F.A.R.C. a Movement lost in the Jungles of Columbia

Columbia even before the days of Bolivar has been a country of great beauty and wealth as well as sorrow and poverty. As time goes on, all of these factors have increased. This sorrow includes the drug cartel wars that have plagued the country for decades as well as the lesser known civil war between leftist guerillas (FARC) and the Columbian army. Although the war is over, the causes for this war are still around and continue to haunt Columbia with the possibility of another war breaking out never far away.

Written 12th of May, 2016

Columbia is one of the most beautiful countries in the world; high and vibrant mountains, exotic jungles and beautiful beaches great for fishing and tourism. It is also home to the “longest civil war in the western hemisphere”. In the jungles of Columbia for the last fifty years, there has been a movement and it is still going on; one that has yet to be diminished and one that has been claimed by white powder, jungle rot, time and blood. It is the leftist guerrilla movement in Columbia. The world faintly knows it by the group who wages it, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia a.k.a. F.A.R.C. and it is a movement that has shaken Columbia as well as other countries, shaking Columbia to its political and economic core. This paper will argue that the heart, cause and continuation of this war are of economics, politics and of old colonial mind sets which started this war and how understanding these things can end it. 

The Columbian conflict started on the heels of another conflict known as “La Violencia”, translated to mean “the violence”. From 1948 to 1958, liberal and conservative parties fought for control of the Columbian government which left over one million dead. In 1958 an agreement came to be where both liberal and conservative parties would get a say in the newly formed government. However there were parts of the parties that were left out, in particular, the peasant part of the liberal party was excluded from the government. After being the subject of assignations, the peasant party took its’ adopted Marxist ideology and then took to the jungles to live in their own semi-autonomous colony, around the town of Marquetalia. They believed they could set up a self-sufficient, local government to help the people of the area. Long story short, the Columbian government did not like this and they saw it as an insurgency. So they sent the Columbian military to crush the colony in an operation known as, “Operation Marquetalia”.  The operation was meant to root out the rebels in Columbia by means of delivering both economic relief and using military force. But military force is what seemed to be primarily used. Now it was not a story of totalitarian government forces coming to exterminate innocent civilians, there had been a history of skirmishes between the two sides before, but nothing quite as extreme as what was to come. On May 28, 1964 the Columbian army, expecting light to no resistance attacked the inhabitants of the colony. But much to the military’s dismay, they walked into a hornet’s nest of resistance, forcing the military to retreat back to their bases and pushing the colonists turned rebels out into the jungles.  

For the next fifty years, this war would sway back in forth in the favor of each side. But never was there a clear indication of which side triumphed over the other. This helped continue the violence and in the process, both sides committed war crimes. What also kept the violence continuing for so long was FARC’s guerrilla tactics. Although their numbers range in the thousands, their forces are not consolidated in one specific territory or city. They are spread out in small mobile groups never staying in the same place for more than a few days making them nearly impossible to track. Another thing that makes taking FARC down hard for the Columbian military, is the fact that F.A. R.C. is an umbrella organization. An umbrella organization is an organization that has a bunch of branches coordinating underneath them and working with each other, and F.A.R.C. has sixty of them. 

“Colombia’s largest rebel group FARC, is divided into blocks. These blocks consist of fronts that operate from specific regions throughout Colombia. A front can have between 96 and 300 fighters and is divided in columns (96 fighters), companies (48 fighters), guerrillas (24 fighters) and squads (12 fighters)”. The tactics they all use are things such as ambushes and mortar attacks to bombings and kidnapping. This complex, mobile lightly armed, assortment of rebel groups has been one of the main reasons that the Columbian Army has not been able to end F.A.R.C. The Columbian Military on the other hand is a more traditional military organization using patrols, bombing raids and ambushes to combat F.A.R.C. However, when that didn’t work, violent and somewhat criminalistic paramilitary forces were used to do the really dirty work of the military.  

