Wall Street Journal reports Cuban link to FARC

CatGirl says on Mar 10, 2008, 17:47:

Uhh - oh...thanks Sloop

Love and Time: the only two things that cannot be bought, but only spent

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durito says on Mar 10, 2008, 18:14:

The Cubans have had contacts with the FARC for 40 years.

Sure they probably diminished greatly the last 18 years since the end of Soviet aid, but Cuba had it's hand in with pretty much every Latin American guerrilla group for the last 50 years.

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sloopskipper says on Mar 10, 2008, 18:14:

Scarry stuff!

Maybe borring Panamá is not all that bad.

But, not really. Time to get outa here, but maybe not further into Latin America.

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Neonovo says on Mar 10, 2008, 20:52:

50 years...mmmm...let's see that would be since 1958? That was a year before the Cuban revolution, and Fidel was probably still in "La Sierra" swatting mosquitoes.

On the other hand, Señor Marulanda (aka as Pedro Marín, aka Tirofjio) was already well known, since starting his fight back in '49.

By 1960, Robin Kirk in her book "More Terrible than Death" remains us "Compared to what these men (Marín's) had already gone through, Castro's journey on the Granma, the boat he used to transport his men to Cuba to begin the revolution, must have seemed a pleasure cruise. Yet Manuel Marulanda's grueling fight had just began.

Neonovo

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cali373 says on Mar 10, 2008, 21:13:

Let us not forget that the ELN has always had links to Cuba.

Smile if you are a thinker!

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Catfish35 says on Mar 10, 2008, 21:21:

Damn cubans, never could trust them!
Who woulda thunk it, Mexicans and Cubans!

"So many guns, and so few brains". sam spade

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miamimike says on Mar 10, 2008, 23:32:

The Cubans have had contacts with the FARC for 40 years.

Sure they probably diminished greatly the last 18 years since the end of Soviet aid, but Cuba had it's hand in with pretty much every Latin American guerrilla group for the last 50 years.
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I beleive that also and always wondered why Bush, if he was looking for a fight, didn't go after Castro in 2004 instead of Saddam H. Saddam only caused Trouble in Iraq and once in Kuwait, Fidel OTH, exported his trouble to practically every country in the Americas for the last half century or so. His(castro) country also had Missiles Aimed at the US and brought us to the Brink of Nuclear War! And Castro was only 90 miles off our Coast,,What an easy opportunity missed to wipe out the Father of Terrorism by invading Cuba,,,

"Wait a minute. What did you just say? You're predicting $4-a-gallon gas? That's interesting. I hadn't heard that." -- Feb. 28, 2008 --George W. Bush, Washington, D.C.

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rhydewithdis says on Mar 11, 2008, 06:15:

Why not just link to the original WSJ article? =)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120510858118323265.html

They said I couldn't play football I was too small / They say I couldn't play basketball I wasn't tall / They say I couldn't play baseball at all / And now everyday of my life I ball.

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sloopskipper says on Mar 11, 2008, 07:43:

Yes, of course. Wonder why I didn't think of that, DUUUH. Thanx, a great, but chilling article.

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durito says on Mar 11, 2008, 07:46:

"I beleive that also and always wondered why Bush, if he was looking for a fight, didn't go after Castro in 2004 instead of Saddam H. Saddam only caused Trouble in Iraq and once in Kuwait, Fidel OTH, exported his trouble to practically every country in the Americas for the last half century or so"

By 2004 Castro wasn't a threat to anyone not in Cuba.

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Sorry I said 50 years, how about 47?

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Neonovo says on Mar 11, 2008, 19:54:

Is the point that somehow grass-root revolutions never really take place as only "foreign" infuence will cause them? a 'la Cuban infected Colombians?... and who Infected Cubans? Aahh...Soviets? and who the Soviets? Aahh the...mmm....well.
So local social coniditons would always be just so perfect were it not for "damn-foreingers" corrupting the humble campesinos and filling their heads with commie-trash, turning them into upitty rebels. You really believe that?

Neonovo

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podborski says on Mar 12, 2008, 05:06:

I believe he thinks cuba has been supporting FARC for over 40 years.

Your making it into something more has me wondering now though if there might be something to that.

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Neonovo says on Mar 12, 2008, 20:40:

We all lack historic memory; out-of-sight, out-of-mind. My point is that FARC's contacts -Cuban, Venezuelan, or whatever - have nothing to do with its origin. So I'm very glad when I run into good memory jugglers like a great documentary, quote, or book, like "More Terrible than Death" by Robin Kirt with a great index of events in Colombia's history.

