only the coating of the motive. Communism, supposedly a Science, was always actually more of a religion, and like all religions, it was not enamored of competition; it therefore sought to diminish Christianity so that it could capture the flock. In order to fill a spiritual void, it must first create a spiritual void, and so it sought to limit and erode the influence of the Church. It also viewed the Church as a likely portal for the forces of counterrevolution, which must be closed. The Church survived in Cuba, but under pressure and under scrutiny. As in the case of Mexico, the people’s spirituality remained intact in spite of the conflict between Church and State. Los indigenas of Mexico and los africanos of Cuba were too spiritual for there to be any other result. Liberal/radical State, conservative Church: the people remained in the middle with God.

As time went on, however, familiar Church dynamics acquired a new dimension: powerful currents of change began to appear in the Christian universe, as more and more priests began to dream of breaking free from the Church’s association with repressive elites, from its tradition of whitewashing the world of the wealthy and powerful and abandoning the poor to the afterlife. At Vatican II, or the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, which was opened in 1962 by Pope John XXIII, and closed in 1965 by Pope Paul VI, the seeds of change were planted. A liberal wind swept through the Catholic world as leading church figures agreed to many reforms and changes in attitude, including a new commitment to improving man’s earthly existence, in addition to their previous vocation of preparing him for the world to come. Out of the spirit which was awakened by Vatican II would eventually evolve the radical Christian movement known as "Liberation Theology", protagonized by such figures as Gustavo Gutierrez of Peru, Helder Camara and Leonardo Boff of Brazil, Ernesto Cardenal of Nicaragua, and Oscar Romero of El Salvador. Liberation theologians were a highly diverse group of sociospiritual activists who did not always come to the same conclusions; and yet, most began from the same starting point, which was that the emphasis of Christianity, as it was preached and directed into the world, must shift from that of Jesus’ capacity to suffer and bear persecution, to that of Jesus’ passion to serve the poor. For this interpretation, they found as many compelling Biblical references as had the proponents of forbearance, the champions of "turning the other cheek." Among them:

"If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me." (Matthew 19:21)

"Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich an to enter into the kingdom of God." (Matthew 19: 23-24)

"No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other: or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." (Matthew 6: 24)

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor." (Luke 4: 18-19)

Jesus’ reaching out to the afflicted - his extraordinary healings of lepers, cripples, the blind, the "possessed", and the grief-stricken - were taken to be signs of his enormous love of Man, which ought to be emulated, not postponed. While preaching to a great mass of people beside the Sea of Galilee, Jesus said to his disciples: "I have compassion on the multitude, because they continue with me now for three days, and have nothing to eat: and I will not send them away fasting, lest they faint in the way." (Matthew 15: 32) This is when Jesus produced his great miracle of "multiplying the loaves", transforming the seven loaves of bread which he and his disciples