Chavez Roils Latin America as Friend of Cocaine-Peddling FARC
By Helen Murphy and Matthew Walter
March 10 (Bloomberg) -- Last year, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- one of the world's oldest and biggest guerrilla groups -- was a fading insurgency. After a five-year Colombian offensive, the FARC had retreated to the jungles, its ranks thinned by casualties and desertions.
Then Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez publicly befriended the group, negotiating freedom for some of its 750 hostages, helping disseminate its propaganda and touting his regular correspondence with FARC founder Manuel Marulanda. The intervention by Chavez, a self-described revolutionary socialist long suspected by Colombia of supporting the rebels, revived the FARC with a modicum of legitimacy.
It also set the stage for events that have roiled Latin America, after Colombia's insurgent-hunting incursion into Ecuador prompted Chavez and Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa to send troops to the border. Chavez threatened war if Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's troops entered Venezuela, where Colombia thinks Marulanda, 77, hides.
Without Chavez's embrace of the FARC, the raid ``wouldn't have gotten all this worldwide attention and wouldn't have become an international crisis,'' says Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington research group. ``Without Chavez, who knew how to grab the international attention, this would have been handled very differently.''
By Helen Murphy and Matthew Walter
March 10 (Bloomberg) -- Last year, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- one of the world's oldest and biggest guerrilla groups -- was a fading insurgency. After a five-year Colombian offensive, the FARC had retreated to the jungles, its ranks thinned by casualties and desertions.
Then Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez publicly befriended the group, negotiating freedom for some of its 750 hostages, helping disseminate its propaganda and touting his regular correspondence with FARC founder Manuel Marulanda. The intervention by Chavez, a self-described revolutionary socialist long suspected by Colombia of supporting the rebels, revived the FARC with a modicum of legitimacy.
It also set the stage for events that have roiled Latin America, after Colombia's insurgent-hunting incursion into Ecuador prompted Chavez and Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa to send troops to the border. Chavez threatened war if Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's troops entered Venezuela, where Colombia thinks Marulanda, 77, hides.
Without Chavez's embrace of the FARC, the raid ``wouldn't have gotten all this worldwide attention and wouldn't have become an international crisis,'' says Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington research group. ``Without Chavez, who knew how to grab the international attention, this would have been handled very differently.''
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