Word: farces
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...FARC commanders dismiss the "narco-guerrilla" portrayal as government propaganda and insist they're still a viable rebel movement whose survival doesn't depend on drug income. For his part, Alberto points to his unit's spartan housing conditions - mountain and jungle shacks often without electricity or running water - as proof that they're not exactly living as sumptuously as famous cocaine kingpins like Pablo Escobar...
...comandante also downplays factors like the recent death of FARC's founder, Manuel Marulanda, 79, from a heart attack in one of his jungle lairs. "It's a big blow, but it's not a disaster," he says. "It was a natural death - he died of old age. The enemy didn't kill him." But he admits that where he and his comrades would once have heard immediately of news like Marulanda's demise through FARC communications channels, this time they had to rely on news radio. It's the kind of structural breakdown that allowed the army to plant...
That campaign is likely to become more effective after Wednesday's rescue operation. But while Alberto, a government target himself, admits the FARC has been rattled, he believes it won't collapse. In fact, the unraveling of the group's central authority could end up making local bosses like him stronger. "We can't deny that we have suffered desertions of combatants who haven't understood clearly the reason for our struggle or who have let themselves be influenced by state propaganda," he says. "We have to study the situation so this doesn't keep happening." But he insists that...
...result, despite the government's gains in recent years, the comandante is confident in his front's abilities to defend its own turf. As soon as the military enters the 18th Front's territory, the FARC usually hears about it from its large network of civilian informants. Many of them rely on FARC-protected coca cultivation for their livelihoods, but others are simply poor rural residents who have been beaten down for decades by the military and still believe in the FARC's original social-justice crusade. The guerrillas dress in civilian clothes and can be hard to distinguish from...
Either way, few believe the FARC could ever topple the government today. And for many, it's getting harder to believe that the government won't eventually defeat the FARC, a 44-year-old insurgency. But it still has thousands of armed fighters, a war chest of hundreds of millions of dollars and a triple-canopy rain forest to hide in. Despite the heavy blows it's taken in recent years, the rebels continue to dominate regions like the Cordillera Occidental, where teachers, farm laborers, health workers and even locals who have spent more than a year outside the area...