FARC

[Victor]

Can anyone give me some fairly unbiased sources on the group.
All I ever hear about them is that they are either noble revolutionaries, or evil drug dealers who eat American tourists' children.
Thanks

[The Wiseman]

LATIN AMERICAN HISTORY: “The Colombian conflict in historical perspective : the evolution of the land issue“

The origins of these illegal actors involved in the current internal conflict appear to be rooted directly in ( FARC ), or are indirectly ( AUC ) related to, the unresolved issue of land distribution.

While some analysts regard the origins of ELN and EPL in movements led by urban intellectuals, in contrast the peasants’ roots of FARC are generally acknowledged. Alfredo Molano considers that FARC “is deeply rooted in a legacy of class conflict …seeing that it would be impossible to break through the rigid political and agrarian structures using legal means, the opposition declared an armed rebellion “.

FARC-EP and Colombia's unfolding revolution

What is the FARC-EP fighting for?

The Pentagon and its paid pundits slander the group as "narco-guerrillas" without an ideology or vision of the future. The documents presented in "FARC-EP: Historical Outline" show that this is hardly the case.

The group's political perspective is outlined in the form of six anniversary greetings, written from 1994 to 1999. All the documents were written by Marulanda, the FARC-EP's commander-in-chief.

What emerges from these documents is a clear political vision of the "New Colombia" that the FARC-EP is fighting for. In particular, in the revolutionary struggle that it is carrying out, "massive and conscious popular participation is indispensable."

"This is not a confrontation of military machines, but rather of classes contending over the political leadership of the country," Marulanda writes. "War has been the consequence of the implacable aggression by the oligarchy against the people rising up in struggle for its liberty." (May 1996)

The FARC-EP openly expresses its goal as a socialist society "without exploiters or exploited."

The immediate aims expressed in the 1993 "Platform" (and in the 1964 "Agrarian Program of the Guerrillas of the FARC-EP") are concrete steps toward that goal: reorient the economy toward national social needs; genuine and thorough land reform; completely restructure the Armed Forces; a sovereign foreign policy independent of the demands of U.S. imperialism.

This policy is described as "Bolivarian"--in the spirit of Simón Bolívar, the great Latin American national-liberation leader of the 19th century. The FARC-EP uses the term in the sense of national unity in the face of imperialism.

Colombia: Origins of the FARC

The peasant struggles bore fruit when from 1930 to 1946 a series of Liberal Party administrations initiated land reform that triggered furious political opposition from the Conservatives. When the internally divided Liberal Party was defeated in 1946, the new Conservative government resorted to political violence to regain the lands of the oligarchy. In 1948 a charismatic progressive Liberal and land reform leader, Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, was gunned down in Bogota. His assassination set off a popular insurrection in the capital and in almost every city where the Liberals were strong. In response brutal gangs funded by leaders among the elitist wing of the Liberals and Conservatives roamed the countryside committing atrocities against civilians. During the decade La Violencia claimed the lives of between 200,000 to 300,000 Colombians.

La Violencia came to an official end in 1958 with a National Front that allowed the Liberal and Conservative elites to share public office and alternate the presidency. Nothing in the agreement addressed the plight of Colombia's landless peasantry. In 1964, the army unleashed a major land and air attack against Marquetalia, a rural resistance community that had been established as an independent republic during the violent decade. Under attack, 48 guerrillas fled to the mountains in the southwest state of Cauca where, later that year, the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) was founded. In the same period other guerrilla groups, the ELN (National Liberation Army) and the EPL (People's Liberation Army) were established.

[Victor]

wow thanks, that's perfect.

[Victor]

So is this shit actually true?

After the Seventh Guerrilla Conference was held in 1982 FARC-EP began to use the drug trade and kidnappings in order to finance their operations.  To me this seems to be quite against Marxist principles as a guerrilla army and class struggle are supposed to be from the ground up and focus on armed revolution of the masses as well as political revolution through militant trade unions and the proletariat, guerrilla forces are supposed to receive support from the peasants and workers and not through the use of extortion and drug trafficking which in turn makes lives miserable for the lower classes in other countries.  Also, the FARC-EP targest civilian population with gas and during attacks claims a lot of innocent lives.  No I could understand kidnapping to a certain extent, such as the kidnapping of wealthy land lords who abuse the peasantry and their workers as well as politicians whom do not serve the rights of the people, but the FARC-EP has even gone as far as kidnapping indigenous rights activists and other non-crucial targets; it seems now that the business of this group is less of a proletarian struggle and revolution than more of a well oiled kidnapping and narco ring.

http://themustardseed.wordpress.com/2007/12/17/chavez-uribe-and-the-farc-kidnappings/

[The Wiseman]

So is this shit actually true?http://themustardseed.wordpress.com/2007/12/17/chavez-uribe-and-the-farc-kidnappings/

The FARC is not involved in drug trafficking despite the established wisdom, they do recieve a lot of funding from taxes on coca farming in their controlled area though. Drug trafficking is most prevalent in areas controlled by the far-right paramilitaries in the AUC and the oligarchy in control of Columbia's regressive state.

