by David A.G. Fischer

Created on: May 04, 2008   Last Updated: June 21, 2008

Social circumstances cultivate civil insurrection

Colombia's Marxist guerrilla group, las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), or the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, has been misunderstood and underestimated since its germination. Even today they are mistakenly labeled as the sole offenders and primary cause of violence in the country, as Colombia and its armed forces, along with U.S. assistance, continue attempting to extirpate them.

This notion of the FARC, while common around the world, contradicts reality. Violence in Colombia was a regular occurrence long before the FARC arose from the country's blood-stained soils. In fact, during the past half millennium, "war torn and oppressed" is the most accurately succinct description for civil society in this country of extreme contrasts.

When dissecting Colombia's internal conflict, the objective should be to develop a comprehensive understanding, even it if juxtaposes mainstream imagery. Awareness as such begins by realizing that the majority of people affected by the conflict are the impoverished indigenous communities, rural farmers, and common folk. However, their accounts of the violence are rarely printed or reported, an important point to keep in mind.

Information that is traditionally reported are testaments by the government, military and national police force. This is the news that makes its way around the world, and this is what produces popular perception. In fact, personal accounts that contradict this news, often surfacing weeks or months later, rarely reach the public here in Colombia, let alone around the world.

In order to have a more integral and impartial understanding of Colombia's Marxist revolutionary group, one must examine the socio-political climate at least two decades prior to their inception. By doing so, it is clear to see that a particular social impetus was the cause of this revolutionary effect.

When viewing a time-line depicting the events, one also notices that Washington's involvement in this Latin American paradise has been incessant since shortly after WWII. That preliminary involvement was initially rationalized to fight communism which was sprouting in the backyard.

So, who were the supposed communist elements in Colombia in 1948? Well, on 9 April of that year, only a day after meeting with Cuba's "Fidel Castro at a conference of anti-imperialist student leaders" (1), the country's most publicly supported populist leader and presidential candidate of the

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