Re: "Marxist guerrillas are fighting back history"

["Jose G. Perez" <jg_perez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I think you are wrong to dismiss the phenomenon that Hugo  Chávez
represents, and I think you are wrong to identify the FARC with Chávez
himself.

While it is true that there is no real revolution possible in Latin
America save the socialist revolution, it is also true that there is
no road to socialist revolution save a movement for national
liberation. By dismissing the latter for the sake of the former, we
turn our backs on both and condemn ourselves to the eternal
irrelevance inhabited by countless Fourth Internationals and Lenins of
Our Time.

José


----- Original Message -----
From: "Julio Pino" <jpino@xxxxxxxx>
To: <marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, July 25, 2000 2:49 PM
Subject: Re: "Marxist guerrillas are fighting back history"


Re the FARC: just because it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck,
it
doesn't make it a duck! (There, Marxist ornithology!)The FARC has more
in
common with Hugo Chavez than with Fidel Castro. It is a fighting a
self-described "Bolivarian Revolution" whose goal is a multi-class
government respecting and protecting many different kinds of property
forms. They do not wish to replace(overthrow is too strong a word) the
current regime so much as to expand Colombian democracy to include
them. So
the most likely scenario in Colombia is in fact the FMLN route; the
guerrillas laying down their arms and joining the political order as
the
third party to compete with the Liberal/Conservative duopoly that
currently
runs the country.
Unless: President Bush or Gore does something incredibly stupid, like
introducing more US advisers and bombing the coca fields, or Pastrana
becoming a dictator, throwing his lot in with the generals, a la
Fujimori,
thereby forcing the FARC to radicalize.
Julio Cesar

>Colombia's Rebels Keep the Marxist Faith
>

>
>SAN VICENTE DEL CAGUÁN, Colombia, July 22 -- The dream of a
>Marxist-Leninist revolution remains improbably alive amid the rolling
>cattle pastures and steamy coca fields of southern Colombia.
>
>