For more than 40 years, the FARC were led by their legendary commander Manuel Marulanda. Following Marulanda’s death from a heart attack in March 2008, Cano became the rebel group’s leader. Cano, whose real name is Guillermo Léon Sáenz, was a student leader at the National University in Bogotá during the 1970s. After joining the FARC he became involved in the guerrilla group’s political activities, including the Patriotic Front (UP) party in the 1980s. After the UP was decimated by right-wing paramilitaries that assassinated more than 2,000 party members, including two presidential candidates and four elected congressman, Cano became the head of the FARC’s new clandestine political organization, the Clandestine Colombian Communist Party.

U.S. aid under Plan Colombia over the past ten years has dramatically strengthened the Colombian military. Its soldiers are now well-trained in counter-insurgency techniques and benefit from U.S. intelligence gathering. Troops can also be deployed quickly to almost anywhere in the country thanks to the Blackhawk helicopters provided under Plan Colombia. Improved intelligence gathering has been a contributing factor in many of the successful air strikes against FARC camps, such as the ones that resulted in the deaths of Reyes and Mono Jojoy.

But Cano is not as vulnerable to satellites, planes and the rapid deployment of Colombian troops by helicopter. The FARC commander is high in the Andes Mountains in some of the most rugged terrain in Colombia, which is dominated by steep canyons, peaks that reach over 14,000-feet and almost constant cloud cover. In fact, there are only a handful of days during the year that the higher elevations of the mountains in southern Tolima are not blanketed with clouds.

As a result, it is difficult for the military to detect Cano’s location with satellite imagery and reconnaissance planes. It is also difficult for the army to rapidly deploy troops because it is too dangerous for helicopters to operate in the cloud-covered mountain terrain. According to Lieutenant-Colonel Rodolfo Mantilla, commander of the Caicedo Mountain Battalion, “Success is often determined by the weather. When we receive intelligence about the guerrillas we have to try and maintain that intelligence sometimes for four, five or six days until the weather clears and we can launch an operation.”

Instead of relying on air support, the Colombian army’s strategy has been to flood the region with ground troops in an effort to gain control over territory. But it has been slow going for the army. As  Mantilla explains, “Our troops can only move one or two kilometers a day because of the steep canyons and the landmines planted by the guerrillas. It is also difficult because it only takes one civilian to tell the FARC where our troops are and we can be easily ambushed.”

While some army units are directly engaged in search-and-destroy missions targeting Cano, others are seeking to consolidate control over recent territorial gains. The strategy intends to win the “hearts and minds” of Colombian peasants who have lived under FARC rule for the past 45 years in order to undermine local support for the guerrillas. In 2008, the army began making frequent incursions into remote hamlets situated in the municipality of Chaparral. But as has occurred in many regions throughout Colombia under the government’s democratic security strategy, the army’s advancement into FARC-controlled territory has involved the perpetration of human rights abuses.

During the first year of the army’s efforts to extend state control in the municipality of Chaparral, 823 peasants were forcibly displaced by military operations, according to statistics provided by the Inspector General’s office—the government agency responsible for investigating human rights abuses. The government’s local human rights investigator, Claudia Pena, says there have also been four cases of “false-positives” in the municipality, where the army has executed civilians and reported them as guerrillas killed in combat. However, local residents in one mountain village claim that there has been double that number of false-positives in their community alone. One resident says that the army killed villagers simply because they assumed they were guerrillas.

It is difficult to obtain accurate statistics regarding human rights abuses because, according to Pena, “The people have been caught in the middle of the conflict and are afraid to say who is responsible for killings that occur. When a community refuses to help the army then soldiers assume that they are guerrillas. The same happens when they refuse to help the guerrillas, who accuse them of being army informants.”

Over the past year, the army has begun to consolidate its control over territory by establishing a permanent presence in several remote mountain villages and hamlets. One such village is Santa Barbara, where the departmental government has built a new “mega-school” to serve the 10,000 residents that live in the village and its surrounding hamlets. One local community leader says that the government also provided computers and bicycles for free. The new school, as is the case with other schools in the region, also serves a military purpose. According to Lt. Col. Mantilla, “We are implementing programs in schools throughout the municipality to deter children from wanting to join the guerrillas.”

Not all of the communities in which the army has recently established a permanent presence have received the same amount of attention as Santa Barbara. Three months ago, the army established itself in the mountain village of Limón, which historically was a full day of travel by four-wheel-drive jeep from the town of Chaparral, where the Caicedo Mountain Battalion is based. The state recently paved the rugged dirt track that constituted the principal access route into that mountainous region and it now takes only two hours to reach the remote village.

But like many other former FARC-controlled regions that are now in the government´s hands, the military constitutes the only permanent state presence. Representatives of the government’s Social Action agency only visit the village of Limón once a week and never venture out to the even more remote hamlets. Similarly, Limón’s health clinic, which serves the 5,000 peasants that live in the village and its surrounding hamlets, is only staffed by a nurse, with a doctor visiting on Sundays.

Most peasants living in Limón and its surrounding hamlets live in extreme poverty, supporting themselves through subsistence agriculture and by cultivating a handful of cash crops such as cacao and coffee. However, because most of the farming occurs in the remote hamlets, it is difficult for peasants to get their crops to the market in the town of Chaparral. While the new road has helped, many still have to first transport their crops by mule on dirt trails from their hamlets to Limón; a journey that often involves a four-hour or more trek each way.

