FARC rebels get anthropologist as their chief

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Agence France-Presse

FARC rebels get anthropologist as their chief
Web posted at: 6/1/2008 6:52:27
Source ::: AFP

BOGOTA • The death of the founder of Colombia's FARC guerrillas has elevated a new generation to the leadership of Latin America's most resilient rebel group, one more familiar with university textbooks than their rural predecessors.

Alfonso Cano, now the chief of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia following Manuel Marulanda's demise in March, is representative of the incoming lot, whose revolutionary culture is steeped in the Woodstock-style counter-culture push of the late 1960s and early 1970s. An anthropologist by training, Cano heads a leadership committee that also counts two medical doctors, Timoleon Jimenez and Mauricio Jaramillo, and an agricultural specialist, Joaquin Gomez. The only exception at the table is head of FARC military operations Jorge Briceno, the son of a former combatant who was, according to anecdote, born in a rebel camp.

Jaramillo and Gomez, in contrast, honed their revolutionary credentials with studies in, respectively, Cuba and the former Soviet Union. Gomez was a multilingual university professor. "This is a generation born around 1950, which went to university (...) when the 'May '68' effect was in full swing in Colombia with an active student movement in all the state universities," sociologist Luis Eduardo Celis said.

"It was in that ambience of student zeal and the counter-culture wave that Cano and the other left-wing leaders learned about the new theatre, the protest songs and the nihilist poetry," said Celis, who works at a centre called Nuevo Arco Iris that specializes in studying armed conflict.



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[Peace Patriot]

1. Given the Unosur meeting this week (foundation of the South American "Common Market"

and common defense--sans the U.S.), the fascist thugs running Colombia have become very isolated, and let's hope they are on their way out, to be replaced with a South American-brokered political settlement of Colombia's 40+ year civil war. The Bush Junta (and the Clintons before them) have done everything possible to stoke that civil war ($5.5 BILLION in military aid to the fascists), and are furthermore plotting to CREATE civil wars elsewhere, by organizing and funding secessionist groups in Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador (to split off the oil-rich provinces from the national governments that represent the vast poor majorities in these countries). But South America is good and sick of this behavior by the U.S., and is unifying around resistance to it. (At the Unosur meeting, for instance, Argentina and Brazil said they will refuse to trade with the white separatists in Bolivia. Argentina and Brazil are land-locked Bolivia's biggest gas customers--so who is going to buy a separatist state's gas?)

The unity and resistance to U.S. domination (and dirty rotten plots) is perhaps why our corporate predators may allow Obama to be elected. Really, I have no illusions about our "trade secret" code election machinery--it's up to the rightwing corporations who own and control the "trade secret" code in the voting systems, whether they will risk reversing an Obama landslide or not. I don't think they will, actually--because I think they see the great risks they would be taking in doing that (the risk, for one thing, of an outraged citizenry finally tossing their election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor'). They will very likely shave his mandate, and try to hamper him in every way, and the corporate predators will use an Obama administration to consolidate their enormous gains under the Bush Junta--with not too much interfering reform by Obama--and they will let him try his ideas out in South America (more consulates, floods of Peace Corps volunteers/spies, "free trade" with labor and environmental protections ON PAPER, more "war on drugs" militarization, alternative energy investments (hopefully not corporate biofuel production--he seems to know about this), while the Bush-reconstituted 4th Fleet (nuclear armed) roams the coast of Venezuela, as a warning of what failure to cooperate with Obama's measures might mean.

The Bushites seem hell-bent on getting a hot war started this year, but they have so far failed. They may spring something really bad on Obama, during the election campaign--say, Bush sending U.S. troops to support the Bolivian separatists' "independence." These separatists are very foul-smelling WHITE SUPREMACISTS, so that will put Obama in a tight spot. He would, of course, not support them. But what if U.S. troops are committed? Or, a less racist, but ultimately more dangerous secession of the Zulia province (where most of the oil is) in Venezuela, adjacent to putrid Bush "ally," well-armed Colombia, could conceivably be instigated this year, and that would be even more difficult for Obama, because he has bought into the demonization of Hugo Chavez. He called him "authoritarian" and a possible supporter of "terrorists," in his speech to the Miami mafia. What if Bush sends troops, or lends the 4th Fleet, to a secessionist "independence" cause? How will Obama react? And--perhaps more important--how can he prevent having ANOTHER OIL WAR QUAGMIRE laid at his doorstep, as he takes the oath of office? (And, is he on board for it or not? It's hard to tell.)

They did it to JFK--the SOBs in the Miami mafia and their CIA cohorts. Those CIA cohorts are back--with the Bush Junta--a CIA that believes in MANUFACTURING wars for our war profiteers and our corporate resource thieves. They tried to pull JFK into an invasion of Cuba, in his first months in office. (He refused.) Are they repeating that scenario?

FARC is the last armed leftist fighting group in South America. They've been fighting the fascists in Colombia for over forty years, and control one fourth to one third of Colombia's territory. The rest of the continent has gone democratic--really democratic. There is no need for armed conflict in a real democracy (unlike the fake one in Colombia), because, in a real democracy, the real needs of the people and of the country are attended to, and everyone, including fascists, have protected civil and political rights. This is true in Venezuela, and true thoughout the continent, except in Colombia, where leftist politicians and voters, union leaders and other innocent, unarmed people are killed for daring to assert their rights. In Colombia, the government serves the rich and the bigger drugs/weapons traffickers, and is heinously murderous toward the poor. The Colombian government also serves the Bush Cartel and U.S. corporate predator interests.

FARC provides one of the excuses for the U.S. heavily arming Colombia--even though most of the carnage in Colombia has been perpetrated by the government and its rightwing paramilitary death squads (according to all human rights groups). The leftist democracies (which now cover nearly the whole continent) have proven strong and resilient, and very resistant to Bushite plots. Armed conflict between leftists and fascists serves the Bushites' purposes. So it is very much in the interest of South America's leftist democracies to resolve Colombia's civil war--to stop the fighting, to make peace. And several governments have been trying--including the two most affected by the fighting, Venezuela and Ecuador (where many thousands of refugees have fled to, from Colombia, and whose borders are constantly harried by this war), also Argentina, Brazil and others, in support of their efforts (and France, which wants to free a French citizen being held hostage by the FARC). The Bushites have done everything they can to prevent peace, including deliberate targeting and killing of the chief FARC hostage negotiator, Raul Reyes, this March (just as the president of Ecuador was about to get the French hostage released)--the incident that almost started a war between Colombia and Ecuador (and Venezuela).

The news that FARC now has a non-military leader, Alfonso Cano, may point to FARC's hope for a peaceful settlement, and may indicate that a South American-brokered peace is in the works. I hope this is true. I know that Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, the presidents of Venezuela and Ecuador--of course--also, the president of Bolivia, the new leftist president of Paraguay, and most other leaders, and millions and millions of South Americans, want to see this happen. It would be great if this were Unosur's first triumph: peace and real democracy in Colombia.