Armed revolution in Latin America is over, says Chavez Hugo Chavez said Farc guerrillas should lay down their arms The armed revolutionary has no place in modern Latin America, the Venezuelan President has declared. Catching his critics off guard, Hugo Chavez called on the Marxist rebel army in neighbouring Colombia to lay down its arms and release its hostages, declaring that guerrilla armies are now "out of place".
Adopting the mantle of international statesman, the Venezuelan President appeared to be stepping forward finally to turn a page of history for a continent that for decades has been blighted by eruptions of insurgent violence, not just in Colombia but also Nicaragua and El Salvador. As most of those conflicts have come to an end, Colombia has been alone in failing to end its own internal strife. "At this moment in Latin America, an armed guerrilla movement is out of place," Mr Chavez said. "The guerrilla war is history," he asserted in his weekly television address, prompting expressions of both surprise and welcome among government leaders in Colombia. They have recently accused Venezuela of running a clandestine campaign of support for the Marxist rebels. Mr Chavez is no stranger to the revolutionary mantle. In 1992 his Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement – inspired by the 19th century independence guerrilla Simon Bolivar – made a doomed attempt to overthrow the government. Even now, having made the transition from rebel to politician, Mr Chavez is still the staunchest of supporters of the world's most famous revolutionary, Fidel Castro. Whether his latest comments represent a profound change of heart or not, they may help open a path to long-term peace in Colombia after 40 years of bloodshed. It is a time of deepening difficulties for Farc, the Spanish acronym for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which recently confirmed that its founder and top commander, Manuel Marulanda, also known as "Sureshot", had died of a heart attack at a jungle base in March. It has lost several other members of its top leadership in recent months. "I think the time has come for the Farc to free everyone they have in the mountains. It would be a great, humanitarian gesture in exchange for nothing. That is what I propose to the new [Farc] leader."Since the death of Mr Marulanda, who instigated his Marxist-inspired struggle in Colombia with a group of armed peasants in 1964, the group has been led by Alfonso Cano, a man described as being more bookish and potentially more moderate than the man he replaced. His statement on Sunday marked the first time that the Venezuelan leader had addressed Mr Cano directly. "I say to Cano, let's go. Release those people," Mr Chavez said unambiguously. Farc is believed to be holding as many as 750 hostages in remote jungle areas of Colombia. For much of its existence, it has relied on taking citizens captive in the hope of extracting large sums in ransom – a practice that became known as "miracle fishing". For years, Colombians lived in terror of Farc roadblocks when any of them could have found themselves snatched from their cars. A few dozen of those still in captivity are considered high-profile hostages. They include three military contractors from the United States and the former presidential candidate, Ingrid Betancourt. Believed to be in poor health, Ms Betancourt holds joint French-Colombian citizenship. Her plight has been the subject of persistent lobbying by the French government for her release. Since coming to office in 2002, Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe has waged a determined effort to restore order to the country and end civil war. Over four decades, tens of thousands of lives have been lost as Farc battled it out against right-wing paramilitary groups that sprung up to combat its grip on the country as well as government forces. Last year, he invited Mr Chavez to help mediate with the group for the release of its hostages but withdrew that invitation in November, claiming that the Venezuelan leader was not sticking to his side of the bargain. The breach triggered a deep chill in relations between the two leaders as Mr Chavez loosed a string of derogative remarks about Mr Uribe's competence. Tensions spiked further when a computer belonging to Farc's second-in-command was found, which Colombia said showed Mr Chavez had funnelled $300m (£152m) to the group. There was no concealing the surprise in Bogota at the switch Mr Chavez seems to be making. "He was their defender and ally and so it's surprising that he has acted like this," said Carlos Holguin, Colombia's Interior Minister. "I hope Farc hears him – that all of Latin America hears him." Indeed, while Colombia may retain some scepticism about Mr Chavez's motives, its government also knows that Farc has a long history of ignoring all outside appeals for an end to its struggle. However, Mr Chavez, who has been leading his own "socialist revolution" in Venezuela, may be the one leader able to bring influence on them. In his statement, Mr Chavez offered a reason of his own to bring Farc's campaign to an end, pointing to the US. "You in the Farc should know something," he offered. "You have become an excuse for the empire to threaten all of us." He often uses the term "empire" to refer to the United States. Washington has made no secret of its desire to isolate Mr Chavez from other governments in Latin America. A revolutionary region *Caracas' most famous son, Simon Bolivar, led the charge in Hispanic America's struggle for independence. He is remembered across Central and South America as El Libertador after defeating the Spanish colonialists, and establishing the Gran Colombia federation in 1821 that would bring independence to Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Panama. *Mexico's revolution began with a letter. Thrown in jail in 1910 for declaring his intention to run against the dictator of 30 years Porfirio Diaz, Francisco Madero issued a note from his cell calling for revolt. A bloody decade of civil war ensued. *Guatemala's 'October Revolutionaries' – a group of dissident military officers, students and liberals – struck in 1944, overthrowing the military junta that had ousted dictator Jorge Ubico. Guatemala was to experience a decade of change known as the "Ten Years of Spring". *Aided by Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Fidel Castro landed in eastern Cuba in 1956 and over the next two and a half years rolled his '26th July Movement' across the country and into Havana, toppling the US-backed Fulgencio Batista in 1959. *Nicaragua's Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza dynasty in 1979. They lost elections in 1990, but returned to power in 2006 with the former guerrilla leader Daniel Ortega once more at the helm. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Related Article: http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/3537Venezuela Denies Arms Smugglers Caught in Colombia Belong to its Military Mérida, June 9, 2008 (venezuelanalysis.com)— According to the Colombian Attorney General, Mario Iguarán, Colombian officials arrested a sergeant of the Venezuelan National Guard for attempting to smuggle ammunition to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) on Friday. Venezuela says, though, the arrested man is not a National Guardsman and pledged to carry out a full investigation of the incident "in accordance with the law." "Four people were captured in a flagrant act, from whom 40,000 AK-47 cartridges were confiscated," Iguarán told the press Saturday. Two were Colombians, he said, and "two of them identified themselves with Venezuelan I.D. cards, one of whom claims to be Manuel Agudo Escalona, a junior sergeant in the National Guard." The Colombian government says the ammunition was destined for the FARC's 16th Front. However, Fredys Alonso Carrión, the top commander of the Venezuelan National Guard, announced Saturday, "When we received the information [of the arrest], we immediately began investigating." "I can tell all of you with total confidence that there exists no active duty or retired member within or in relation to the National Guard by the name of Manuel Agudo Escalona," Carrión declared on the Venezuelan state television channel, VTV. The Colombian Chancellor, Fernando Araújo, appealed to the Venezuelan Foreign Relations Department for "coordinated work between both chancellors" in order to "verify the identities and who could be implicated." In response, the Venezuelan Foreign Relations Ministry released a statement Saturday, assuring that the incident would be rapidly investigated and submitted to thorough legal proceedings. According to the statement, "From the first moment in which the information circulated the press, we established communication with the Colombian Foreign Minister in order to comply with the legal steps by which we will verify the identity of those detained." Once the "transparent facts" are clarified, the Venezuelan government will proceed "in accordance with the law and the truth" in order to solve the issue, the Venezuelan Ministry communicated. The Venezuelan daily newspaper El Universal reported Monday that Agudo Escalona and the other captured Venezuelan, a civilian named Germán Castañeda Durán, pleaded guilty to arms trafficking charges before a public tribunal in Bogotá. In a contrary account, the Venezuelan Minister of Justice and the Interior, Ramón Rodríguez Chacín, speculated Monday that the arrest is actually a "false positive," in which Colombian officials "simulated some punishable act, attributed it to the guerrilla and took the credit for having resolved the case, which they themselves had set up." According to Minister Chacín, Agudo Escalona has alleged that he was offered more than 100 million bolivars (US$46.5 million) to cross the Orinoco River in a small boat in military uniform, then the ammunition was planted in his boat and Colombian authorities arrived "immediately" afterward to make the arrest. In any case, the arrests were made by Colombia's Technical Investigations Body (CTI) in the borderlands between the Colombian Guainía and Vichada provinces, along the frontier shared with Venezuela. They were part of broader operations that also led to the arrest Friday of a bodyguard of the FARC's top military commander, Jorge Briceño, who is known as "Mono Jojoy," and several other insurgents. Colombia has accused Venezuela of financing and facilitating arms purchases for the guerrillas, citing as evidence computer files found in FARC laptops its says it recovered from the wreckage of a FARC camp that Colombia bombarded within Ecuadorian territory last March. The computers spent a month in the custody of Colombia, after which a forensic analysis by INTERPOL found "no evidence" that the computers were tampered with, but INTERPOL did not evaluate whether the files under question actually belonged to the FARC. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez energetically denies the accusations, saying his relations with the FARC have been exclusively aimed at hostage releases. Colombia's raid in March killed the FARC's chief hostage negotiator, Raul Reyes, two days after Chávez, in collaboration with Colombian opposition Senator Piedad Córdoba, negotiated the liberation of four high profile FARC hostages and garnered international praise. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Comment: I suspect Chavez's statement was torn out of the actual context of his intention and the focus was more on the role of FARC in Latin America. Nevertheless, the essence of true revolutionary analyse should be based upon 'factual analyses of actual conditions' or, to use a Leninist term, 'concrete analyses of concrete conditions'. Lenin put the question well when he said that "it is not enough to be a revolutionary and an adherent of socialism or a Communist in general. You must be able at each particular moment to find the particular link in the chain which you must grasp with all your might in order to hold the whole chain and to prepare firmly for the transition to the next link...[4] " We should still be prepared to deal with now unseen complexities, arm the people in all ways possible, including spiritually to wage spiritual warfare. Unless we deal with our old character defects we will be replacing one set of fascist fools with another set of fanatics. The people need to take revolutionary vanguard elements seriously, not as a bunch of isolated crazed clowns without mass support. We need to go far beyond last century's Left vs. Right schizophrenia divorced from connected reality. The truth is in the center, the people are the truth, the obvious conditions of their lives: hunger, poverty and repression. Take a good look at the people! Sit down, talk to and question the people. I do every day and night with an open mind and ear. Do they seem happy and content or troubled and perplexed? As educators, we must first relate to the people's level of social consciousness, then elevate it with basic community education, dong local community work where the people gather and most important of all learning from the people what their survival needs and immediate concerns are in their lives, not simplistically import foreign ideology without breaking in down into understandable terms. When someone is hungry, feed him. When someone is ragged, clothe them. When someine is illiterate, teach him. When someone is lost, give him shelter. When you see a need, meet that need! Be for real! We should see our participation in electoral politics ~ war without guns ~ as another expression of our revolutionary fervor. Be rational and not fanatical. No, we are not going to elect a socialist for President nor does one have a snowball's chance in hell of becoming the next President. We need to be realistic and work with what we got without fantasies. Understanding the ebbs and flow of vibrant revolutionary movements, sometimes coming closer to our calculations, other times drifting further away, but never stagnant. All is in a state of flux on the quantum level. Venceremos Unidos! Come Together and Create! C/S |
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