As the war continued into the eighties, the war started involving drugs. The jungle is one place that is perfect for a huge drug operation and those who operated in these jungles were F.A.R.C.  In the mists of the drug war in the eighties, rebel groups like F.A.R.C.  were used also as hitmen by the cartels. One instance is the M-19 assault on the Palace of Justice. After the fall of drug lords like Pablo Escobar, the F.A.R.C. took over the drug operations in Columbia in order to finance their war against the Columbian Military and the American Government. Along with drug trafficking, they also dealt in kidnapping and murder for hire. All this money went to fund their Revolution against the Columbian government and their imperial U.S. backers. 

For the first two decades, the U.S. government was helping fight the F.A.R.C. because of their war on communistic influences in the western hemisphere. However, it soon became more about the deadlier, “war on drugs”. A 2009 U.S. report estimated that F.A.R.C. supplied 60% of the cocaine trafficked into the United States. The profits from this lucrative business went to supplying F.A.R.C.s’ war effort. Profits also supplied the areas they controlled with goods and services such as medical supplies; supplies that the government had not been able to provide. After the eighties, the Columbian Civil War turned into a bloody stand still with no side able to exterminate the other. The use of violent paramilitaries by the Columbian Military and the indiscriminate bombings by F.A.R.C. only continued to escalate this war.  But within the last ten years the two sides have begun to have peace talks and in 2015, a cease fire was implemented between the two parties. While this ceasefire is in place, the two have meet in Havana to have peace talks which have shown great success so far, with F.A.R.C. disarming all child soldiers and helping deactivate land mines in their territory. The Columbian Government has released several prisoners and has pardons ready for the rebels and their leadership, not just from the Columbian government but also from the U.S. This is the jest of the history of the civil war in Columbia but the political details still remain to be told about what started this war and why it continued for so long.

The politics of this war “begins with the peasant struggles of the 1920s and 1930s. Peasant and indigenous groups organized in response to harsh working conditions imposed on day-workers by coffee plantation owners and conflicts over land tenure”. This struggle would play a major role in La Violencia (1948-1958), where leftist groups fought right wing groups for control of the government. To end the war, both sides agreed to share power .However, they left out the peasant class who were on the far left side of the political movement creating discontent and unrest and giving rise to the group we now know as F.A.R.C.  Part of the agreement known as the National Front excluded communist groups which included the peasants and said that they were not allowed to participate. This came to no surprise to the peasants because they were used to it. In the colonial period, they had been stepped on and left out of anything related to politics. In colonial times if you were of African or native decent, you were on the lowest tier of the social ladder; with no say so in how the government was run or how you would be treated by the higher ups. These higher ups were of Spanish decent and were known racially and socially as the “Creoles”. In the early 1800s the peasant class helped in the overthrow of the Spanish empire, but things still remained the same for them.  Fast forward to the 1950s, and it was clear the peasants were not going to take it anymore. “La Violencia” gave them the power and knowledge to fight back against the government. The peasants were determined to live how they wanted to live and not by how a government said they were to live, especially one that did not represent them. Many believe that by excluding the peasant party from being a part of the government, it caused this war in the first place. 

While on the subject of representation, lack of representation in the government was a major factor in the economy of almost every Latin American country. Whether its gang violence or violent revolution, the economy plays a very key role. If people can’t get good paying jobs, they try to find employment in anything that will pay well regardless of whether it’s legal or moral. The argument for why economy is so important lies within F.A.R.C. and the Columbian jungles itself. If you look at the area that F.A.R.C. operates in, it is predominately rural poor jungles areas. One of the main reasons that F.A.R.C. started was that these rural areas were being neglected by the Columbian Government. This is where F.A.R.C. started its, “goal of creating a society in which the needs and concerns of the rural population would be addressed”.  This goal helped keep F.A.R.C. alive in the areas that they controlled. The peasants received jobs, protection from bandits and corporations, infrastructure and above all else hope for a better future. The average F.A.R.C. member comes from a poor family, predominantly from the peasant class. They can be either male or female and they are disenfranchised with the current government. 

