Derrick Calloway's List: FARC

• Of all the existing urban guerrilla movements, however, few have achieved the notoriety or significance of Uruguay’s Tupamaros. They have become perhaps the most effective such movement in all Latin America and are emulated in many respects by similar groups elsewhere. In an attempt to explain the objectives, strategy, and significance of what many regard as the archetype of the modem urban guerrilla movement, Maria Esther Gilio, an Argentine journalist, has written a book, The Tupamaro Guerrillas.*
• These advantages include a multiplicity of terrorist targets, such as government officials, diplomatic personnel, prominent business firms, etc., which, if attacked, guarantee instant and widespread publicity for the guerrilla movement at home and abroad. Furthermore, the cities provide a readily available source of material and facilities such as food, medical care, transportation, and communications, all of which are essential for a viable insurgent movement.
• In addition to urbanization and the concentration of radical student and intellectual elements in metropolitan areas, another factor contributing to the shift to urban insurgency has been the rather conspicuous failure of rural insurgencies in countries such as Peru, Colombia, Guatemala, and Venezuela as well as the Guevara-led debacle in Bolivia. To those intent on overthrowing the existing political and social order, Guevara’s untimely demise in the hills of Bolivia confirmed what many had begun to suspect: that waging guerrilla warfare in the countryside often is equivalent to suicide.
• Coupled with the increasing urbanization is a concentration of radical students and young intellectuals in most metropolitan areas. Products of an educational system still strongly influenced by Marxist political and economic theories, they are quick to embrace terrorism and violent revolution as a means of effecting political and social change. Consequently, they provide a substantial and readily available manpower source for guerrilla movements.
• In October 1967 Ernesto “Che” Guevara, a renowned strategist and tactician in the field of guerrilla warfare, was killed while leading a band of would-be revolutionaries in Bolivia. Guevara’s death at the hands of the Bolivian armed forces marked not only the death of a hero of the “Revolutionary Left” but also the end of rural-based guerrilla warfare as an effective instrument of change in Latin America. Che learned too late that if revolutionary war is to alter the political face of Latin America, it will have to be waged in the cities, not in the countryside.
• • Guerrilla warfare is only tactically successful if fought in urban setting or in the jungles. Two examples, Vietnam where the VC, "won" an asymmetric war using guerrilla warfare. Also, the Iraq war, the insurgency in Iraq doesn't try to confront the US military in open combat but uses urban warfare.
• • What is the education system like in Colombia? Is there still a large Marxist base among intellectuals and academics in Colombia? Could this help explain why the FARC has been able to recruit and maintain committed fighters?
• • Guerrilla warfare doesn't work in the country-side, thus move to urban areas and jungles.
• • Uruguay's Tupamaros, how were they successful?

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• Of the innumerable leftist uprisings in Latin America through the years, only two have ever achieved their main goal -- Fidel Castro's Cuban revolution in 1959 and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua in 1979.

    

  After Castro took power almost 40 years ago, Fidel and his Argentine-born lieutenant Ernesto "Che" Guevara promised to create, in their words, "One, ten, a hundred Vietnams in Latin America." Castro and Guevara inspired guerrilla groups all through the region.

    

  However, their dream did not come true. They were met by determined foes in Venezuela in the early 1960s. They met their match against military dictatorships in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay in the 1970s.

    

  Some of the Latin American leftist groups were just plain beaten, like the Tupamaros in Uruguay, one of the earliest rebel groups that began in 1960, but were gone twelve years later. A brutal military crackdown in Argentina in the mid-1970s defeated the Montoneros and the ERP. The Ecuadorian government defeated the Afaro Vive Carajo! in the 1980s.

    

  Other rebel groups signed peace deals and even became involved in mainstream politics, such as Colombia's M-19 -- which was a major terrorist force in the 1980s. Others that made peace with their respective governments were the Farabundo Marti rebels in El Salvador and the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unit, which signed a peace treaty in 1996, after a three decade struggle.

    

  In Peru, the Maoist-inspired Shining Path (SL), which is larger and more violent than the MRTA, is still around and carries out attacks. Since it came into being, Shining Path has carried out almost 1,500 guerrilla attacks and is said to be responsible for the deaths of about 27,000 people. But ever since 1992, when Peruvian authorities captured SL leader Abimael Guzman, Shining Path is not quite the terror organization that it was about ten years ago.
• Today, Latin America's really last major guerrilla group is the FARC in Colombia. The FARC has been around since 1964 and is still waging a war. The FARC is in control of large remote parts of Colombia and it doesn't look like there will be any kind of peace agreement with or will it be defeated by the Colombian government any time soon

  • This is realy just about the FARC then. What is it about the FARC and Colombia that makes them different and able to survive and grow.<br>
• • The failure of so many Leftist groups. When push came to shove, military dictatorships with organize central control and backing from anti-Communist supporters (the US possiby?) just smashed the Leftist groups who largely relied on guerilla warfare. Guerilla warfare by definition is not a method by which one plans to actually defeat the enemy in open combat, but merely to impose enough costs on the enemy to cause them to capitulate or acquiesce.

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• FARC takes in $200 million to $300 million annually—at least half of its income—from the illegal drug trade
• The FARC also profits from kidnappings, extortion schemes, and an unofficial “tax” it levies in the countryside for “protection” and social services.