Most of the communities throughout the region have lived under FARC rule for decades. The community leader in Limón explains that the FARC ensured there was no violence or crime, and also that farmers didn’t damage the environment. Under state control, there has been an increase in crime and no improvement in the economy. According to a community leader in Limón who belongs to the local Community Action Council (Junta Acción Comunal), “The military is the only state presence here. We need more investment in technology and in infrastructure, like improving the trails so peasants can get their crops to market easier. This is the only way to eliminate the poverty.”

Much of the local population is both distrustful of the new military presence and afraid that the guerrillas might target them if they cooperate with government agencies. The desire to appear neutral is evidenced in the words of a 73-year-old woman named Armelia, who has lived her entire life in the hamlet of Jasminia. Armelia says that the guerrillas never bothered the community and neither does the army. However, she wishes someone would help alleviate the extreme poverty in which she lives, claiming that there has been no change in the social and economic situation during her long life.

While many peasants strive to appear neutral, some are involved with one side or the other in the conflict. One resident of Limón explained that many families have children in the FARC. Another said that the extreme poverty leads many to join either the guerrillas or the army. According to Lt. Col. Mantilla, sometimes when peasants from regions traditionally controlled by the FARC want to join the guerrillas, the rebel group tells them to join the army instead so they can act as informants. Mantilla claims to have discovered two soldiers in his battalion during the last two months of 2010 that were FARC members who had infiltrated his unit.

There is no question that the FARC has been hurt by a more aggressive Colombian military, which has benefited from more than $7 billion in U.S. aid and training over the past decade. The guerrilla group’s influence in regions where it expanded its presence during the 1980s and 1990s has been either completely eliminated or has been diminished significantly in recent years. The FARC’s focus on a military presence in most of these regions often led to local populations viewing the guerrillas as outsiders. The rebel group’s failure to establish close ties to local populations allowed the newly-strengthened and more aggressive Colombian military to defeat it in those regions. As a result, the visible guerrilla presence in northern and central Colombia, as well as in the far eastern departments of Guainía, Vaupés and Amazonas, has been virtually eradicated. However, it is difficult to determine to what extent the FARC still operates clandestinely in these regions.

By the end of 2010, the FARC maintained a significant visible presence in only three regions of the country: the south-east (Meta, Guaviare, Caquetá and Putumayo); the south-central highlands (Huila and southern Tolima); and the south-west (Nariño, Cauca, Valle de Cauca and southern Chóco). Even in these traditional strongholds where the FARC remains organically linked with much of the peasant population, the guerrillas have been forced to retreat to the most remote areas.

Despite these setbacks, the FARC’s military strength and popular support remains relatively intact in its traditional strongholds. In fact, according to a 2010 report issued by the Bogota-based NGO New Rainbow Corporation, more soldiers and police were killed in 2010 than at the height of the conflict in 2002. However, many of these casualties resulted from defensive actions by the FARC such as the planting of landmines, whereas ten years ago soldiers and police were being killed in large-scale guerrilla offensives launched against small and medium sized towns. Nevertheless, the FARC continues to carry out offensive actions, conducting more than 1,800 attacks in 2010, albeit on a much smaller scale than previously. Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of these attacks occurred in the three regions in which the FARC maintains a strong presence rather than throughout the country.

Many of these attacks have targeted the thousands of troops that are hunting Alfonso Cano in southern Tolima.  Lt. Col. Mantilla claims it is difficult to determine exactly how many guerrillas are protecting Cano. There are several concentric rings of security surrounding the FARC commander as well as guerrilla units that engage in offensive operations throughout the region. There are also many FARC militia members living in the hundreds of hamlets and villages that are scattered throughout the mountains, as well as in the town of Chaparral.

Despite the army’s many successes against the FARC in recent years, it continues to struggle in its efforts to make significant headway in the guerrilla group’s traditional strongholds. Nowhere has that struggle proven more difficult than in the rugged mountains of southern Tolima. Consequently, notes Mantilla, “There has been a lot of blood spilled in these mountains, by our soldiers and by the guerrillas. This is not a mission that can be accomplished in weeks, or in months. It is going to take years.”

Today, Guainía is in the midst of a bust period. It is also enjoying a greater degree of peace than at any other time in the past couple of decades, thanks to the national government’s “democratic security” strategy. However, the militaristic pacification of the region is the not the first pacification that has impacted the local indigenous population. In the middle of the 20th century, an evangelical missionary arrived to “civilize” local indigenous peoples.

The arrival of rubber barons early in the 20th century had proven devastating for many indigenous tribes in Guainía as they were brutally exploited as virtual slave laborers. But in 1944 a savior arrived in the form of an American evangelical missionary named Sophie Muller. She initially lived among the Curipaco tribe, which had largely succeeded in avoiding contact with outsiders due to the remoteness of its communities situated along the Guainía River.

Muller had been attending art school in New York City when she “found God” and joined the newly-formed New Tribes Mission. She was dispatched to the Colombian Amazon in order to bring the word of God to remote indigenous peoples. After travelling for several weeks by river deep into the Amazon rainforest she encountered the Curipacos, who befriended her. Over time, Muller learned their language and eventually devised a phonetically-based written form of it. She then began teaching the Curipacos to read and write. Muller devised simple texts based on the New Testament and successfully converted the Curipacos to Christianity.

In the ensuing years Muller began reaching out to the other fourteen indigenous tribes in Guainía and, utilizing the same strategy, also converted the overwhelming majority of their members to Christianity. The Puinave tribe had survived for thousands of years on sustainable agricultural practices and by hunting and fishing. The Puinave had successfully preserved their own religious rituals by relocating on numerous occasions in order to escape the efforts of Jesuit missionaries to “civilize” them. Muller, however, succeeded where the Catholics had failed.