The Evolution of FARC

At first the guerrillas tried to resist growing coca They suspected that it represented a kind of underground "imperialist" invasion, and they worried that peasants who became prosperous would stop supporting the revolutionary struggle. But the guerrilla leadership soon realized that banning coca would mean losing peasant support to the authorities. This realization marked the birth of the infamous gramaje, a coca-trade tax that is nothing less than guerrilla-imposed extortion of drug traffickers and prosperous coca farmers. The guerrillas' rapprochement with coca also led to the belief that they are traffickers-narcoguerrillas. That notion is false, however. Cultivation of illegal crops was established in the colonization areas not simply because of weak army presence, but because the colonists were on the brink of ruin. And the guerrillas were in the colonized regions long before coca cultivation appeared. Their growth was due mainly to the repression unleased against popular protest, and by the growing impoverishment of the population - not to their participation in the drug trade.

Drugs replace communism as the point of entry for U.S. policy on Latin America

While the FARC undoubtedly generates wealth through the "war taxes" it levies on drug processors and traffickers, as well as through the abduction of foreign corporate executives and wealthy Colombians for ransom, there is no direct evidence linking the rebels to the actual export of drugs to the U.S. Available evidence reveals that among the primary transporters of drugs are right-wing paramilitary groups in collaboration with wealthy drug barons, the armed forces, key financial figures and senior government bureaucrats.

Most human rights violations and war crimes attributed to guerilla activity actually come from the paramilitaries with establishment ties to the Columbian military and its U.S. advisors, land-owning oligarchy, and multinational corporations. They eradicate grassroots activists and union leaders, making Columbia the world's most dangerous nation to conduct union activity.

Colombia Primer

Whilst all the armed actors within Colombia carry out human rights abuses, the paramilitaries are consistently responsible for the vast majority of these abuses, with over 80 percent of all abuses attributed to them.17 The paramilitaries regularly use terror to murder and intimidate civilians. For example, in their most recent report Human Rights Watch (HRW) describe how fifty paramilitary fighters entered a small coastal town in Colombia, Chengue, and pulled dozens of residents from their homes. "They assembled them into two groups above the main square...[t]hen, one by one, they killed the men by crushing their heads with heavy stones and a sledgehammer. When it was over, twenty-four men lay dead in pools of blood...as the troops left they set fire to the village".18

[Victor]

Thanks, that was really helpful.
It's hard to decipher bullshit from the real with the media.

[G-Zone]

I have family from Colombia and this subject is always hot.   You have one side that says "kill them all (FARC)", and another side that says we need to have open dialog and negotiations.
I for one believe the Colombian government needs to have an open dialog and start negotiations because this war will go on forever.
Chavez says the Colombian conflict has no military solution which I agree.   This war has been going on for more than 40 years.
One of the ladies that was rescued by Chavez's efforts said that she was sure that the FARC would have no reason to exist if the Colombian government would make changes and address the issues the FARC brought forth.

Does anyone have any good reports or analysis on how the Colombian conflict can end?

-Chris G.

[Xing]

Here are some documents capturing the hypocrisy of the situation.     These documents are from the National Security Archives, an excellent site for browsing formally classified information.
 

A senior Colombian guerrilla leader killed in Ecuador last weekend in a cross-border raid by Colombian forces held secret talks with U.    S.     diplomats ten years ago in Costa Rica, according to a declassified memorandum of conversation published on the Web today by the National Security Archive and cited in today's New York Times.   

I'm new to the site, so you'll obviously have to modify this. 
hxxp: www.    gwu.    edu/~nsarchiv/colombia/index.    htm

[kittenslayer]

One of the ladies that was rescued by Chavez's efforts said that she was sure that the FARC would have no reason to exist if the Colombian government would make changes and address the issues the FARC brought forth.

Which is what all revolutionary group want around the world, Cuba and Chinese communists both tried to change the goverment through political and peaceful methods, but discovered it to be of no use...