Brother of "Alfonso Cano" is a Bogota city employee

tejasmarcos says on Jul 25, 2008, 17:46:

wow. great find...

trying to walk a straight line on sour mash and cheap wine...

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billyb says on Jul 25, 2008, 17:47:

"has little contact with his brother"

I wonder how much influence he really has with his brother. Might be a great back channel for negotiations.

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Colombiareports.com says on Jul 25, 2008, 18:46:

This became public when Cano assumed power within the FARC. I remember an interview back then when the brother said Alfonso wouldn't listen to him.

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billyb says on Jul 25, 2008, 18:53:

" I remember an interview back then when the brother said Alfonso wouldn't listen to him.'

Yes, but that might have just been prudence on his part. Colombian blood ties run very thick.

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Colombiareports.com says on Jul 25, 2008, 19:02:

fair :-)

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Mr. Hollywood says on Jul 25, 2008, 20:38:

There are a number of these sort of situations. That's the rich irony of Colombia for you.

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billyb says on Jul 25, 2008, 20:55:

I have one for you. When la Violencia started with Gaitan's assasination, my grandfather was mayor of Pereira and 3 days after El Bogotazo, a mob of liberal "chusma" attacked my grandfather's house, machine gunned it and tried to breach it. If it hadn't been for Colonel Pedroza, an old family friend who was commander of El Batallon San Mateo in Pereira, who drove them off after a short gunbattle in the plaza Bolivar, who knows what the results would have been. But here is the kicker. The leader of the liberal party in Pereira at the time and the fucker who sent the mob, was the brother-in-law of one of my aunts, who just happened to live rent free in one of my grandmother's houses. How's that for colombian style keeping the violence in the family?

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houstongal says on Jul 26, 2008, 07:41:

There's a good page 1 article in today's Houston Chronicle on the brothers. Apprarently Roberto has tried to persuade his brother to negotiate (and looks like he's continuing those efforts) to no avail.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/5908600.html

One brother chose force, the other peace to bring change to Colombia

By JOHN OTIS
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle South America Bureau

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA — In their quest to change Colombia, two brothers chose radically different paths.

Guillermo Saenz, 58, plans attacks and kidnappings as commander of the country's largest guerrilla group. His younger brother, Roberto Saenz, publicly denounces the rebels from his seat on the Bogota City Council.

"I told my brother that I don't believe in the armed struggle, that it was crazy, that it had to stop" said Roberto Saenz, recalling their last encounter in Venezuela in 1990. "But he's very doctrinaire."

Guillermo Saenz's decision to join the guerrillas led to death threats against the family. For many years, Roberto Saenz lay low.

But in March, Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda, founder and longtime leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia died at age 78, and the rebels named Guillermo Saenz, who is better known by his nom de guerre Alfonso Cano, its new commander.

Since then, Roberto Saenz, 52, has come under the spotlight as Colombians sought insights about the secretive new guerrilla leader. Guillermo Saenz hasn't spoken to the media in the past six years.

Aside from parentage and left-wing politics, the two brothers share little else.

The bearded, bespectacled guerrilla has long been one of the FARC's leading Marxist-Leninist ideologues and proved to be a hard-liner during several rounds of failed peace talks with the Colombian government.

While Guillermo Saenz roamed the mountains and jungles of Colombia with an automatic rifle over his shoulder, his soft-spoken younger brother was forced to flee their homeland as a safety precaution.

Back in Colombia, Roberto Saenz has used his celebrity status to call on the rebels to disarm. Coming from the brother of the top FARC commander, "his messages are especially valuable," said Gilma Jimenez, a colleague on the City Council.

Leftist debate
In some ways, the saga of the Saenz brothers reflects a long-running debate among Colombian leftists.

Pointing to the assassinations of politicians, militants such as Guillermo Saenz have held that armed struggle is the only realistic path to power.

Moderates like Roberto Saenz have argued the existence of the rebels gives right-wing death squads a pretext to kill leftists who want to give the system a chance and change it gradually from the inside.

Roberto and Guillermo Saenz were among seven brothers and sisters born into a middle-class family of intellectuals in Bogota. Their father named Guillermo after former Conservative Party President Guillermo Leon Valencia.

But Guillermo Saenz turned out to be the family radical. He devoured the texts of Marx and Lenin, joined the Communist Youth organization and began collaborating with the FARC in the 1970s while studying at Bogota's National University.

Government agents threw Guillermo Saenz in prison. He was freed in 1983 under an amnesty and disappeared into the mountains to join the FARC.

Though a college boy with no military experience, Guillermo Saenz quickly bonded with the FARC's mostly peasant leadership and was named to its ruling seven-man secretariat.