Muller’s arrival in the Colombian Amazon initiated what anthropologist Nancy Flowers has called a “messianic movement.” According to Flowers, “The aim of the missionaries has been to eradicate all aspects of the native belief system and to train native pastors to carry on their work. Young people have been taught to reject their own cultural traditions, but nothing has effectively replaced them. Like many other Amazonian groups, the Puinave have lost more than they have gained from the ‘civilizing’ process.”

Anthropologist Jonathan David Hill, who worked with indigenous peoples in the Colombian Amazon during the 1990s, concurs with Flowers’ assessment: “Indigenous people were taught to be ashamed of their social and religious practices, which were labeled in frankly denigrative terms as ‘evil’ forms of ‘devil worship.’ Indigenous shamans and chant owners were especially targeted as agents of evil, and most of them were ostracized by their kin group.”

When it was suggested to Muller that her missionary work was eradicating the traditional practices of the indigenous, she replied, “Drinking and dancing without stopping; you know that dancing leads to immorality. Those idiots used all that sorcery. The men would drink and dance all night long; then they would go and mount the girls and do immoral things.”

Tiverio Acervero runs an indigenous cultural center in Inírida with the objective of reviving the traditional practices eradicated by Muller. He claims that the American evangelist had both a positive and negative impact on the local population. According to Acervero, “The positive was that she organized the indigenous people and created a plan for living. The negative was that she prohibited indigenous music, dances, chicha [traditional alcoholic drink] and traditional medicines because they were from the “devil.” Muller also viewed non-indigenous traders and Catholic priests as “devils.”

According to Maria Fernanda Aristizabal, a government lawyer who has worked on behalf of indigenous rights in Guainía, Muller helped instill pride in many indigenous people who had become downtrodden through the exploitation and abuse they experienced at the hands of outsiders. Muller was also responsible for ending much of the violence that was commonly waged between indigenous tribes and established a peaceful process for addressing problems. As Aristizabal notes, “Muller gave the indigenous tools like reading and writing. In many ways, she empowered the indigenous more than the Catholic priests did. She helped them to feel it was okay to be proud to be indigenous.”

Aristizabal met Muller in the early 1990s at one of the regular assemblies that the missionary organized to bring together evangelical indigenous community leaders from throughout the region. Aristizabal explains that it was immediately apparent upon meeting Muller that the missionary had a strong and charismatic personality. But she also remembers being surprised that Muller’s theology was very simplistic. When Aristizabal arrived at the gathering, Muller was lying in a hammock. “When she saw me, she immediately assumed I was an anthropologist and jumped out of the hammock yelling, ‘Anthropologist! Anthropologist! You are the devil!’” said Aristizabal.

Muller spent forty years living with the indigenous in Guainía and, with the aid of the New Tribes Mission, successfully translated the New Testament into fourteen indigenous languages and converted 90 percent of the population to evangelism. But in the 1980s, the Marxist guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) arrived in the region and viewed the evangelical missionaries as agents of the U.S. government. Twenty years later, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez would threaten to expel the New Tribes Mission from that country for the same reason. In 1984, under threat from the FARC, Muller fled across the border into Venezuela where she continued her missionary work with the indigenous in that country and only returned to Guainía for occasional visits.

In contrast to the Liberation Theology that was being practiced by increasing numbers of Catholic priests throughout rural Latin America at the time, the evangelical missionaries were far more conservative and reflected the individualistic values that dominated U.S. culture. According Hill, “The missionaries’ ideology equated ‘good’ with ‘Christianity,’ ‘modernity,’ and ‘capitalist prosperity.’ Much like the founding ideologies of the architects of independent nation-states of the early nineteenth century.” Not surprisingly, the FARC viewed the evangelical missionaries of the New Tribes Mission as ideological enemies, even killing three members of the Mission in northern Colombia in 1996.

The FARC´s 16th Front came to dominate much of Guainía and the neighboring department of Vichada during the 1990s. At the same time, the cultivation of coca, the raw ingredient in cocaine, increased dramatically in Guainía, as it did in many other departments in eastern and southern Colombia during that period. In Guainía, coca filled the economic void created by the end of the gold rush that had occurred in the late 1980s.

The indigenous population had to once again learn to live with outsiders, and they managed t co-exist with the FARC in relative peace, although they were never supportive of the guerrillas. As one indigenous leader in Inírida explains, “The guerrillas never did anything for us.” Despite a lack of active support from the local indigenous population, the FARC gained control over much of Guainía and was firmly ensconced in the jungle directly across the river from the departmental capital Inírida. In 1999, hundreds of guerrillas launched an attack on Inírida, but failed to capture the town.

In 2002, President Alvaro Uribe launched his Democratic Security Strategy, which sought to establish state control over the 40 percent of the national territory that was dominated by the FARC. During the ensuing years, the number of military personnel based in Inírida increased dramatically from approximately 600 to almost 3,000 members of the Army, Marines and National Police. The increased troop strength, along with training, helicopters and intelligence provided by the U.S. government, allowed the military to aggressively attack the guerrillas. The military has now gained control of all the rivers and most of the department’s sparsely-populated territory. The FARC’s 16th Front has been forced to retreat to the most remote regions and its current troop strength in Guainía is estimated to be less than fifty fighters. As one Inírida resident explains, “Ten years ago the guerrillas were right across the river, now they are nowhere to be found.”

Military operations against the guerrillas coincided with the eradication of coca throughout much of Guainía. Initially, the eradications were conducted through aerial fumigations, but later they were performed manually. The eradication of coca hurt the economy in rural regions and in the town of Inírida. Meanwhile, according to local indigenous leader Alexander Bira Vare, the defeat of the guerrillas opened the door for the neo-paramilitary group Aguilas Negras to move into western Guainía along the border with Vichada. The paramilitaries now control cocaine production and trafficking along that section of the Guaviare River.

Over the last eight years, most indigenous communities have experienced another shift with regard to the outsiders who impact their lives, this time with the FARC being replaced by the government. While the armed conflict has mostly ended in the region, the government presence remains primarily military in nature. According to Bira Vare, the state has failed to implement any significant social and economic programs in rural indigenous communities that have been hurting economically since the eradication of coca.

Similarly in the town of Inírida, the massive military presence constitutes the principal face of the national government. As a departmental capital, the town should have at least a Tier Two level medical clinic. However, the clinic is poorly staffed and inadequately equipped, resulting in many seriously ill residents having to take the long flight to Bogotá to be treated.

The presence of almost 3,000 military personnel in the town has also failed to boost the regional economy because all food and other supplies are flown in from Bogotá to serve the needs of the troops rather than being purchased from local merchants. The military’s principal social and economic impact on Inírida consists of the money troops spend in the bars and on prostitutes every Sunday, which is their day off. As one male resident explains, there is much resentment of the military among local men because “the local girls want military boyfriends and many of them end up pregnant and the soldiers don´t stick around.”

At the same time that the military has established security in many rural regions, the government has offered the country’s natural resources to multinational companies for exploitation. This process is also evident in Guainía as mining appears to be the next economic boom that will attempt to alleviate the region’s widespread poverty. In 2009, the government announced that coltan reserves had been discovered in Guainía. Coltan is a precious metal that is essential for producing capacitors used in cell phones, video game players, computers and other electronics. Canadian mining companies have already surveyed the region as producers seek alternatives to the reserves that are fueling the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Indigenous leader Bira Vare is concerned that the national government will hand over concessions in indigenous reserves to foreign mining companies. He says that, according to the government, the indigenous people only own the surface rights to the land and that the state owns the sub-soil rights to minerals such as coltan. Consequently, Bira Vare is fearful that indigenous tribes in Guainía will once again be negatively impacted by outsiders who impose their ways on them.

In the meantime, the removal of the FARC from much of Guainía has allowed foreign evangelical missionaries to return and again become active in the region. One American missionary who was visiting Inírida to review a revised translation of the New Testament into one of the indigenous languages lauded President Uribe’s achievements. And in reference to the widespread human rights abuses perpetrated under the government’s democratic security strategy, he argued, “I know there have been some problems, but Uribe would never have been so successful if he’d abided by international law.”

The current wave of missionaries is intent on continuing the work of Muller, who died in 1995. Given that certain sectors of the indigenous population are now working to revive the traditional cultural practices that Muller eradicated, they may well seek to replicate her moralistic approach. Aristizabal acknowledges that Muller’s legacy is controversial, but nevertheless claims, “She was the most influential person of the 20th century in this whole area, in Guainía, because she changed the balance of relations between the indigenous and non-indigenous traders.” And it appears that those relations will continue to change for the indigenous peoples of Guainía in the 21st century, but it remains to be seen if these changes will be for better or worse.

On September 23, one day after the death of FARC commander “Mono Jojoy,” President Juan Manuel Santos stated in New York that, “The time of terror is over; now it is time to cultivate peace, to cultivate prosperity.” With this ambiguous phrase, it would seem that Santos was hoping to show that the FARC’s time is up and that peace is on the way. Later on, in the same press conference, Santos made a call to all guerrilla combatants to demobilize and leave the war behind. He further stated that the government is going to hunt down the leaders of the FARC. This was not the first time that Colombia’s new president has said that the war will be total. A few days earlier, he stated, “We are not going to rest one second until we are able to destroy all terrorism!” Apparently, the time to cultivate peace will have to wait while the war continues.

The implication here is that there are two government strategies with regards to the armed conflict. The first is to urge the low-level guerrilla fighters to demobilize and the second is to kill high-ranking guerrilla commanders. It is a strategy designed to defeat the guerrillas militarily from the inside and outside. Yet it ignores any real possibility for peace since it begs the question: Who do you negotiate with if all the leaders are dead? The government believes, wrongly, that it is just a question of time until the FARC decide, due to military pressure, that they want to just demobilize.

At the same time, when the guerrillas decide that it is truly interested in talking about peace, the government will be ready with the doors open, according to Vice-President Garzón. But first the guerrillas have to decide that violence no longer makes sense in the Colombia of today because the government will not talk without the guerrillas first ceasing to engage in violence. But how will the government decide that the guerrillas are not using negotiations as a strategy for war? Well, when the guerrillas stop using violence, the government will know. The amazing inference here leads to an obvious problem: how does one get to this point given the strategy of the government as well as an analytical error by, at least, the FARC.

