AN OVERVIEW OF THE FARC-EP
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Party and Liberal Party. The Communists were led by Isauro Yosa (alias Major Lister) and Jacobo Pias Alape (alias Charro Negro), all of whom were peasants. Among the latter group, the current legendary leader of the FARC, Manuel Marulanda Velez (Tiro Fijo) started his revolutionary career. (Richani, 2002a: 60)12 While partially correct, such depictions over-simplify the programmatic history and strategic formation of the PCC and the evolution of armed struggle in Colombia.13 For example, of those listed above, none were of a Liberal persuasion during the 1950s but were all members of the PCC. In fact, Yosa, Alape, and Marulanda were representatives of the Party’s Central Committee (Cala, 2000: 57–8; Pomeroy, 1968: 312). In response to long-made assertions that the FARC-EP has extensive roots in a bilateral Communist–Liberal alliance, the insurgency’s beginnings are systemically aligned with the PCC while Liberals remained an insignificant factor in its formative history (Avilés, 2006: 36; Safford and Palacios, 2003: 355; Kline, 1999: 18; de la Peña, 1998: 331, 353; Osterling, 1989: 187).14 To state otherwise negates the breadth of chronological information outlining the structure of the PCC in relation to the FARC-EP’s pre-inception via the self-defense groups of southern Colombia during the midtwentieth century (Arenas, 1972; Gomez, 1972). For decades the Liberal Party proved to do very little to change Colombian political policy, while the PCC mobilized sectors of the populace into specific defensive networks (Sánchez, 1985: 795).15 The Party deeply supported the development of political enclaves outside the vicious power struggle of Colombia’s two dominant parties. Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley (1994: 556) affirmed that “there is no doubt that those regions that became safe havens from the violence – the ‘peasant republics’ – historically were mainly rural islands of Communist Party influence in a sea of Liberals and Conservatives.” It is apparent when examining those connected to the PCC and Liberal parties that clear material differences existed. Unlike the Liberal “guerrillas,” who stole and laundered for individual profit and revenge, the PCC organized a class-conscious movement that rallied against the state and the ruling class therein (Chavez, 2007; Gomez, 1972; Williamson, 1965). During the 1950s it was the communists that made Liberals aware of the exploitive social relations surrounding the means of production in the countryside, the coercive responsibility of the state to maintain such processes, and encouraged them to leave behind their “sectarian vision of struggle” (Chavez, 2007: 93). In time, “the Liberal Party disowned those members who aligned themselves with the PCC and its support of ‘class struggle’” (de la Peña, 1998: 331). Certain regions saw the Liberal Party commit violence towards the Party, as the PCC continued to organize persons into the self-defense collectives. In the department of Tolima, Liberal cadres joined divisions of the Colombian military and carried out aggressive actions against the communist communities (Chavez, 2007: 94). Hence, the self-defense groups that would later form the FARC-EP were never constructs of social-democratic elements of Liberal leftist factions, but solely from the PCC (Gomez, 1972; see also Marulanda, 2000:
