Why did FARC started?

Answer 1

The events that led to FARC's formation were many decades in the making. In 1898, Colombia was officially a democracy, but the system of governance resembled a Dictatorship. The government ruthlessly controlled the population and suppressed the lower classes with taxes and violence.1 Corruption was rampant, and state officials retained power by seizing farmland from rural peasants and distributing it to wealthy patrons.2 These class discrepancies festered for decades and led to civil was in 1948. This civil war pitted the liberal, poor population against conservative, rich communities.3 Rather than defend the rural populations, government forces withdrew to Colombia's urban settlements, leaving rural communities defenseless. For rural populations banded together to form self-defense communities.4 The civil war ended in 1954, but the government never reestablished its presence in rural Colombia. Instead, these self-defense communities continued controlling central Colombia, advocating Communism and land reform through legal means. In response, the Colombian Government invaded central Colombia in 1955, determined to disband the communities. Seeing that it would be impossible to advance Communism and land reform through legal means, the communities declared an armed rebellion. From these, FARC emerged in 1965, determined to create a national revolution.5

FARC's ideology was a direct response to the class inequalities, insecurity, and corrupt democracy practiced by the Colombian Government. To rectify these injustices, FARC called for a revolution to replace Colombia's democratic government with a Marxist system. Additionally, FARC demanded extensive and reform for the poor and security for rural communities. These three goals, a Marxist system, land reform, and rural security became the ideological foundation of FARC's revolutionary movement.6 In essence, FARC emerged to change the system of government and improve living conditions for Colombia's poor.

1. Charles W. Berquist, Coffee and Conflict in Colombia, 1886-1910 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1986): 129.

2. Ibid., 21-23.

3. Bert Ruiz, The Colombian Civil War (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2001), 38-39.

4. Thomas Marks, Colombian Army Adaption to FARC Insurgency (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2002): 3.

5. Marc Chernick, "FARC-EP: Las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionaries de Colombia-Ejercito del Pueblo," in Terror, Insurgency, and the State: Ending Protracted Conflicts, ed. Marianne Heiberg, Brendan O'Leary, and John Tirman (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 79.

6. Nazih Richani, "Caudillos and the Crisis of the Colombian State: Fragmented Sovereignty, the War System, and the Privatisation of Counterinsurgency in Colombia," Third World Quarterly 28, no. 2 (2007): 405-06.