The FARC frequently commit an important error while looking at the current situation. They continue to believe in the classic idea of balance of forces. They think the more military power they show, the more they can get from negotiations. While this has often been true in conflicts around the world, this scenario is no longer relevant in Colombia. This creates a situation in which it is impossible for the guerrillas not to lose. First, exercising no violence with only the possibility of peace is too risky since the armed forces could take advantage and attack whenever deemed necessary, creating a huge military disadvantage for the guerrillas. The experience in the Casa Verde will remind the FARC of this possibility. Secondly, continuing to carry out attacks in order to show their military strength creates an incredibly hostile environment for any type of dialogue since the (mostly urban) population will support a military response by the government in such a situation.

Thus the highest hurdle appears. The condition implemented by the government that the guerrillas unilaterally cease using violence before it can enter into negotiations is unacceptable for any armed group in almost any armed conflict, lest the group believes it is on the brink of defeat, something that the FARC vehemently denies. And after all, the laying down of arms is a goal of negotiations, not a starting point! Even organizing a ceasefire requires some form of negotiation to implement. In the Colombian case, such a dialogue would have to be carried out through videos, letters and communiqués from each side. If the leaders of the FARC see the aforementioned statements by government officials, and they certainly do, they will have no reason to think that any proposal that they make regarding negotiations will have any effect on the government. Therefore, a shift in the government’s position would tip the balance towards a real chance at peace.

Both sides need more pragmatic ideas and proposals in order to move any possibility of peace forward. The government needs to change their conditions because it knows that the FARC will not accept them: ending the violence should be the end goal of negotiations. If the government proposed certain economic and social reforms to be discussed in peace talks that would place pressure on the guerrillas to enter into talks. But by declaring that violence will be used against the FARC until the guerrillas decide to no longer use violence, the government is echoing the sentiments of the FARC: that as long as the government continues to use violence then they have no option but to fight back. Ultimately, the inertia of war continues.

The government, with its recent military supremacy, could take advantage of the FARC’s perspective regarding the balance of forces and create a proposal for a ceasefire that would take the first step towards a serious peace agreement. The government could quickly recover any possible losses militarily were the process to fail. If the process succeeded, it would be able to take credit (rightly or wrongly) for creating an environment for peace.

However, for now, the strategy of both sides is to wage all-out war, not because either side can win (despite what the government may think), but because peace implies a risky strategic change. And even though both sides talk of peace and change, the FARC by proposing reforms and the government by proposing a Colombia without the FARC, in the end, it is change that scares them both, thereby hindering any chance for peace.

Many analysts have long suggested that the death of the FARC’s longtime leader Manuel Marulanda would lead to internal dissent within the guerrilla group and a possible power struggle between the rebels’ international diplomat Raúl Reyes and Mono Jojoy. Reyes was portrayed as a political leader and negotiator while Mono Jojoy was presented as a warmonger. Ultimately, analysts claimed, whichever of these two leaders proved victorious in the power struggle would become supreme commander of the FARC and hugely influence the prospects for peace in Colombia. But since Reyes was killed three weeks before Marulanda died, it was assumed by many that Mono Jojoy would then be the legendary leader’s natural heir. Consequently, many analysts were surprised when the FARC announced following Marulanda’s death that Alfonso Cano was the guerrilla group’s new supreme commander. Some analysts even began suggesting that such a decision signified internal divisions within the secretariat that could lead to a fracturing of the guerrilla group.

Analysts have repeatedly been wrong in their assumptions and projections because they lack any real knowledge about the inner workings of the FARC and under-estimate the group’s levels of organization and cohesiveness. In actuality, the FARC’s seven-person secretariat has agreed upon such promotions long before they need to be implemented. In other words, there already exists a list of commanders who are in line to be promoted to the secretariat should an existing member die. Similarly, it has already been decided who in the secretariat will become supreme commander should Cano die.

Such organization and foresight explains why the announcements declaring who would replace Marulanda, Reyes, Ivan Ríos and Mono Jojoy were made within a few days of their respective deaths, sometimes within 24 hours. These promotions had been debated and agreed upon by members of the secretariat long before they needed to be implemented. And the decision to promote Cano rather than Mono Jojoy to supreme commander was not divisive among members of the secretariat or among the guerrilla group’s rank and file because it was partly influenced by the fact that the latter had been suffering serious health problems in recent years, primarily diabetes.

Another misunderstanding many analysts make regarding the FARC relates to a desire to categorize its leaders and reduce them to one-dimensional beings. Because Cano was the head of the FARC’s political party—the Clandestine Colombian Communist Party (PCCC)—then he must be more politically-minded than military-minded, they argue. Similarly, using the same logic, since Mono Jojoy was the commander of the FARC’s largest and most powerful bloc then he must have been a warmonger and the group’s leading proponent of a military solution to the country’s problems.

Such reductionist approaches have led many analysts to claim that with the “politician” Cano rather than the “militarist” Mono Jojoy replacing Marulanda then the chances of achieving a negotiated settlement to the conflict increased dramatically. Similarly, now that Mono Jojoy has been killed then the prospects for peace must have once again improved. Such analysis displays a lack of understanding of the FARC, its commanders and their commitment to armed struggle. Cano joined the guerrillas because he believed that social justice could only be achieved in Colombia through armed struggle. He became the head of the group’s clandestine political party because he was an ideologue. Therefore, as an ideologue who was committed to armed struggle, there is little possibility that Cano will compromise the FARC’s agenda by negotiating a peace that fails to fulfill the guerrilla group’s political objectives.

Likewise, despite analysts repeatedly reducing him to a ruthless military tactician, Mono Jojoy was also an ideologue—as are all of the FARC’s high-ranking commanders. This was evidenced by the fact that the bloc Mono Jojoy commanded has implemented some of the FARC’s most progressive social and economic policies, which have benefited thousands of peasants in eastern Colombia. Over the past 20 years, many small towns in remote regions under Mono Jojoy’s control experienced significant infrastructure improvements as a result of the FARC’s public works programs. The FARC has built hundreds of miles of roads that connected dozens of isolated communities to each other. In the early 2000s, Efrain Salazar, the FARC’s public works director in Meta, had an annual budget of $1 million and paid civilians who worked for him a monthly salary of $125.

And during the 1990s, Mono Jojoy used some of the FARC’s tax revenues to construct electrical grids in dozens of remote towns and villages neglected by the national government. The guerrilla commander also oversaw agrarian reform projects such as the breaking up of ten large ranches in the southern part of Meta in 2002 and 2003 with the smaller properties then distributed to subsistence farmers.

In short, a guerrilla fighter in the FARC will not become a member of the secretariat unless they are fully-committed to both the rebel group’s ideology and the armed struggle. This is a fundamental reality that many analysts fail to portray in their reductionist examinations of the FARC. Furthermore, analysts often imply that the FARC’s supreme commander has dictatorial powers within the guerrilla group when in reality political and military strategies are more often than not a result of consensus decision-making by the seven members of the secretariat. It is this decision-making process that often results in the FARC being slow to respond to proposals; after all, the seven members of the secretariat are scattered across the country.

Such fundamental misunderstandings of the FARC explain why so many claims by analysts regarding the future of the guerrilla group and the implications of certain events have proven to be erroneous. These misunderstandings are rooted in the fact that the overwhelming majority of analysts have little or no experience with the FARC’s inner workings. Ultimately, their analysis is based on the same misunderstandings that they then help to further perpetuate.

Not surprisingly, Colombian government officials quickly began trumpeting the importance of the successful military operation that involved 400 troops and more than 30 aircraft and helicopters. In reference to the killing of Mono Jojoy, Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos declared, “It is the most resounding blow against the Farc in is entire history.” Meanwhile, Defense Minister Rodrigo Rivera, in reference to the fact that information provided by a FARC deserter led the military to Mono Jojoy’s hideout, stated, “The Farc are falling apart from within.”

Undoubtedly, the loss of a longtime leader such as Mono Jojoy will impact the FARC. The guerrilla commander joined the FARC in 1975 at 12 years of age and rose up through the ranks to command the rebel group’s largest bloc, which consists of some 40 percent of its fighters. Along the way he became one of the most respected of the FARC’s leaders among rank and file guerrillas. This respect was not simply a result of his military prowess which, along with his bloc’s extensive role in capturing soldiers and police as well as kidnapping civilians, led many to view him as the most ruthless of the FARC’s leaders. This respect was also due to the social and economic policies implemented under his command.

In many ways, Mono Jojoy encompassed the complexities and contradictions evident in the FARC. He was a ruthless military tactician who in the late 1990s orchestrated a series of large-scale, successful attacks against military bases in eastern Colombia that caught the attention of Washington and led to a dramatically increased U.S. military intervention under Plan Colombia. At the same time, Mono Jojoy was responsible for extensive human rights violations including the kidnapping and killing of civilians in the regions under his command.

Meanwhile, what has been frequently ignored in the reporting on Mono Jojoy is the fact that the bloc he commanded has implemented some of the FARC’s most progressive social and economic policies, which have benefited peasants in eastern Colombia. Over the past 20 years, many small towns in remote regions under Mono Jojoy’s control experienced significant infrastructure improvements as a result of the FARC’s public works programs. The FARC has built hundreds of miles of roads that connected dozens of communities to each other. In 2003, according to a Washington Post report, Efrain Salazar, the FARC’s public works director in Meta, had an annual budget of $1 million and paid civilians who worked for him a monthly salary of $125.

And during the 1990s, Mono Jojoy used some of the FARC’s tax revenues to construct electrical grids in dozens of remote towns and villages long neglected by the national government. The guerrilla commander also oversaw agrarian reform projects such as the breaking up of ten large ranches in the southern part of Meta in 2002 and 2003 with the smaller properties then distributed to subsistence farmers.

So, ultimately, what will be the impact of Mono Jojoy’s death? Colombian government officials and many analysts are already claiming that his demise constitutes the beginning of the end for the FARC. However, the same claims were made after the deaths of three members of the FARC’s secretariat—Manuel Marulanda, Raúl Reyes and Iván Ríos—in March 2008 and the guerrilla group not only survived those setbacks, it actually increased its military actions over the past year. In fact, the FARC has killed more than 50 Colombian soldiers and police over the past month in one of the bloodiest periods of combat in many years.

While the death of Mono Jojoy will undoubtedly prove to be a setback for the FARC in the short term, particularly with regard to troop morale and desertion rates, it will probably not have a significant impact over the long term. After all, Mono Jojoy’s influence and role had already diminished in recent years due to health reasons, primarily diabetes. Furthermore, despite military setbacks, the FARC still has many experienced mid-level commanders who are capable of moving up the ranks—a fact made evident following the deaths of Marulanda, Reyes and Ríos two-and-a-half years ago.

Many analysts also argue—as they did following the deaths of Marulanda, Reyes and Ríos—that the FARC’s new supreme commander Alfonso Cano is more likely to engage in negotiations as a result of the military setbacks. Their latest arguments are based on the premise that Cano is the guerrilla group’s long-time political leader and therefore will be more willing to engage in negotiations than military leaders such as Mono Jojoy. But the assumption that Cano is more open to negotiations is flawed, because the FARC commander is an ideologue who is actually less likely to compromise the rebel group’s political ideals.

Interestingly, the principal obstacle to negotiations both before Mono Jojoy’s death and now is not the FARC, but the government. Previously, the Uribe administration refused to engage in negotiations with the FARC as long as the guerrillas demanded certain conditions, such as the establishment of a safe-haven in which to conduct talks. Last week, FARC commander Cano announced that the guerrilla group is willing “to talk with the current government and find a political solution to the social and armed conflict in the country and without any kind of conditions.” But now it is the Santos government that is setting conditions in order to initiate peace talks, demanding that the FARC first cease its military attacks and kidnapping.

The death of Mono Jojoy, like the killing of Reyes, illustrates the impact of U.S. military aid under Plan Colombia. The military operations that killed the two FARC commanders would not have been possible a decade ago. The Colombian military’s increased intelligence gathering capabilities along with its capacity to rapidly deploy well-trained combat units with U.S.-supplied helicopters has put the FARC on the defensive. The guerrilla group’s internal communications have been compromised and the ability of its leaders to remain undetected in remote jungle regions has been seriously restricted.

Given the Colombian military’s vastly improved capabilities, it will not be a surprise if the FARC’s supreme commander Cano is its next battlefield trophy. After all, the military has deployed more than 4,000 soldiers with the sole mission of tracking down Cano. However, as has occurred in the past, new leaders will simply replace those killed and, given that most FARC units operate on the local level with little regular communication with the group’s secretariat, the death of Mono Jojoy, Cano or any other high-ranking commander will have little direct impact on the daily activities of the rank-and-file. Therefore, the FARC will likely continue its armed struggle in some form or another for many more years.

Ultimately, a negotiated solution is the only way to bring peace to Colombia, but it would have to be a peace with social justice in order to truly end the violence. But the government, empowered by its military successes in recent years, has little desire to engage in any peace process that would affect the social and economic status quo by addressing the country’s gross inequalities and threatening the interests of the ruling elites.

In reference to Mexico, Clinton claimed that “drug cartels are now showing more and more indices of insurgency; all of a sudden, car bombs show up which weren’t there before.” She went on to argue that, as a result, Mexico is “looking more and more like Colombia looked 20 years ago, where the narco-traffickers control certain parts of the country, not significant parts. And Colombia—it got to the point where more than a third of the country, nearly 40 percent of the country at one time or another was controlled by the insurgents, by FARC.”

Clinton is correct in linking drug cartels to the car bombings that frequently occurred in Colombia two decades ago. In fact, between 1989 and 1993, some forty car bombs killed more than five hundred people. But Colombia’s largest insurgent group, the FARC, had little to do with these acts of violence. Drug baron Pablo Escobar and his Medellín cocaine cartel planted car bombs in urban centers to intimidate the government into ending its practice of extraditing Colombian drug lords to the United States.

Furthermore, the FARC were not involved in drug trafficking at the time—and it is debatable whether or not they are to any significant degree today. In fact, the FARC and Colombia’s drug cartels were arch enemies by the end of the 1980s. And, contrary to Clinton’s claims, it was the FARC that controlled “certain parts of the country,” not the narco-traffickers, who were primarily urban based. Clearly, Clinton’s comments sought to create the impression that Colombia’s drug cartels and the FARC were one and the same 20 years ago, thereby conflating the violence of the drug cartels with that of the insurgency when, in reality, the forms of violence and the objectives of the two groups were radically different, even diametrically opposed.

Former U.S. ambassador to Colombia, Thomas E. McNamara, in an op-ed piece published by the Los Angeles Times, defended Clinton’s claims. Comparing Colombia’s Medellín cartel 20 years ago with Mexico’s drug trafficking organizations today, McNamara wrote, “In both countries cartels demanded that they, not the government, determine the rules, settle disputes and control police power. This is clearly insurgency: usurpation of sovereign power, control of territory and the use of force to maintain control.” He goes on to state, “This is quite different from organized crime by American drug mafias. Our mafias do not attempt to usurp sovereign power.”

But McNamara’s labeling of both Colombia’s and Mexico’s cartels as insurgencies is inaccurate even according to the U.S. Department of Defense, which claims that an insurgency is an “organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government through the use of subversion and armed conflict.” Neither the Medellín cartel or Mexico’s contemporary cartels have attempted to overthrow their respective governments. The Medellín cartel used violence to influence government policy (i.e. end extradition), not to seize power. In fact, contrary to McNamara’s claims, the Colombian and Mexican cartels function very much like organized crime in the United States in that they use violence and bribe law enforcement officials and judges solely as a means to defend their criminal activities.

Why would Clinton and McNamara revise Colombian history by conflating the violent actions of the country’s traditional drug cartels and the FARC? The obvious answer is that presenting criminal organizations as a regional political threat (i.e. insurgencies) makes it easier to justify an expanded U.S. military role in Mexico and Central America.

Clinton noted that Mexico needs “better law enforcement and, where appropriate, military support for that law enforcement married to political will to be able to prevent this from spreading and to try to beat it back.” She then stated, “They’re wanting to do as much of it on their own as possible, but we stand ready to help them. But the small countries in Central America do not have that capacity.” The secretary of state then claimed that the militaristic Plan Colombia—more than 70 percent of the $7 billion in U.S. funding has been military aid—had worked in that South American country and suggested that “we need to figure out what are the equivalents for Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean.”

