Portugal's best-known communist and Nobe Prize winner Jose Saramago recently made a public attack on the FARC and ELN guerillas of Colombia, dismissing them as "armed gangs". In these extracts from his open letter to on Latin America, rejects his arguments and raises important questions about the nature and definition of guerrilla struggles. "DURING YOUR VISIT to Colombia you dismissed the two guerrilla groups, the FARC and the ELN: "In Colombia there are no guerrillas, they are simply armed gangs."
You went on to claim that they are not true communists because, "they dedicate themselves to kidnapping, murdering, violating human rights." Saramago, James Petras, a leading marxist writer
You generously allow that "perhaps in the beginning they were (communists) but not now." You then allow that guerrilla struggle is only justified when a country is occupied by a foreign invader and the people must organize to resist."
Saramago, as you well know, there are many conditions under which people rise to overthrow their oppressors: military dictators, murderous civilian regimes, landlords and their death squads, etc...
Do you think that the guerrillas of Zapata, Farabundo Marti and Fidel Castro were leading "armed gangs" because they failed to follow your precepts of voting "en blanco"?
They did not rebel against a foreign invader (though foreign capital, military advisers and sophisticated arms were in abundance). I am afraid that your political criteria would deny the great emancipatory figures and events of the 20th centuries...
But let us for a moment set aside your bizarre historical amnesia. Let's discuss the guerrillas in Colombia, in particular, the FARC.
FARC was formed by 46 peasant activists in 1964, who, after numerous efforts to construct peaceful productive communities, suffered persecution and witnessed the military destroy their crops, homes, animals, while murdering their families, friends and neighbours.
All under an elected civilian regime, oligarchical and repressive to be sure, under a Colombian command advised by US Special Forces.
Twenty years later the FARC negotiated a peace agreement with then President Betancourt, so that many of its militants and some of its leaders could form an electoral party, the Patriotic Union, and compete in the presidential and congressional elections. Between 1984-1989 over 5,000 members and electoral activists were murdered by the