FARC Terrorist Organization

FARC Terrorist Organization

History of FARC Organization

The FARC is a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary guerrilla of peasant origin that follows an agrarian, anti-imperialist political project of Bolivarian inspiration. Its origins date back to a period of protracted confrontation and large scale violence known as La Violencia (1948-1958). FARC leading cadres were actively engaged in this period of rural warfare which pitted Colombia's two major political parties against each other. Following a bipartisan power sharing agreement between liberal and conservative forces, the liberal guerrillas, the direct predecessors of the FARC continued operating in several rural enclaves, forming peasant, self-defense' communities fighting against the latifundista project of large-scale industrial farming (Boudon, 1996).

Within the framework of the Latin American Security Operation (LASO), a counterinsurgency large scale military operation supported the by the United States Central Intelligence Agency, the Colombian government began attacking many of the self-defense' communities established in the early 1960s. The FARC was officially formed in 1964 by the researcher known as Manuel Marulanda Vélez after a military attack on the peasant community of Marquetalia. Marulanda and 47 other armed men fought against government forces and then escaped into the mountains. These 48 men formed the core force of the FARC. The consolidation and expansion of the armed group in the Colombian territory has followed distinct phases. The first, from 1964 to 1980 constitutes the transformation from a peasant, self-defense' group to an armed guerrilla force. In this period, the group engaged in an imaginary war, only sporadically did they come to the front stage of the political debate, they seldom faced the army and their primary activity consisted in the recruitment of new members and the establishment of new fronts along the southern and central Colombian territories. By 1978 the FARC had 1000 members (Humphreys & Weinstein, 2006).

The second phase, from the early 1980s to the mid 1990s is a phase of organizational takeoff and military modernization. In this period the FARC established forty new fronts and transitioned to the largest, most capable, and best-equipped insurgency of Marxist origin in Latin America. The group's transition was made possible through the multiplication of income based on illicit activities. In the early 1980s Colombia was witnessing the coca boom. After initial opposition, the FARC gradually became involved in all aspects of the coca business, from establishing links to small peasant growers to becoming a full-fledged warlord of coca territories. Kidnapping, racketeering and extortion were other sources of income established in this phase. In the 1980s the guerrilla group established the vacuna, a quota that prevented kidnapping and appropriation of livestock. Wealthy landowners, mining companies, multinational corporations and subnational governments were all targets of vacuna collection and kidnapping (Peceny & Michael, 2006).

Starting in the mid 1990s the FARC entered a phase of heightened militarization. Between 1996 and 1998 seven major military compounds were ambushed resulting in the death of over one hundred Colombian soldiers and the capture of several hundred others. In its military incursions the FARC disregarded systematically the safety of ...