Lessons of Cuban Revolution valuable in Colombia

Fidel Castro’s 2008 book discusses how Cuban fighters took power, course of leaders of FARC

Below are excerpts from La paz en Colombia (Peace in Colombia), by Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro that attracted worldwide interest when it was released by Editora Política in 2008.

Castro expressed his opposition to U.S. imperialist intervention and his support for a negotiated end to the decades-long guerrilla war in Colombia in two articles published earlier that year in Granma, the daily newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba. He also explained his disagreement with the political course followed by Manuel Marulanda, leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), who had died earlier that year, and the Communist Party of Colombia, of which Marulanda was a member for many years.

“The Colombian Communist Party never contemplated the idea of conquering power through the armed struggle,” Castro said. “The guerrilla was a resistance front and not the basic instrument to conquer revolutionary power, as it had been in Cuba.” In 1993, he added, “Marulanda took over the leadership of that Party’s guerrillas, which was always distinguished by their hermetic sectarianism when admitting combatants as well as in their iron-handed and compartmentalized leadership methods.”

Castro also expressed his opposition to the FARC’s treatment of prisoners and their practice of taking hostages.

Castro reaffirmed that Cuba would “never support the pax romana that the [U.S.] empire tries to impose on Latin America.” He said that establishing a “real peace,” was the “one way out” in Colombia, and the option “Cuba has advocated” for decades.

Translation is by the Militant.

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BY FIDEL CASTRO

My disagreement with Marulanda’s conception is based on living experience, not as a theoretician but as a political person who confronted and had to resolve very similar problems, both as a citizen and a guerrilla, although Marulanda’s problems were more complex and difficult. …

We who organized the movement that sought to take power on July 26, 1953, had a clear idea of our objectives, and this remained constant. …

The United States organized armed groups [against Cuba after the 1959 revolution] and terrorist groups supplied by air and sea. They planted bombs, burned social and economic installations, including theaters, child care centers, factories, sugar plantations, warehouses, department stores and other targets, snuffing out lives or maiming Cubans through their traitorous actions. …

The U.S. government pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war, because they refused to give up the idea of a direct attack on Cuba, using its powerful military. That would have cost an incalculable loss in lives and destruction, since, the Cuban people, as is well known, would have resisted to the last drop of blood. …

Our idea of the guerrilla force as the developing embryo of a force capable of taking power is not based only on the Cuban experience but also on that of other Latin American countries. In all of them the struggles would be waged by the poor, independently of their level of education, which everywhere, as the exploited classes — worker or peasant, simple day laborers or even soldiers — was very low. …

The United States is not a friend of the peoples of Latin America. For more than a century and a half it intervened in Latin America’s internal affairs, stole its territory, robbed its natural resources, attacked its culture, imposed unequal trade, sabotaged unity efforts going back to the era of independence, promoted conflicts between our countries, exploited the great differences in the heart of our societies. …

During the last 50 years, military coups and bloody tyrannies, supported and encouraged by the United States, have meant hundreds of thousands of “disappeared,” tortured, and murdered in Central and South America. The coup plotters and torturers were trained in U.S. military schools. …

The problem of drugs, which today causes so much pain to the peoples of Latin America, in reality originates with the enormous demand in the United States, where the authorities have never decided to combat it energetically while assigning this task solely to the countries where poverty and underdevelopment push masses of peasants into cultivating the coca leaf or poppies instead of coffee, cacao, or other products undervalued in the U.S. market. …

I disagreed with the head of the FARC over the pace he assigned to the revolutionary process in Colombia, over his idea of excessively prolonged war. …

The FARC, because of its operational conceptions, never surrounded or forced the surrender of a full battalion backed by artillery, armored units and air power. This is an experience we did have, thus defeating even larger units of elite troops. This is not what happened with the FARC, despite the tremendous quality of its fighters.

My opposition to holding prisoners of war, to applying policies that humiliate them or subject them to extremely harsh jungle conditions, is well known. With these policies troops will never lay down their arms, even if the battle is lost. Nor was I in agreement with capturing and holding civilians who have nothing to do with the war.

Related articles:
Agreement to end Colombia-FARC war opens door for class struggle
Rebel Army’s moral values key to overthrow of Batista
UN caused cholera epidemic in Haiti; Cuban doctors fought it
IRS attack on Pastors for Peace is aimed at solidarity with Cuba

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