BOGOTÁ, Colombia — It was appropriate that the first copies of Revolution and the Road to Peace in Colombia: The Example of the Cuban Revolution by Fidel Castro, a new book from Pathfinder just off the presses, were released at the Bogotá International Book Fair here April 25.
The book makes an important contribution to the discussion in a country marked by the decadeslong armed conflict between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and other guerrilla groups. The FARC, the largest of the groups, signed a peace agreement with the government that ended fighting in many areas in 2016.
The negotiations that led to the end of the war were in good part a product of the advocacy of Cuba’s revolutionary leadership for an end of the armed conflict.
The book presents political lessons Castro drew on the proletarian moral values required to lead workers to take power. The National Liberation Army (ELN), the largest guerrilla group after the FARC’s demobilization, and smaller FARC splinter groups remain active. Along with a drug-trafficking gang, they have been involved in a new outbreak of fighting in Catatumbo, in the northern part of the country, displacing more than 18,000 people.
The annual book fair here, known as FILBo, has been a major cultural event in the region since 1988. The two-week-long event is held every spring at the sprawling Corferias exhibition center. This year Spain was the country of honor.
More than 500 exhibitors and 500 authors from 24 countries were present, and 2,300 cultural events — from book presentations to poetry readings to concerts and children’s activities — were part of the program. Dozens of buses dropped off schoolchildren to browse the fair every day. Many food and beverage stands throughout the center provided sustenance for the thousands who flocked here.
This was the first time that volunteers from Pathfinder Press took part in the fair, joining a Bogotá-based distributor that has begun supplying Pathfinder titles to bookstores and libraries in the region. Pathfinder publishes works by Socialist Workers Party leaders and other revolutionaries, including Castro.
The Pathfinder volunteers visited stands at the fair and stores in the area to promote the new book on revolution and peace in Colombia and other titles. They also attended book presentations at the fair discussing the challenges in implementing the peace process and the history of the fight for agrarian reform, among others.
Land distribution in Colombia, where peasants make up a significant percentage of the country’s 53 million people, is the most unequal in Latin America. A handful of wealthy landowners control more than half the land.
While the fair was taking place, tens of thousands of trade unionists and others marched on May 1, International Workers Day, a national holiday here. Colombian President Gustavo Petro, a former guerrilla himself, addressed the crowd.
All in all, Pathfinder volunteers and the distributor in Colombia succeeded in getting orders from a number of chains and stores, an expansion of the reach of the books in Latin America.