m-19 - popular? [Archive]

new democracy

6th August 2002, 22:23

i got a question to the guy from colombia: does m-19, a leftist guerilla that engaged in armed struggle in 1,971 and in 1,989 make peace and became a legitimate party was a popular organistion? i would prefer an answer from the colombian guy but any information from anybody would make me happy.

concerned

7th August 2002, 02:49

The M-19 was far more popular than any of the current guerrillas (namely Farc and ELN) because they didn't commit as many terrorists acts and actually did had a political agenda (a political agenda that I might not agree with, but a political agenda nonetheless). I wouldn't say they were popular though, but they at least had a bit of more support and legitimacy among the Colombian people.

Unfortunately at the end even M-19 was corrupted too with the money of the mafia. In their struggle to survive they made deals with Pablo Escobar, the biggest drug lord of all times. At the time Pablo Escobar wanted to erase some of the evidence against him kept at the national Palace of Justice, and he hired M-19 for this purpose. That has been one of the bloodiest attacks in Colombian history, it lasted for days and many people were massacred. The building was completely destroyed and burnt.

Well as you know afterwards M-19 made a peace deal with the government. Not everybody in M-19 surrendered though, some of them defected and joined other guerillas. Some of them had always been fighting and didn't know how to do anything else. Besides the guerrilla business combined with drugs can be quite lucrative, and there was nothing the people of M-19 in the lower ranks could have done legally to obtain that kind of money.