MESSAGE FROM THE FARC: OPEN LETTER TO GOVERNMENTS AND PEOPLE BORDERING COLOMBIA
We would like to greet you and make some comments that should be of great interest to Venezuelans, Panamanians, Ecuadorans, Peruvians, and Brazilians, given the historical commercial, political, cultural and territorial links that characterize our rich and prosperous region.
We Colombians are living in a political, economic and military conflict that has lasted more than 50 years without the differences that separate us having been resolved. In the course of 35 years, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP) has made several calls and proposals to the governments of Colombia with the goal of interesting them in talks on the road to achieving a firm and stable peace with social justice.
Now, when we find ourselves moving forward with the national government in talks that can achieve the desired peace, the permanent threats of the Pentagon, the CIA, the DEA and the war hawks in the United States are more visible and more destructive in the view of the millions of Colombians who are friends of peace, although we know that in the United States there are important thoughtful and progressive sectors opposed to the state policies of open or concealed intervention in the internal affairs of other countries.
U.S. imperialism is preparing to intervene militarily in Colombia and to break the Torrijos-Carter treaty with the Panamanians and to destabilize the democratic process that has begun in Venezuela.
Gen. Charles Wilhelm, head of the U.S. Southern Command, was in Colombia in March 1998 to witness the theater of operations where the FARC-EP wiped out an elite counter-guerrilla unit of 228 troops. After this trip, the State Department came out with a document saying that the FARC-EP could take power in Colombia within five years. This document was designed to create the worry of an imminent revolution in Colombia and the need of the other countries to take measures against it. There were discussions along these lines with the countries bordering Colombia to commit them to creating a multinational force with the capacity of slowing the Colombian revolution.
Of course, the eventual intervention would create a military conflict of large proportions and unforeseeable hemispheric consequences, with high costs for the people of Latin America. And surely the United Nations would come with their Blue Helmets as a "Neutral Peace" force. The result can be nothing other than destabilizing the regions and winning bigger arms sales and big business for those who live off wars, leaving desolation and death for the people of Colombia and its neighbors.
It is necessary to say that the majority of governments have not gone along with this plan—the exception being [Peru’s President Alberto] Fujimori, who immediately militarized the border alleging a security problem for Peru. The Empire does not stop there in its unconcealed desire to involve the peoples and governments of the region in a conflict that doesn’t concern them.
In Ecuador the well-calculated and perverse campaign continues about the supposed danger that the FARC-EP represents for Ecuadorans. In Panama, they continue portraying acts of violence on the border with Colombia— kidnappings, assaults, robberies, and attacks on police stations—as committed by the FARC-EP. Of course, the FARC-EP has nothing to do with these incidents and condemns them energetically.
To top it off, Angel Sierra, reporter for Channel 13, was used for a journalistic scandal piece about the inability of the Panamanian police to maintain the border with Colombia. It showed FARC-EP guerrillas entering Panamanian territory— a violation of the sovereignty of that country.
The FARC-EP wants to make it clear that these armed people do not belong to our organization and that this is a piece by U.S. intelligence services and the Colombian Army. On June 22, 1999 Gen. Charles Wilhelm’s new declarations came out, saying that "the public force of Panama is not organized or equipped to confront incursions by the Colombian insurgents in the Darien and San Blas provinces." According to this general, the problem with the Panama-Colombia border puts the security of the Panama Canal in danger. The interventionist intentions of the warmongers in the United States are clear: intervene in Colombia, break the Torrijos-Carter Treaty [that calls on the U.S.] to totally turn over the canal by Dec. 31, 1999, and destabilize the democratic process in Venezuela, led by President [Hugo] Chavez.
In the face of this situation, we call on the people and governments neighboring Colombia not to fall into the clutches of those that would impede by force the legitimate right of people to construct their own destiny without intervention by outside forces. We equally reaffirm our unchanging policy to not carry out military operations outside Colombian territory. We ask for the same from Colombia’s neighboring people and governments.
INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION OF THE FARC-EP
MOUNTAINS OF COLOMBIA,
JUNE 27, 1999
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