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Guerrillas and the Impasse 57 This chapter is grounded on my interviews with guerrilla leaders and informants as well as on a host of other primary and secondary sources. The interviews, which were conducted in 1997 and 1998, sought to gather information about the social composition of the guerrillas as well as their current political goals. More interviews were conducted between 1994 and 1996; these were chiefly explorative and designed to familiarize myself with the subject matter and actors involved, establish the necessary contacts, and assess the feasibility of this research. This chapter has two main objectives. It presents a brief history of the two major active guerrilla groups in Colombia, FARC and ELN, and a small group, Ejercito Popular de Liberacion (EPL; Popular Liberation Army), within the context of the crises of the peasant economy and the failures of the state institutions in resolving the conflict that these crises generated. The chapter’s main argument is that the signing of the Pact of Chicoral in 1972 and the formal establishments of FARC (1964–1966) and ELN (1965) were no coincidence. The Pact of Chicoral and the guerrilla movements represent two diametrically opposed responses to the same institutional crisis whose genesis lies in the land struggles of the 1920s as discussed in chapter 2. The second objective of this chapter is to analyze how the comfortable impasse with the state allowed the guerrillas to achieve a positive political economy, endowing them with political, military, and economic assets significant enough to increase their incentive to maintain the status quo rather than seeking an outright victory or a negotiated settlement. Seeking either an outright military victory or a negotiated settlement carried risks that outweighed the benefits of the status quo. Keep in mind that the guerrilla’s position is grounded on the experience of the Patriotic Front and other guerrillas who agreed to surrender their arms and participate in the political process later to become subject to a systematic liquidation campaign by the states (particularly its armed forces) sanctioned paramilitary groups.1 In systems analysis, outcomes are in most cases different from the actors’ original goals and interests. In this mode, the chapter argues that the guerrilla organizations lend themselves inadvertently to a war-system dynamics. I analyze the guerrilla groups in terms of their social composition, strategies, – 4 – 58 SYSTEMS OF VIOLENCE and military strength because, I maintain, that the war system is driven by the actors’ incentives, goals, interests, and calculations. However, one can only evaluate an actor’s behavior in connection with its impact on other actors’ behavior and incentives. FARC FROM MARQUETALIA (1964) TO CAQUETÁ (1998) FARC evolved from the defense organizations that peasant squatters (colonos) and poor peasants established in order to defend their parcels from the encroachments of large landowners and the state. The regions of Sumapaz and Taquendama (areas of strong communist presence) in the eastern part of the department of Tolima and southwestern part of Cundinamarca, which included large coffee estates, formed the bedrock of the FARC. These areas witnessed a struggle for land since the 1930s. After the assassination of the Liberal Party leader, Gaitán, in 1948, the Communist Party instructed the formation of self-defense leagues in these areas. A few months before the 1950 election, President Ospina Pérez (1946– 1950) declared a “state of emergency” in the country in an effort to control the riots protesting Gaitán’s assassination. The Liberal Party in its turn declared a boycott of the presidential elections and called for a general strike. Consequently, the army occupied Villavicencio (capital of Meta) and Puerto Lopez and armed supporters of the government occupied San Vicente de Chucurí in Santander on election day. Armed resistance spread to various departments and especially to the eastern plains. Liberal Party partisans, many of whom were related such as Los Parra’s, Los Bautista, Los Fonseca, Los Villa Marin, Los Calderon, and others, joined forces with peasant leaders such as Elise Velasquez, Franco Isaac, and Guadalupe Salcedo , in their fight against the Conservative government. In the southeast of Antioquia, the resistance symbol was Juan de Jesus Franco; in southern Córdoba, Jose Guerra led the resistance; and in the northeast of Cundinamarca, Saul Figaro led the resistance. In southern Tolima, the guerrillas were drawn from members of the Communist Party and Liberal Party. The communists were led by Isauro Yosa (alias “Major Lister”) and Jacobo Prías Alape (alias “Charro Negro”), all of whom were peasants. Among this latter group...

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