As the biggest irregular army in Colombia, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia - FARC) operates in various regions of the country in search of resources to fund their 50-year-old war against the government. The FARC is the oldest and most important guerilla group in the Western Hemisphere. It has long financed its political and military battle against the Colombian government by kidnapping, extortion and participating in the drug trade on various levels.
In spite of a concerted effort by the Colombian government, with close to $8 billion in US assistance, the rebel group still operates in 25 of Colombia's 32 provinces and is estimated to have aproximatley 8,000 guerrillas in its ranks.
The FARC’s roots can be traced back to the outbreaks of violence that afflicted rural Colombia following the assassination of the populist leader of the Liberal Party, Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, in Bogota on April 9, 1948. The assassination touched off a sectarian struggle, first in Bogota and later in the countryside, which started out as a battle between the country’s two chief parties, the Liberals and Conservatives. The violence, which became known as "La Violencia," would leave close to 200,000 dead during the next 15 years.
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| Alfonso Cano |
The rebel group adopted the name Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia in 1966, and began a slow, steady rise. The growth of the illegal drug market helped. In the mid-1970s, the guerrillas changed their bylaws and began collecting taxes from the numerous marijuana growers in the south of the country. They later expanded that mandate to include coca leaf plantations. During the same period the FARC began kidnapping en masse and extorting large and small businesses. In the early 1980s, the FARC began taxing cocaine laboratories that operated in their areas of influence.
The FARC is a complex group with a well defined structure and line of command. It's organizational structure has evolved throughout the years as a result of a process of adaptation to the main challenges of the internal conflict. Ostensibly hierarchical, the geography and size of Colombia has made it nearly impossible for the central command, known as the Secretariat, to exercise control over the whole organization, which is broken up into fronts, with the exception of various special forces units that tend to roam where they are most needed or to carry out a special operation. The FARC has a vast support network of logistical experts in bombing, transportation, kidnapping, arms trafficking, food storage, etc., and manages militia groups in the cities.
There is much discussion about whether this structure and modus operandi constitute a "cartel," or a criminal organization. While it is true that parts of the FARC traffic in illegal drugs in increasing quantities, kidnap, extort, and partake in other criminal activities that undermine their mission, their overall structure, recruitment, modus operandi and purpose remain centred in political rather than financial returns.
In recent years, the rebel group has suffered numerous setbacks. In November 2011, FARC’s top commander, Alfonso Cano, 63, was killed by the armed forces near a rebel camp in the remote south-western part of the country. In peace talks in Havana in 2013, Colombia's FARC guerrillas called on the Colombian government to consider legalizing coca cultivation. the FARC called for the creation of a "land bank" of unused or underused areas that could be distributed to landless peasants and for a more democratic method of rural planning. The land would include "latifundia," or large rural estates, confiscated from drug traffickers. The proposal marks a retreat from the previous FARC position that called for the seizure and redistribution of all latifundia.
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| FARC negotiator Tanja Nijmeijer |
"We need to reorientate the use of land toward sustainable agricultural production,"
According to the Bogota daily El Tiempo Colombia’s leftist FARC rebels smuggle U.S.-bound cocaine via Venezuela, Panama and the Pacific, citing unnamed U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration sources.
The information was obtained from documents found on the computer belonging to Edgar Tovar, commander of the 48th Front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, who was killed by the army.
An unnamed police expert told El Tiempo that the 48th Front stockpiles cocaine in Putumayo, bordering Ecuador and Peru, the 30th Front protects the shipments all the way to Cañon de Garrapatas, in the north-western province of Choco, and the 57th Front moves the drugs into neighbouring Panama.