FARC: We'll Keep Fighting

Colombian Rebels vs. Uribe's "Total War"

By the FARC General Command
A Communique from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)

December 6, 2002

The FARC-EP reaffirms its unwavering revolutionary and Bolivarian commitment to continue the battle to win political power using a combination of all forms of struggle for as long as the State and its governments do not change their out-dated and perverse political customs. We are sure that nothing and no one will succeed in derailing the political objectives of our Organisation which has risen in arms for the conquest of peace with social justice.

1. Mr Alvaro Uribe Velez came to the presidency to set in motion his macabre strategy of total war without dialogue against the workers and the population of the lower and middle classes, for the benefit of the oligarchy, the landowners, the ranchers, the owners of the financial system and the imperialist capitalist multinationals.

The result is an ever-widening gap between the two million oligarchs who own the economic and political power of Colombia and the rest of the population which each day is forced by the policies of the State and its government to join the ranks of the abject poor, unemployed, marginalised, destitute and exiled because of the internal conflict.

2. The growing distance between the rich and the poor is reflected in the increase in unemployment, of under employment and in the low wages received by millions of salaried workers in the countryside and the towns, and in the lack of health and education services, housing, credit facilities, safe drinking water and land for campesinos to work and produce in dignified conditions that enable them to sustain their families. These sectors of society are condemned to suffer the deplorable effects of the unfettered application of neoliberal policies prescribed from Washington by the IMF and the World Bank.

In the name of total war, the government decreed a State of National Emergency and created the so-called Zones of Rehabilitation with no sound economic reason in Arauca, Casanare and Bolivar in order to impose State Terror on the civilian population to make them accept their impositions and demand nothing for state abandonment during more than five decades of Liberal-Conservative governments.

3. The government of the Liberal-Conservative oligarchy indiscriminately raises VAT (value added tax) and authorises increases in the prices of petrol and transport so that it is the people who are paying the cost of a war which is consuming more than 50 percent of the national budget. At the same time it intimidates Congress, in spite of the independence of its powers, to force it to approve decrees and laws which harm the interests of the most poor, demonstrated by the decrees on Labor Flexibilisation, Tax Reform and the repressive, exclusive and politically manipulative Referendum.

All this to further weaken our national sovereignty and the freedoms of the dispossessed and distract attention away from the working people while Congress is preoccupied with a debate the only purpose of which is to disguise the stains on the faces of corrupt political manipulators with seats in the State’s public corporations.

4. This paramilitary government, not satisfied with the series of taxes collected by State-created entities, allows its military forces and the police with their paramilitary gangs to also collect taxes from small business people, transport contractors, cattle farmers, shopkeepers and agricultural farmers in different regions of the country such as Meta, Caqueta, Arauca, Putumayo, Guaviare, Tolima, Huila, Boyaca and Cundinamarca, to mention just a few places.

The population targeted by state taxes is demanding that the government make clear once and for all how many states and governments exist in Colombia with the authority to collect taxes with the approval of the national government. What no one knows is just how long the people can withstand so many arbitrary acts before someone can be bothered to investigate and punish those responsible.

5. The current administration in an extreme and blatant act of cynicism has absolved of their responsibility in massacres, assassinations and crimes against the unarmed civilian population recognised paramilitary leaders such as Rito Alejo del Rio and Carlos Arturo Marulanda, among many others, for being outstanding promoters and organisers of the State Paramilitary Strategy. This confirms the Terrorist nature of the Colombian governing regime which, in spite of such state barbarity, is protected by impunity.

6. The Governing Caste headed by Uribe Velez dreams of liquidating trade union and popular organisations, in particular, the revolutionary political armed opposition, using State military force. Its proposal consists of wiping the guerrilla movement from the political map in order to remove a major obstacle to the imposition of the kind of dictatorial policies which remain a bitter memory for the countries of the Southern Cone and Central America and to the definitive delivery of our national sovereignty to the US government.

This explains the US’s eternal interference in the internal conflict of the Colombian people through the provision of sophisticated aeroplanes, helicopters, various calibre weapons, thousands of millions of dollars, military and technical advisers, in order to improve the fighting capacity of the Colombian military in its operations against the Insurgency. They do it under the pretext of fighting terrorism and drugs trafficking but it’s really to avoid the rejection of its interventionist policies.

7. Colombian State policy, supported by the government of the United States, ratifies the clear absence of political will on the part of Uribe’s government to seek negotiated political solutions to the social and armed conflict Colombia has been enduring for more than 50 years. It also explains the total disinterest of the government in discussing with the FARC-EP the exchange of prisoners of war in the power of the two parties, the government and the FARC-EP, in line with the entreaties of the relatives, friends and individuals concerned with finding political proposals which will resolve this problem emanating from the political confrontation.

8. The FARC- Army of the People calls on the Colombian people to step up their organised struggle of the popular masses in the factories, the streets and the countryside in defence of their interests, freedoms and fundamental rights that have been so undermined by economic, political and social inequalities.

The FARC-EP reaffirms its unwavering revolutionary and Bolivarian commitment to continue the battle to win political power using a combination of all forms of struggle for as long as the State and its governments do not change their out-dated and perverse political customs. We are sure that nothing and no one will succeed in derailing the political objectives of our Organisation which has risen in arms for the conquest of peace with social justice.

[signed:] Secretariat of the Central General Command of the FARC-EP
Mountains of Colombia, 30 November 2002

For more Narco News, click here.