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Jacobo Arenas (died August 10 1990 ) was the " Nom De Guerre " of Luis Morantes, a founder and ideological leader of the FARC ("Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia"). He was also one of the FARC figures involved in the organization and creation of the Patriotic Union political party in 1985 . He was fluent in several languages other than his native Spanish, including English and Russian. Jacobo Arenas spent most of his life involving himself in the activities of Marxist revolution in Colombia since the 1960s. During this time, he mostly lived in the mountains, jungles and remote villages, having to make several sacrifices and enduring hardships. Arenas sometimes had to hide from those that he identified as his enemies, including Colombian security forces, the CIA (which Arenas believed responsible for numerous alleged plots against him) and eventually paramilitary fighters as well. Arenas is thought to have followed the example of Che Guevara , who changed his way of life when he saw that the people of Latin America were facing hardships during a regionwide motorcycle trip (partially included in the film "''Diarios de Motocicleta''" - The Motorcycle Diaries ) when he was a senior year medical student. Jacobo Arenas admired Che Guevara and started his life as a revolutionary due to similar realizations, after becoming an intellectual, first through his experiences in the Colombian Communist Party (PCC) and finally in the FARC. Arenas is credited for helping to lay the foundation for the FARC's organizational structure and promoting its later development into what is usually considered as one of the strongest and longest lasting Marxist guerrilla movements in the world. To implement the policy of "standing steadily", he taught them in several areas, such as Anthropology, international military law and counter techniques for any changing situation. INITIAL ACTIVITIES IN MARQUETALIA Political influence Arenas was sent by the Communist Party (PCC) as a political activist in order to help Organize existing self-defense and guerrilla units in a rural enclave known as Marquetalia , peasant-based groups that had originated during " La Violencia " ( 1948 - 1958 ), when the Communists developed organic links to several Liberal guerrilla and irregular rural forces, most of whom nominally depended on the official Liberal Party and eventually demobilized by the end of that period. Those groups with more direct relations with the PCC tended to not demobilize, keeping their weapons and organizational structures mostly intact. Most of the original members of these armed groups did not have a formal ideological background beyond vague political affiliations, but they were motivated to use guerrilla-style fighting techniques both as a mechanism of defense and to conduct raids against their enemies when possible. As such, the Conservative Party and in general the nation's central government didn't think that most of these groups represented a real threat, beyond being mere "bandits" with little or no long-lasting political motivation. The Communist Party interpreted this situation as a potential for future growth, and found ways to foment, influence and infiltrate existing peasant groups, including those in the Marquetalia area, in order to reorganize their struggle with a more specific political direction. Ideologue of FARC After his arrival, Arenas soon met Manuel Marulanda , who had once been a young Liberal peasant leader among his relatives after 1948 but later increasingly embraced Communist influences , and eventually they both became the two top leaders of the FARC, after the fall of the so-called " Marquetalia Republic " in May 1964 during a massive Colombian Army offensive. To later observers, Marquetalia had thus been the place where FARC's so-called "heart and mind" combined together, in particular Manuel Marulanda and Jacobo Arenas. Throughout the rest of the history of the FARC, these two leaders were in charge of increasing FARC's strength from time to time for more than 25 years, until Arena's natural death in August 1990 . MEMORIES OF MARQUETALIA DIARY Jacobo Arenas later wrote a book called "Diario de la resistencia de Marquetalia" ("Marquetalia Diary") in 1972. The book includes a chronicle of the events of the fight between the guerrilla fighters and the soldiers of the Colombian army brigade. Diary contents In the diary, Arenas describes the geographical location and the natural beauty of the Marquetalia area with many details, giving the reader a detailed mental picture of the area, made up of 800 square km in the Andean mountainous region, at around 6000 feet above sea level and monsoon precipitation. In particular, one of the snowed mountains in the Huila Department is more than 12,000 feet high; Nevado Del Huila . The diary puts the guerrilla and peasant struggle in Marquetalia in context, happening six years after the triumph of the 1959 Cuban Revolution , which filled the minds of many worldwide with revolutionary fervor. While the events in Cuba absorbed most of the world's and the region's attention, information about the events in Marquetalia and their aftermath later began to be of great interest throughout these sectors in all of Latin America. The diary highlights some of the inner workings of Marquetalia as a sort of improvised " Commune " or small socialist society, where not only the peasant fighters and Communist Party ideologues were present, but also several members of their families and some of their friends, who worked together as a community for both common socioeconomic and military/defense purposes. Arenas describes the military operations against Marquetalia in May intelligence report argued that it could reach as many as 2000, though other