A farewell to revolution?

[Zorro]

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The FARC are finished, no matter how many men and weapons they may still have.” Former Salvadoran guerrilla leader Joaquin Villalobos' lapidary conclusion about the Colombian narco-guerrilla movement is worthy of consideration, given his unmatched insight into Latin America's armed, revolutionary left. So is the almost tearful acknowledgment by Venezuelan President Hugo ChÁvez's ideological guru, Heinz Dieterich, that “ChÁvez's speech on the FARC (calling on it to abandon armed struggle and free its hostages) is the equivalent of unconditional surrender to Washington's hemispheric ambition.”

However hasty these judgments may end up being, it certainly seems that the region's oldest and last political-military organization is, at long last, on the brink of defeat. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's strategy of “democratic security” appears to have paid off, supported by the U.S.-financed Plan Colombia, as well as by much plain good luck, such as finding thousands of incriminating computer files three months ago in an attack on a FARC camp in Ecuador.

If events in the next few months confirm the FARC's demise, Latin America would finally be rid of one of its main scourges over the past half-century. At least since December 1956, when Fidel and RaÚl Castro, together with a young Argentine doctor, later known as Che Guevara, sailed from Mexico's port of Tuxpan to Cuba and into history, the region has seen innumerable attempts by small left-wing revolutionary groups to take power through armed uprisings. They have all invoked heroic precedents from the 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as the impossibility of proceeding otherwise under brutal right-wing dictatorships, such as Fulgencio Batista's in Cuba, Anastasio Somoza's in Nicaragua, and military-oligarchic complexes in Guatemala, El Salvador, Bolivia, Argentina, Peru, Uruguay and elsewhere – including Colombia.

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More at: http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080629/news_lz1e29castan.html