The Guardian 4 June, 2008
Obituary
Manuel Marulanda Vélez
Manuel Marulanda Vélez, the legendary leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), died on March 26 of a heart attack after a brief illness. Final confirmation of the loss of "Tirofijo" ("Sureshot") came when Timoleón Jiménez, a fellow member of FARC’s Secretariat, appeared on Venezuelan TV channel Telesur to make the stunning announcement.
Sometimes choked with emotion, Jiménez traced Marulanda’s 60 years of armed struggle against the oligarchs still oppressing the poor and dispossessed of Colombia. It began with the outbreak of a civil war between the two historical political rivals of Colombia, the Conservatives and the Liberals. The assassination of Liberal leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán in 1948 was the start of a bloodbath unleashed by the Conservatives against the poor who were pressing for land reform and very basic rights and services. It was also the beginning of the remarkable armed resistance of the Colombian people.
"From those times", Jiménez said, "thanks to his leadership and enormous politico-military capacities, the man who would later take the name Manuel Marulanda Vélez in honour of an assassinated trade union leader, was assimilating his military experience and developing a revolutionary and communist vision of the world which enabled him to understand exactly the deep economic, social and political causes of not just his own personal situation, but of the profound inequality, violence and injustice of our society."
Secretariat member Alfonso Cano has replaced Marulanda as commander.
Marulanda (Pedro Antonio Marín) was born on May 13*, 1930 into a poor peasant family in the west-central coffee growing department of Quindío. He only received an elementary education before taking a series of jobs such as woodcutter, house builder, highway inspector and selling candy on the streets. With the onset of "La Violencia" ("The Violence") in 1948, Marulanda fled to the hills and joined one of the many peasant self defence groups.
Like his family, the young Marulanda was a Liberal but by the early 1950s had become a committed Marxist. When armed hostilities subsided to an extent a decade later, Colombia was host to a number of self-sufficient enclaves including the "Republic of Marquetalia". The US was concerned at the presence of these rivals to its dominance of the region and sponsored a military operation to smash them.
The operation dispersed the popular forces but created a number of battle-toughened mobile guerrilla groups including the "Bloque Sur" ("Southern Bloc") that was to become FARC. The Communist Party of Colombia sent outstanding cadre Jacobo Arenas to give leadership to the group, which would grow from a band of 40 guerrillas to a force of 27,000 men and women under arms in rural areas and many thousands more in city-based militias.
When Arenas died in 1990, Marulanda assumed leadership of FARC. The combination of his leadership, the bravery of his guerrillas and the support of the rural populations saw his forces in control of 40,000 square kilometres (or around 40 percent of Colombian territory) by 1999 when President Pastrana began overtures for peace. Those negotiations collapsed like all subsequent attempts due to the government’s unwillingness to address Colombia’s chronic social inequality and to guarantee the security of popular political forces.
In 2003, President Alvaro Uribe began applying the policy of "democratic security" to supplement the US’s Plan Colombia aimed at containing the progress on the county’s armed resistance. This dramatic escalation of the war against the rural population of Colombia has claimed a number of highly placed victims in recent times. Raúl Reyes died in a cross border attack into Ecuador by the Colombian army, which derailed FARC efforts to secure the humanitarian exchange of prisoners including French Colombian national Ingrid Betancourt. March also saw the death of another member of the Secretariat, Iván Ríos.
FARC and the popular political forces of Colombia have suffered notable losses in recent times but their ability to survive setbacks is remarkable. They overcame the loss of Arenas and the political genocide unleashed against the remarkably successful Union Patriotic (Patriotic Union) electoral alliance of left parties and groups including the Communist Party and FARC members. That outrage claimed approximately 7,500 lives during the 1980s. They remained committed to their struggle and to a negotiated solution to the armed and social conflict in Colombia. In concluding his announcement of the passing of "Tirofijo", concluded "Comandante Manuel Marulanda Vélez: to die for the people is to live forever!"
* Maulanda’s year of birth is uncertain. Some sources have it as 1932.