A surprising insistence
By Manuel Alberto Ramy, progreso-weekly.com, 12 June 2008
In what could be described as an unexpected insistence — though intelligent and beneficial for Colombian society and the region, because of its pacifist nature — Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez last Sunday issued a surprising call to the new chief of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
“The time has come for the FARC to release all the people they have up there on the mountain. It would be a great humanitarian gesture, in exchange for nothing. That’s how I propose it, now that there is a new chief in charge of the FARC secretariat. That would be the first step toward ending the domestic war in Colombia,” he said.
The call from the Venezuelan president did not end there. He added that guerrilla war, as a means to achieve power and generate beneficial changes, no longer corresponds with the current situation in Latin America.
“It is necessary to tell this to the FARC. That’s want I wanted to tell Marulanda. I told him so publicly, at the end. Several times. I never wrote to him. Now I tell Alfonso Cano [the FARC’s new leader] that they should release all those people. There are women, old people, sick people, soldiers who have spent as long as 10 years there. Enough! The time has come, Cano, I believe it. Guerrilla warfare passed into history.”