FARC

[Viva-La-Revolution]

FARC are they Freedom Fighters or Terrorists and can they win?

Have yous seen the documentary Guerrilla Girl
its good look at my post in the film thread for more information!!1

[Q]

They're drugdealers that terrorise and kidnap civilians, 'nuff said.

[The Grey Blur]

FARC are they Freedom Fighters
Yep.


can they win?
Nope.

[Whitten]

They are freedom fighters. Winning would be difficult but not impossible, whats useful is that they effectivly keep the government from oppressing half the country.

[Viva-La-Revolution]

They only tax the drugs they dnt deal them and they only tax for the purpose of funding there cause and the Revolution.

If America stayed out of it they might have a chance of wining but no chance of that happing :angry:

[Janus]

Previous discussions on FARC.

http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=59941&hl=FARC

http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=56589&hl=

http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=51089&hl=

http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=50672&hl=

http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=47141&hl=

[The Grey Blur]

If America stayed out of it they might have a chance of wining but no chance of that happing :angry:
No, it's just militarily impossible to defeat the Colombian government without major support in the cities. The FARC have been fighting for 30+ years and have achieved little or nothing.

[RGacky3]

Their Vanguardists like many other revolutionary groups, and they are EXTREAMLY pragmatic (also like many vanguardist revolutionary groups), terrorists? A little bit, but compared to the Columbian military and Para-militaries they are freaking saints.

Farc is another Marxist-Lenninist Vanguardist group that gives up principles extreamly quickly and personally I would'nt support them. Calling them terrorists is a long shot though, people use terrorism as a buzzword (as communist was 20 years ago).

[Luís Henrique]

This issue is not a moral one.

The FARC work under a mistaken strategy - that of "prolongued people's war". This consists, essentially, in the idea that you can choke capitalism in the cities if you liberate the hinterland. This is only possible, however, in places - like China or Vietnam - were the cities depend on the peasant economy, but the peasant economy does not depend on the cities. As in Colombia the agricultural crops are all oriented to the international capitalist market, such strategy cannot work.

Worse, the main Colombian export commodity is cocaine, which happens to be an illegal commodity in all countries. So the division of Colombia in areas controled by the State and areas controled by the FARC provides an excellent juridical environment to the cocaine production and traffic, plus an excellent excuse to the Colombian State to declare itself unable to effectively fight the traffic without having to admit its own corruption and inefficiency.

So, the Colombian civil war is a "drôle de guerre"; the FARC cannot win it, and the State doesn't wish to.

Luís Henrique

[OneBrickOneVoice]

Originally posted by Permanent [email protected] 08, 2007 07:59 am

If America stayed out of it they might have a chance of wining but no chance of that happing :angry:
No, it's just militarily impossible to defeat the Colombian government without major support in the cities. The FARC have been fighting for 30+ years and have achieved little or nothing.
No they actually have liberated large parts of the countryside winning is hard without superpower backing but things have gotten better since Chavez has been in power in neighboring Venezula alledgedly, he allows them to train in Venezula.

[metalero]

FARC began as a communist influenced peasant resistance against landlords and their sponsored bypartisan state violence in the 60's, but after the authoritarian colonial burguoise regime decide to eliminate the occupied and socialized land under the excuse of fighting "independent republics", they became organized as a Guerrilla army using the Combination of all means of struggle, meaning workers organization, mass mobilization and using the few democratic spaces in the cities while waging guerrilla warfare against the army and their deaths squads in the country side, a valid tactic for a authoritarian regime that acts as a savage fascist monster in the country side for the benefit of mega rich landowners and drug barons. Unlike maoist guerrillas in Asia, FARC historically has kept ties and alliances with working class organizations in the cities, such as the Colombian communist party who has wide militancy in the CUT , the main workers federation. In fact, after peace talks in the 80's they joined workers, peasant communities and social movements to form the Patriotic Union, the biggest leftist party ever to that date in Colombia. What's next is well known by the working class, and pretty well hidden by the burguoise: 2 presidential candidates murdered, dozens of congressmen, councilmen and mayors fallen in extrajudiciary executions, and the subsequent persecution adn extermination of more than 4000 militants and simpathizers. After that, FARC decided to wage all out war to overthrow the government. In the mid 90's FARC were totally defeating the army, until the 2 billion dollar Plan Colombia came, making Colombia the 3rd largest recipient of US military aid after Israel and Egypt. All that plus the savage massacres and forced displacement of poor peasants who were the main FARC support making Colombia the third worst humanitarian crisis regarding forced displacement, led the conflict to a stalemate, with no option for the state to smash the FARC or at least force them to follow their conditions, but neither for FARC to overthrow the government. Unlike many guerrilla armies led by middle class intelectuals who capitulated to peace talks while the rotten oligarchy keeps carrying out state terrorism and the Colombian working class gets poorer, FARC has woved not to disarm until the political conditions are met to allow the working class to participate and change the economical conditions without being harassed, dissapeared, tortured nor murdered, something fairly reasonable but almost unthinkable for an ultrareactionary and corrupt ruling class.

[Viva-La-Revolution]

I think its good that Chavez might be helping FARC They need someone strong in the region to stand up to america and its also good becasue it might help the region become more left.

Recently socialist leaders have being elected in Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Venezuela along with leftist presidents in Argentina, Ecuador, Peru, and Uruguay.