estimates and claims have since differed. Arenas narrates how since the application of the Plan LASO in Colombia, the scattered fighters soon gathered to give birth to the FARC, after the former Marquetalia fighters of Marquetalia hid in jungles and remote villages throughout Colombia, organizing to fight a long-lasting war by using guerilla warfare techniques in order to someday seize power. LIFE IN FARC Guerrilla organization As an intellectual cadre, Arenas organized a large scale educational program intended to educate the early FARC guerilla fighters, as most came from low income peasant families with limited previous educational background. He had studied Marxist-Leninist theory and with extensive knowledge of Communism he was able to improve the organic structure of the guerrilla group in order to better suit a revolutionary movement. In jungle and rural areas under guerrilla influence, Arenas was able to organize schools to educate both local inhabitants and guerrilla members in ideological and practical matters. At the time, he considered that most Communist movements in the world did not teach the ideology to their members properly, and thus did not deeply study books such as " Das Kapital " ("The Capital", often known as the "Bible of Communism") and other works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels . These schools had their own teaching methods and in some respects the more developed courses could theoretically approach college levels in certain specific areas of knowledge. According to some FARC opinions and unofficial outside estimates, it is believed that, as a consequence of the schools originally organized by Arenas, the level of ideological education within the FARC's leadership and the more veteran guerrillas could allegedly be of a very high standard, comparable to that of other Communist organizations in the world. The symbol in the center of the FARC-EP flag is a book and two rifles in the middle of a map of Colombia , which transmits the message "learn and fight for Colombia", as a sign of the importance ideological education has for the FARC-EP. The three colors in the background yellow, blue and red is common in Latin America which indicate the unique identity of the region. It has been speculated that it could surpass the level of Cuba n ideological education, though no specific comparisons nor structured academic analyses have been conducted in order to prove or disprove this. Female fighters Jacobo Arenas understood the problems relating to the women in Colombia as well as in Latin America , where socio-economic and educational deficiencies exist, such as the issue of relatively limited coverage of available programs for free primary education and the generally expensive and restricted nature of higher education. As a result, many poor women have to face hardships, including getting involved in prostitution at an early age in brothels in order to find money to finance their education and overall living cost, thus " Child Prostitution " is a serious problem throughout Latin America. Some analysts consider that it is also usual for some women to react to this situation by seeking to find the means to counter existing Machismo in their country's culture and social organization. In Colombia, it is said that one of the available responses throughout Arenas' time as FARC leader was for poor rural women to join FARC either independently or through their relatives. Sometimes similar behavior and recruitment patterns also occurred around leftwing movements in Nicaragua , El Salvador , Cuba and Peru , as well as during the Chinese Revolution and during the Soviet ( USSR ) participation in World War II . Arenas introduced a manner of social system for women in FARC, that would allow most of them to maintain a family life while in the group with a degree of access to both external and internal child education systems, in order to suit the culture of their future Communist style state. There are also some rules for women guerrillas that are meant to keep their potential role as mothers and their love affairs from interfering with the groups's activities. Results have apparently been mixed, as human rights analysts such as Human Rights Watch argue that the participation of women in FARC and other armed groups has also resulted in noticeable reports of physical and mental abuse from all parties (enemies, comrades and superiors) while in such structures. It is known that a sizable number of FARC guerrillas are female (it is unofficially estimated by some sources that they could make up a third of the group), originally very small but increasing gradually after the fall of Marquetalia. The establishment of FARC families throughout areas under guerrilla influence following the instructions of Jacobo Arenas has been considered to be similar to the so-called " Iron Triangle " in Vietnam , where thousands of " Viet Cong " families lived in a secret underground tunnel system for more than a decade as a safety measure to protect themselves from chemicals such as Agent Orange and from generalized bombing in many jungle areas. This is considered to reflect an aspect of Communist theory, due to a statement of Karl Marx which stated that the "Baby of the new society, pregnant in the mother of old society". Influence of the Cuban Revolution and Che Guevara See Also: Cuban revolution Che Guevara The 1959 triumph of the Cuban Revolution , greatly influenced revolutionaries in Latin America and all over the world. This had been among the influences of the Colombian Communist Party's strategy of sending promising Party cadres such as Luis Morantes to organise the Liberal and Communist peasants in its areas of influence, in a manner akin to how Argentine-born Marxist revolutionary and guerrilla leader Ernesto Guevara ("Che" Guevara) helped organize Cuban revolutionaries. After the fall of Marquetalia and the formation of the FARC in 1964 , the ideas of Che Guevara and the Cuban revolution influenced Jacobo Arenas in his work as the ideological leader of the group. The death of Che Guevara in October 1967 was interpreted by the FARC as a display of revolutionary sacrifice, one that was held as an example by Jacobo Arenas and other guerrilla ideological figures. Guevara's ideas came to be held as the correct revolutionary path in Latin America by Jacobo Arenas and his FARC comrades. Guevara's written works, such as ''Guerilla Warfare'', ''Message to the Tri-continental'' and the ''Bolivian Diary'' were closely studied and appreciated by Colombian guerillas and are usually still kept as handbooks. Photos or images of Che Guevara, as well as political propaganda slogans such as "Che, the hero of Latin America", are prominent among FARC ideological teaching schools and media offices inside and outside Colombia, sometimes to a greater extent than those of other Communist leaders and theoreticians. Seventh Guerrilla Conference Arenas is credited with allegedly being the main figure behind the FARC's 1982 Seventh Guerrilla Conference and a contemporary "Strategic Plan", which would have outlined a series of goals and steps that would organize the FARC into an "Army of the People" (the initials "EP", Ejército del Pueblo, were adopted during this Conference) capable of potentially seizing power sometime in the 1990s, explicitly combining both the illegal and legal forms of struggle (organically implementing a traditional Marxist and Communist strategy termed "the combination of all forms of struggle"), as well as the political and the military aspects of their group. Influence of Arenas in the FARC-EP belligerence Many U.S. and other military experts argue that Manuel Marulanda, as a veteran guerilla fighter and as an excellent commander for four decades, heads perhaps the most capable and dangerous Marxist guerilla organization in the world. Marulanda is very often referred to as "Sureshot" ("Tirofijo"), because of a reputation for using firearms very accurately during his earlier years as an insurgent. For some of those analysts, an allegedly problematic aspect in Marulanda's profile concerns the fact that he has limited educational background, due to the poor economic conditions that his family and many others had to face when growing up in rural Colombia. Jacobo Arenas, in contrast had a political and ideological education as a communist intellectual, thus it is believed that he realized that FARC's initial status was not up to the necessary standards needed to properly fight a Colombian Army that could count on the aid of the United States from time to time. This was possible since, after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, the United States increased its military influence throughout the region through the activities of the U.S. Southern Command, an organization tasked with overseeing and handling military affairs in Latin America. U.S. Special Forces, such as the Green Berets , specifically trained to fight in Latin America jungles for counterinsurgency operations. Additionally, the widespread Spanish language was also taught to many members of U.S. forces in the region. From the perspective of Arenas, the challenge of having to potentially face a military with the highest standards in the world made upgrading FARC's own military capabilities a necessity. The role of Jacobo Arenas in FARC's military reorganization was significant. After the Seventh Guerilla Conference in 1982, Arenas started to work toward the goal of turning the FARC from a guerrilla organization to a rebel army (the "People's Army"). According to his instructions, FARC added ranks and badges to many of its uniforms, as well as introducing a new inventory system for firearms and ammunition, in addition to providing new weapons and technology for FARC militants. In theory, a properly organized and trained guerrilla army would thus meet the international requirements for the recognition of a "state of belligerence", contained within the Geneva Conventions of August 12 1949 and its additional protocols. Some of the reforms implemented by Arenas were later published and transmitted to the media, as follows: Area: The military operations has to be carried out only within the territory of Colombia, there are no such military activities outside the Colombian borders. ;FARC regulations: # The Statute - formulates the ideological foundations of the FARC-EP; it defines its organic structure, the regime of command, the obligations and rights of the combatants and the basic principles of the revolutionary organization. # The regulations of the disciplinary regime - deals with essential matters of military order. # The internal rules of command - deals with the usual daily practices of the different units of the FARC-EP. ;FARC structure: # Squad: the basic unit consisting of 12 combatants. # Guerilla: consists of two squads. # Company (Compañía) : consists of two guerrillas. # Column: consists of two or more companies. # Front: consists of more than one column. # The Central High Command (Estado Mayor Central) designates the highest command of each front. # Block of Fronts: consists of five or more fronts. It co-ordinates and unifies the activity of the fronts in a specific zone of the country. # The Central High Command or its secretariat designates the High Command of each Block. They co-ordinate the areas of the respective blocks. # The Central High Command (Estado Mayor Central) is the superior organism of direction and command of the FARC-EP. Its agreements, orders and decisions rule over the entire movements and all its members.
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