VPM Intro Activity

1. Violent Protest
Movements
IB Global Politics
UWC Costa Rica

2. FARC: Fuerza Armadas
Revolucionarias de Colombia
• Civil conflict has left 220,000 dead and
5,700,000 displaced over last half century
• Territorial disputes between military, leftist rebels
and right wing paramilitaries affect much of
country, especially in rural areas
• Key players are FARC and ELN

3. Brief history
• The FARC and ELN were founded in 1960s in the wake of more
than a decade of political violence in Colombia, known as La
Violencia (1948–58).
•
• Excluded from a power-sharing agreement that ended the fighting,
communist guerillas took up arms against the government.
• FARC was composed of communist militants and peasant self-
defense groups
• ELN’s ranks were dominated by students, Catholic radicals, and left-
wing intellectuals

4. Brief history
• Right-wing paramilitary groups formed in the late
1960s after the Colombian Congress passed
legislation that allowed citizens to form local self-
defense organizations.
• The largest paramilitary group, the United Self-
Defense Forces of Colombia, was on the U.S.
State Department's list of foreign terrorist
organizations until July 2014 - formally
disbanded in 2006, but splinter groups remain

7. Differentiating FARC and ELN
• Some commentators argues ELN is more ideological than FARC:
Broadly similar programmes.
• Both oppose U.S. influence in Colombia, the privatization of natural
resources, and rightist violence, and claim to represent the rural
poor against Colombia’s wealthy.
• The FARC is primarily a rural organization while the ELN's
supporters tend to be in urban areas. In some parts of the country
they cooperate; in others they have clashed directly.
• Both are designated by US State Department as foreign terrorist
organizations

8. Michael Shifter – President of Inter-
American Dialogue
"The FARC
is the critical
group, if
there's an
agreement
with the
FARC, that

9. Rebels with a Cause?
• Members of the FARC are often described as delinquent insurgents
who have lost all personal and institutional ethical boundaries and
continuously engorge themselves in a wide range of criminal
activities.
• More to the organization than drug running and kidnappings?
• The FARC has been able to sustain itself for almost fifty years and,
though its membership has dramatically fluctuated in recent years, it
shows no sign of collapsing anytime soon.
• Able to integrate itself, at least to a degree, as a significant
component of its country’s formal economy on both the national and
international stage