Colombian guerillas explain their aims

President Ernesto Samper of Colombia is struggling to hold on to power amidst increasing evidence that his 1994 election campaign was financed by the drug cartels. LUIS AUGUSTO GARCÍA GUERERO of the Camilista Union — National Liberation Army (UCELN) explains some of the background to Colombia today and the origins of the guerilla struggle. The three guerilla organisations originated in the social, student, peasant and workers movements of the 1960s and were influenced by the Cuban and Vietnamese revolutions. The decision to undertake armed struggle arose when state terror and the violence of the oligarchy closed off all other alternatives for social change. On July 4, 1964, the National Liberation Army (ELN), which identified with the Cuban Revolution, was formed in the department of Santander, an oil-rich area controlled by United States multinationals with a militant workers tradition. The guerilla priest Father Camilo Torres Restrepo was an early member of the ELN. A month earlier the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), linked to the Communist Party of Colombia (PCC), was formed from organisations established by peasants in the Pato and Guayabero regions to protect themselves against the attacks of rich landlords. In 1968, as a result of an earlier split in the PCC and the creation of the PCC (Marxist Leninist), the People's Liberation Army (EPL) was formed in Llanos del Tigre, a zone with a strong tradition of peasant struggle. Each group separately engaged in revolutionary struggle until 1987. In 1984 social upheaval led to the formation of the United Workers Centre, the development of peasant unity and the coordination of civic movements. Large mobilisations and strikes resulted from this unity and its influence led the armed organisations to unite in the Simón Bolívar Guerilla Coordinating Committee (CGSB). The small regional guerilla nuclei of three decades ago have won sufficient support from the Colombian people to consolidate themselves into an alliance that has a political and military presence in 700 of Colombia's 1050 municipalities. More than 10,000 combatants are organised in 120 fronts and guerilla columns. (Colombia's population is 33 million.) This increasing strategic capacity has been based on the guerilla forces winning popular support. The minister for agriculture, Cecilia López Montano, admitted in January, "The insurgency is winning the war in the impoverished countryside, where misery, the product of social injustice, is the impetus of subversion." The guerilla movement offers an alternative model of power, a people's power which fights tyranny and oppression. We encourage the exercise of true national democracy in accordance with the people's social and cultural identity and encourage communities to analyse, understand and propose self-sustaining solutions to their problems. This is often the first time that such communities have had the chance to start to take control of their own lives and begin a process of social transformation. This process is the lifeblood of the revolution. The CGSB's alternative economic strategy aims to "humanise" the country. Our program, "New Colombia", is based on democracy, sovereignty, welfare and life for the majority, the impoverished, marginalised and exploited communities. These people will form the basis of national liberation and the construction of a Latin American socialism in harmony with nature and rooted in our regional and cultural diversity. Our revolutionary ethic is based on honesty, openness and permanent struggle against a regime based on exploitation, environmental destruction and drug trafficking. The Colombian ruling class will not allow social change to occur peacefully. The only democracy and legal guarantees that exist are purely for the traditional parties of the oligarchy to contest elections. Whenever opposition parties or movements have won support, questioned economic and social structures and proposed alternatives, they have been totally annihilated. Organised workers, peasants, indigenous peoples and community activists have met with the same fate. To impose its policies of privatisation and neo-liberalism the regime has also murdered those it considers "disposable": street children, beggars and prostitutes. Millions of peasants have been displaced by military and paramilitary activities. According to the National Union School, at least 614 unionists have been murdered in the last five years. (It is said that it is easier to organise a guerilla column than a labour union.) Several presidential candidates have been assassinated in recent years. Last year the church-based Intercongregational Commission for Justice and Peace alleged that the military and paramilitary forces assassinate five people a day. Democracy has been further restricted by the spread of corruption and the infiltration of political and military institutions by the drug cartels. Big international capital, national industrial monopolies, large land-holders and drug traffickers have been allies in the development of counter-insurgency strategy. This death and terror machine is coordinated by the US government and implemented by the military high command. US military advisers are present in 15 bases. The US also trains military cadre and provides military aid under the guise of assistance in the war against drugs. The workers barely surviving on low salaries, the unemployed and underemployed live in "misery belts" surrounding the cities. The peasants, indigenous people and blacks who have been forced off their land by oil, coal, gold and lumber companies now live in these areas. At the bottom of the social pyramid are the 55,000 children who die of hunger and curable disease each year, while at the top the governing minority and multinationals pillage and export the nation's wealth and resources. The guerilla movement has opened up political and social processes for the great majority, the politically and economically excluded. Our proposal for peace with social justice and dignity will ensure radical transformations in social relations and government and the open, rather then hidden, exercise of power. The regime violates its own laws and conducts a genocidal war which shows no respect for human life. We believe all lives are important, but understand that a revolutionary war, which has the support of international solidarity, is necessary to liberate Colombia and win back respect for life.