Farc rebels, who have fought a 52-year battle against the Colombian state using a variety of weaponry and combative tactics, are to lay down those weapons forever as an unprecedented peace deal has been struck with the government that is to be signed on Monday. Following the point that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia are demobilized, the weaponry will be melted down and used to create three separate monuments to end the longest-running conflict in Latin America, as The Guardian relays.
Colombia FARC rebels meet to vote on peace deal https://t.co/gJcbyiWOMA
— AFP news agency (@AFP) September 17, 2016
Gonzalo Sanchez, director of the National Centre of Historical Memory in Bogota, states what this means to the history of the great guerrilla movements of the past.
“This is an agreement with the last of the great guerrilla movements that emerged in the context of the cold war. There might be other episodes, but strategically the armed project, the armed utopia, is closing its cycle with Farc.”
The Marxist followers were inspired by the actions and exploits of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, who headed to Cuba in a fishing boat with only 80 men back in 1956, where they overthrew the dictator at the time, Fulgencio Batista, within three years.
By the 1960s and 1970s, guerrilla groups had arisen in every country in Latin American except for Costa Rica. The publication shares details about the separate groups within the various nations.
“…the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in Nicaragua, the 8th October Revolutionary Movement (MR*8) in Brazil, the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN) in Venezuela, the People’s Revolutionary Army (ERP) and Montoneros in Argentina, theTupamaros in Uruguay, the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) in Chile.”
The Cuban rebellion and the rebels’ success were the inspiration for the new groups, and was spurred on by cold war politics and the backing of the United States for rightwing dictators, among other events of the time.
The actions taken by the named rebel groups involved assassinations, hijackings, kidnappings, bank robberies and attacks on military and political targets.
Che Guevara era closes as Latin America’s oldest guerrilla army calls it a day https://t.co/ows4uZw9HK pic.twitter.com/HUZJ5Cker1
— Global Issues Web (@globalissuesweb) September 25, 2016
Civil wars resulted in a number of Latin American nations over the activity of the rebels, including bloody battles in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua. Daniel Ortega, a Cuban Sandinista guerrilla, was able to secure power through a revolution in 1979, following which he was elected as president in Nicaragua.
South America did not see the same developments and impact by the rebel groups following the execution of Che Guevara in Bolivia. The Cubans and Soviets withdrew from efforts to continue to supply rebels. The funding and weapons supplies were therefore cut. The groups in South America were then left splintered and unable to maintain strongholds, due to lack of support. The guerrillas of this region were never able to get close to overthrowing and seizing power through force.
Farc leaders admit that the support that has allowed them to survive as long as they have has always come from civilians. Rodrigo Londono, the Farc’s maximum leader, stated in a speech just last week about civilians’ role in their survival over the years.
“They have offered us unconditional support and protected our forces in many ways even risking their own lives.”
The incidents that resulted in the rebel groups resorting to negotiating a peace deal involved a weakening of the groups in 2012 when former President Alvaro Uribe worked with the U.S.-funded military to cut their numbers in half and drove them back into the jungle and the mountain hideouts. Seeing as there were leftist governments in power across the area, the Farc rebels saw that there might be an opportunity for them to come to power by way of a vote, as opposed to by way of violence.
[Feature Image by Keystone/Getty Images]