Similarly, McNamara declared Plan Colombia a success, claiming, “Cartel insurgencies no longer plague Colombia; only a reduced guerrilla insurgency continues. New drug mafias still operate, but Colombian trafficking has been greatly reduced.” In actuality, the amount of cocaine being produced and exported by Colombian drug traffickers has not significantly diminished under Plan Colombia. In fact, U.S. drug war “successes” in Colombia simply shifted much of the violence from Colombia’s cities to Mexico as Colombia’s traffickers distributed their cocaine to Mexico’s cartels instead of directly to the United States. And, according to McNamara, the U.S. response to the new Mexican cartels should be, as it was in Colombia, to “suppress insurgency by all legitimate means.”

Clinton’s and McNamara’s comments come at a time when several left-leaning governments have come to power in Central America, following a trend that began in South America. In recent years, the FMLN won the presidency in El Salvador and the Sandinistas returned to power in Nicaragua. The election of Manual Zelaya to the presidency in Honduras also constituted a shift to the left in that country, but the Obama administration’s failure to demand his reinstatement after the Honduran leader’s ouster by a military coup ensured a return to the right.

In light of the regional shift to the left in both Central and South America, Clinton’s suggestion that the United States needs to intensify its militaristic approach to drug trafficking in the region reflects Washington’s response to the growing threat posed by Colombia’s leftist insurgency a decade ago. U.S. military intervention under Plan Colombia was as much about combating a leftist insurgency as it was about combating drugs. Clinton’s revision of Colombia’s drug history in order to link drug trafficking networks to alleged insurgencies in Mexico and Central America is most likely an opening salvo for justifying an increased U.S. military presence in a region that is not under threat from insurgencies but rather, from Washington’s perspective, left-leaning governments and social movements.

According to the agreement, increased cooperation between the United States and Colombia is crucial “in order to address common threats to peace, stability, freedom, and democracy.” The Obama administration has repeatedly rejected the concerns of South American leaders by claiming that the ten-year cooperation agreement between the two countries only permits U.S. military operations to be conducted in Colombia in order to achieve these objectives and that it poses no threat to neighboring nations. “This is about the bilateral co-operation between the United States and Colombia regarding security matters within Colombia,” explained U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile, Colombia’s Foreign Minister Jaime Bermudez declared, “Some third countries have expressed some concern regarding the agreement. We have always said that this agreement applies exclusively to Colombia.” But nowhere in the agreement does it actually state that U.S. military operations launched from the Colombian bases are to be restricted to Colombia.

This subtle omission in the text of the agreement is crucial when taken in conjunction with another U.S. military document. In its Fiscal Year 2010 Military Construction Program budget estimate, submitted to Congress in May 2009, the U.S. Air Force requested $46 million in funding to upgrade Colombia’s Palenquero Air Base, the largest base covered under the cooperation agreement. This document makes clear that U.S. military objectives related to the use of the Colombian bases extend far beyond Colombia’s borders to those South American countries viewed as posing threats to U.S. interests.

According to the U.S. Air Force, the Palenquero base “provides a unique opportunity for full spectrum operations in a critical sub region of our hemisphere where security and stability is under constant threat from narcotics funded insurgencies, anti-US governments, endemic poverty and recurring natural disasters.” The term “full spectrum operations,” as the document makes clear, means that the Colombian base can be used as a launching pad not only for counter-narcotics and counter-terrorism operations, but for any form of military operation anywhere in South America.

The document reiterates the importance of Palenquero to U.S. regional interests by stating that the air base “is essential for supporting the U.S. mission in Columbia [sic] and throughout the United States Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM) Area of Responsibility (AOR),” which constitutes all of Latin America. It goes on to state: “The intent is to leverage existing infrastructure to the maximum extent possible, improve the U.S. ability to respond rapidly to crisis, and assure regional access and presence at minimum cost.”

The U.S. Air Force concludes by making clear that the importance of the Palenquero base goes beyond being able to conduct counter-narcotics operations and warns Congress that a failure to fund the required upgrades to the existing facilities “will severely limit the ability of USSOUTHCOM to support the U.S. Global Defense Posture (GDP) Strategy” and limit “USSOUTHCOM to four other CSLs [Cooperative Security Locations] which are restricted to supporting aerial counter narcotics missions only and two other locations that, while not mission restricted, are too distant to accommodate mission requirements in the AOR.”

In accordance with the U.S. Air Force’s stated objectives in the region, the text of the U.S.-Colombia base agreement clearly affirms that U.S. military operations will not be restricted to supporting counter-narcotics missions, as was the case with the expired agreement with Ecuador for the use of the Manta Air Base and current accords with several Central American and Caribbean nations. According to the U.S.-Colombia base agreement, its objective is “the deepened cooperation in counter-narcotics and counter-terrorism, among other things.” Furthermore, according to the U.S. Air Force, “Palenquero will provide joint use capability to the U.S. Army, Air Force, Marines, and U.S. Interagency aircraft and personnel.”

In conclusion, the U.S.-Colombia base agreement does not restrict U.S. military activities to the territory of Colombia nor does it limit them to counter-narcotics and counter-terrorism operations. In other words, the U.S. military can use the Colombian bases to launch any type of military operation it wants against any target anywhere in South America. And in its report to Congress, the U.S. Air Force made evident the importance of Colombia’s largest air base to achieving U.S. military objectives throughout South America, including managing the threat posed by “anti-US governments.” Clearly, South American nations, particularly Venezuela and Bolivia, have ample reason to be concerned.