Word: guerrillas
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...worse than his bite. "Pay attention to what Chavez does, not what he says," was the message to Washington from its people in the field. But after Chavez last weekend withdrew a controversial intelligence law in Venezuela, and told Colombia's FARC rebels that the age of Marxist guerrilla warfare in Latin America is over, many may be wondering if even the bark of the hemisphere's most prominent anti-U.S. maverick has begun to mellow...
...truth be told, the tradition of the fatigue-clad Latin American guerrilla, striking and vanishing through mountainous jungle terrain with a raised fist and a Marxist slogan, died years before Pedro Antonio Marin - known by his nom de guerre, Manuel Marulanda - passed away two months ago in a remote Colombian forest. But Marulanda's death by heart attack, confirmed over the weekend by the rebels he commanded for 44 years, makes it official: the Che Guevara era, like that of the hemisphere's military dictatorships, is over. And so, for all intents and purposes, is Marulanda's once feared...
Also known as Tirofijo, or Sureshot, Marulanda, who was believed to be between 78 and 80 years old, was the most powerful and resilient guerrilla leader the world had never heard of. In contrast to the flamboyant lives of rebel colleagues like former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, Marulanda's was as thickly veiled as the Colombian jungle he occupied for half a century. But he built what was, at its apex a decade ago, one of the world's largest and fiercest insurrection forces. At the turn of the century, the Marxist-inspired FARC numbered some 20,000 fighters...
...most likely answer in Marulanda's case, as it was for so many Latin American guerrilla leaders, is that he was driven by both impulses. Despite the cynical thuggery his rebel army has become known for in its twilight, Marulanda's original struggle was heartfelt: Colombia was and remains one of the most socially unequal countries on a continent whose inequalities are still among the world's worst. Whether he fought for idealism or pride, the injustices he and all the other Che Guevaras targeted in the 20th century still have to be tackled before Latin America can enter...
...made to get inside the mind of this complex man, Guevara. We are told he was a medical student, suffered from asthma, was more ruthless than Castro, was the real brain behind the operation. Big deal. ... When we aren't getting newsreels, we're getting routine footage of guerrilla clashes in the jungle. ... All this movie inspires toward the Cuban Revolution is excruciating boredom..." He wrote this in 1969, in a review of the flop Hollywood bio-pic Che!, with the not-very-Latin Omar Sharif as Guevara. Yet most of Ebert's denunciations apply to Soderbergh's movie, which...