The drug business is very much ingrained in the areas that F.A.R.C. controls and the continuation of a poor economy explains why the drug business will be hard to change. For many farmers, growing food crops and getting them to market is not very profitable but growing cocaine is incredibly profitable. The average cocaine grower can make ten times what a regular farmer can grow. Profitability to farmers has to be addressed in order to make a peace deal between F.A.R.C. and the Columbian government, and it has to be everlasting in order to prevent ex rebels from falling back into old habits. 

  While all of the major parties want peace, there is still a small problem of new rebel groups forming and old hostilities continuing. One thing to remember about war is that the longer it goes on the harder it is to let the war go even when the guns go silent. Some problems cannot be solved by cease fires and handshakes. “More than seven million people have registered with the government's Victim's Unit. The vast majority have been internally displaced by the violence, but many have also been kidnapped, threatened, injured by landmines or forcibly disappeared”. The war took many lives and it will be hard to get things stable in all ways but the victims will get justice and the peace deal is trying to make sure to stop any uprisings like this from happening again. The challenges don’t just pertain to healing the victim’s scars, they also pertain to the controlling the warring factions. Along with F.A.R.C., there are other groups that could continue to fight such as the E.L.N. or splinter groups of rebels that refuse to take part in the peace negotiations. On the other side, there is a more pressing matter of preventing the para militaries from killing ex F.A.R.C. rebels when they disarm. The para militaries are known to be used by the Columbian government to commit crimes that the Columbian military could not, such as “carrying out massacres and assassinations, and targeting left-wing activists who speak out against them”. Jaquin Gomez, one of the leaders of the F.A.R.C. says that, “in order for F.A.R.C. to truly lay down their arms is for para militarism to end as a state’s policy”.  The way to fully end the conflict and gain ever lasting peace is to deal with these violent and unpredictable groups but addressing them is a good start. 

The various factors and conditions are front stage in the peace negotiations between the Columbian Government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (F.A.R.C.). The factors are politics, economy, abolishing the old colonial mind set and stopping Columbia from being dragged into another war. What makes the factor of politics in this war so important is what is currently being discussed at the peace negotiations in Havana, Cuba. In fact, F.A.R.C. will be given political representation and a party of their own. This is a huge breakthrough and draw for F.A.R.C. for the peace process giving F.A.R.C. the political representation that it wanted for so many years. As for the economy, the Columbian government has agreed to implement land reforms pertaining to economic and social development of rural areas with the provision of land to poor farmers in exchange for F.A.R.C. helping eradicate illegal crops and drug trafficking. “With 4.6 percent growth in 2014, the country is already one of the region's fastest-growing economies. Tourism, which has risen as violence has declined, has driven some of the expansion”. The areas that have been a part of the ceasefire between F.A.R.C. and the Columbian government have actually seen much uplift in profitability and this has continually provided incentive for both sides to work out a peace deal.

The most crucial part of a peace deal is about reintegrating rebels into civilian life, transitional justice, excluding those who have committed the most serious crimes, reparations and rebel disarmament. All very hard things to do for both sides considering some rebels have been fighting for decades and have not known anything different. Also another problem is soldiers and rebels seeing each other as human beings rather than monsters. But most of them just want the war to end. These are all crucial parts of the peace deal and they are what will help keep the peace and prevent some other group from starting another war.

One way to describe the Columbian civil war is a boomerang war. It goes right back to where it ends and starts. The start of this war is one of economics, politics and of old colonial mind sets. This war may have started with the Columbian military hunting communist guerrillas in jungles but it has changed into a war of how Latin America can better itself in more ways than one. This war digs deep into the heart of Latin America and its history. By understanding the reasons for the start of the Columbian Civil War and how it can end could hold the key for everlasting peace in Columbia and the rest of Latin America. 

Bibliography

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