Let me be a little presumptious and share part of the review I posted at Amazon:

The narrative is ray of light through the colombian-purgatory. Particularly enlightening was the treatment given to the grand-father of all guerrilla fighters, Pedro Marín, aka Manuel Marulanda Vélez, aka tirofijo (sureshot).

Targeted by conservatives as a liberal to be shot on sight, Marín headed for the hills in 1949. Otherwise, Kirk surmises he "would likely have...become a posperous merchant, perhaps the major of a town, or the chairman of the local chamber of commerce and the sponsor of a soccer team" (pg 28).

In 1960 Arturo Alape fresh from revolutionary Cuba met Marín and became his biographer. Alape reports that for Marín "There was no abstract cause, like land reform or social justice. Marín did not even have a name for what he planned or who his allies would be. "We did not call our group guerrillas, we had no idea what a guerrilla was.""

Marín just didn't want to be another floating-dead in the Tuluá river where many of his kinfolk and neighbors had ended. By 1960, Kirk remains us "Compared to what these men (Marín's) had already gone through, Castro's journey on the Granma, the boat he used to transport his men to Cuba to begin the revolution, must have seemed a pleasure cruise. Yet Manuel Marulanda's grueling fight had just began. In his 80's he shows no signs of giving it up, his movement kidnapped by a different generation with different objectives and motives.

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juancegomez says on Mar 13, 2008, 11:10:

Neonovo: "Nothing" is too strong a word...Cuban or foreign links may not be the direct root of Tirofijo's & co. armed rebellion in general, but to deny that they have had an impact on FARC's formation and operation, whether indirect (as a historical example of revolutionary success and an inspiration for a specific form of guerrilla struggle and organization) or direct (actual aid, training and support) is something else entirely.

FARC itself was only formed, as a clearly organized guerrilla structure, in 1964-1966, after the Cuban Revolution, and many of the important people in the group were already linked to the Communist Party by then ("Marulanda" had even become a member of the Central Committee, and other people like "Jacobo Arenas" were Communists from the very beginning). Yes, Tirofijo was already fighting before Castro had even begun his revolution, but he wasn't exactly living on another planet either, so it's not like FARC had no influence from the Cuban success or, more generally, from other foreign sources (including the Soviets themselves, via the Communist Party).

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Neonovo says on Mar 13, 2008, 19:50:

I won't split that hair; Kirk's book depicts Marin in his early days as a blind-man gropling for allies, even to the point of going to war against the communist faction, and a liberal group who had spurned him when he chose not to follow its leader.

Marín eventually captured and disarmed a large contingent of communists fighters (several dozen), marched then to camp, and then announced to them as he retruned their weapons "I have no quarrels with you..." or someting to that extent. Marín eventually joined up with the communists mostly out of practical reasons, not ideology.

As for who influences who, let me share an anecdote from another era, in an other place. General Joseph W. Stilwell copious notes served historian Barbara Tuchman well as she wrote "The American Expeirience in China 1911-1945". This multi-lingual man was a habitual writer, noting details to the upteenth degree, and his miltary track-record is, in my eyes, truly heroic.

As a West Point cadet around 1905, he finagled himself a comission to "reconnoiter central america on mule-back and inventory miltary ware and infrastructure" or something to that effect. In his report he talks about the "Serf-like conditions the central american campesino lives, his goverment free to kidnap his offspring as conscripts, and steal his produce without recompense. I predict social hupheaval in the not too distant future".

Too bad his mule didn't bring him further south, where I'm sure he would have noted very similar conditions. The rest his history.

Neonovo

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miamimike says on Mar 14, 2008, 08:26:

durito says on Tuesday March 11th, 2008 7:46:

"I beleive that also and always wondered why Bush, if he was looking for a fight, didn't go after Castro in 2004 instead of Saddam H. Saddam only caused Trouble in Iraq and once in Kuwait, Fidel OTH, exported his trouble to practically every country in the Americas for the last half century or so"

By 2004 Castro wasn't a threat to anyone not in Cuba.

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Sorry I said 50 years, how about 47?

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If Cuba isn't a threat to the US, why does Bush have Cuba listed a Terrorist Nation? Isn't Cuba one of those he termed a member nation of the Axis of Evil? LOL

"Wait a minute. What did you just say? You're predicting $4-a-gallon gas? That's interesting. I hadn't heard that." -- Feb. 28, 2008 --George W. Bush, Washington, D.C.

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Mr. Hollywood says on Mar 14, 2008, 15:03:

The real answer, Mike, you already know. It's called Florida's electoral college votes.

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