But his fast ascendancy only made life more difficult for his family in Bogota. Government agents staked out his parents' home and tapped their telephones, Roberto Saenz said.

At one point, paramilitary militiamen kidnapped another brother, Ricardo, and held him for six months until the FARC released a relative of a militia leader. The oppression prompted four of the seven Saenz siblings to flee to the United States and Europe.

Even today, Roberto Saenz moves about Bogota with two police bodyguards and refuses to disclose personal details, like whether he's married or has children.

At first, Roberto Saenz refused to flee. He joined the Patriotic Union, a left-wing political party founded by the FARC in 1984 as an experiment in legal politics.

But because the FARC refused to disarm, paramilitary death squads considered the party a Trojan horse for the guerrillas. Between 1984 and 1992, they killed more than 2,000 Patriotic Union members.

Deadly commute
Roberto Saenz, by then a councilman for the Patriotic Union, remembers sleeping overnight at Bogota City Hall to avoid exposing himself to gunmen on his commute home.

In 1990, he traveled to Caracas where the FARC and the government were engaged in peace talks.

He spent a month filling in his brother, part of the FARC negotiating team, on family news. But when Roberto Saenz tried to convince his sibling to disarm, he said it was futile.

As the death threats increased, Roberto Saenz gave up his seat on the council and in 1996 accepted a government diplomatic post in Geneva.

He returned to Bogota and was elected to the council.

With Guillermo Saenz leading the FARC, Roberto Saenz has volunteered to contact his brother and persuade him to enter into peace negotiations. But he is not optimistic anything will come of it.

A military offensive has killed several FARC commanders this year and may have contributed to the death of Marulanda. If his brother doesn't agree to negotiate soon, Roberto Saenz fears that Guillermo could meet the same fate.

"On the human level," he said, "I'm very concerned."

john.otis at chron.com

"It is now official: there's no place on earth where you will not find a Peruvian band." David Sedaris

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webmanco says on Jul 26, 2008, 07:50:

Thanks for the link, good information.

One of the two is "La oveja negra de la familia" black sheep of the family, which one?

...A yo, déjenme queto y no me jodan má! ...

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tasco66 says on Jul 26, 2008, 09:04:

And Jean Pierre Gontard (the Swiss envoy) was the teacher of Cano's son and other Farc children. It's a small world.

Jean Pierre Gontard Fue Profesor Del Hijo De ‘Cano’

Jean-Pierre Gontard se hizo conocer en el mundo académico suizo como profesor del Instituto Universitario de Estudios para el Desarrollo, un órgano especializado en problemas del Tercer Mundo vinculado a la Universidad de Ginebra.

Especializado en problemas de mal desarrollo y sus relaciones con la violencia, Gontard cumplió misiones para el Comité Internacional de la Cruz Roja (Cicr) en Africa, Medio Oriente y Asia. Afable,amante de la pesca, Gontard es un políglota que habla un castellano perfecto, con una pronunciación típica de América Latina.

En los 70, Gontard fue el profesor de referencia para unos 200 alumnos provenientes de Colombia que llegaron a su instituto para profundizar estudios universitarios, muchos de ellos becados.

Gontard dirigió entonces jurados de diplomas de investigación y tesis doctorales, dictó cursos y aparejó coloquios y conferencias en Ginebra.

Entre aquellos estudiantes estaba el hijo de ‘Alfonso Cano’.

Fuentes en Colombia recuerdan que Gontard fue invitado por las Farc en la época de la zona de distensión y que desde entonces empezó a madurar la idea de que su país jugara un papel más activo en el fin del conflicto colombiano. Después fue designado como asesor externo para el tema del intercambio. Gontard ha sido mencionado como una de las fuentes de un periodista suizo que aseguró que por el rescate de los 15 rehenes se habrían pagado 20 millones de dólares

http://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/documento/MAM-3003780

Not being bound to swear to the dogmas of any master

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tasco66 says on Jul 26, 2008, 09:40:

"Jean-Pierre Gontard se hizo conocer en el mundo académico suizo como profesor del Instituto Universitario de Estudios para el Desarrollo"

They need to change the name to: Instituto Universitario de las Farc

Not being bound to swear to the dogmas of any master

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billyb says on Jul 26, 2008, 16:47:

Thanks for the article Houston. BTW, whoever has trouble seeing which brother took the wrong path, has serious problems of their own.

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goin_south says on Jul 26, 2008, 18:32:

and, his cousin who plays for the NYYankees is the hottest hitter in the major leagues.

“ I would rather be a conservative nut job rather than a liberal with no nuts and no job.”

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