Farc Faces The Empire

FARC is the abbreviation of “Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia” (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). In 1964, from a peasant movement who under the leadership of Manuel Marulanda Vélez, created the FARC, in the beginning of the movement they argued that the society of colombia was being affected by the false democracy of the National Front (Rochlin, 2003 in Lee, 2011). Germán Pataquiva García (2009) affirm that the emerging of the FARC passed trought principal 3 phases, the first one was the movements of armed resistance inspired by the Colombian Communist Party and under the name of autodefensas campesinas (Peasant self-defense) and the emerging of the first guerrilla groups. The second part was the reactivation and conversion of the peasants’ guerrilla groups.

James Petras and Michael Brescia (2000) argue in his article “The FARC faces the Empire” that the group is the dominant political force in over half of the municipalities, with an army of 18,000 fighters approximately and they had hundreds of thousands of supporters throughout the country. Through their history they had have external economical supporters. As the military force of the Colombian Communist Party, has supported the distribution of wealth, but also had added to their curriculum several armed attacks as hijackings, assassinations and also kidnappings, executing, between others. The conflict has been evolving through the years but it seems like the first ideologies of the group turn into a new direction, which of course means is attracting international interest and