The Last Disciples of Che Guevara
2007Inspired by the Cuban revolution, a group of Colombians went to Havana to receive training in insurgent warfare, returning to Colombia in 1964. Under the leadership of Fabio Vasquez Castano, they founded the National Liberation Army ELN. The movement attracted many Catholic priests who adhered to Liberation Theology, starting in 1966 with a handsome young crusading priest from a prominent family, Father Camilo Torres.Camilo Torres was killed in his first action with the guerrilla group, but several other priests followed in his footsteps. Among them was Spaniard Manuel Perez, who led the movement from the 1970s until his death in 1998. He was succeeded by the present leader, Nicolas Rodriguez, alias Gabino, a tenacious guerrilla fighter and ladys man who joined the movement as a teenager.
Hard hit by the army in 1973, the ELN recovered when it discovered two lucrative sources of income: kidnapping and extorting money from the oil industry. It reached the height of its power in the late 1990s with some 5000 fighters.
Now hammered by right wing paramilitary the Colombian armed forces and the Farc, its moral is suffering and its numbers have dropped to around 3500. Unlike the FARC, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, who adopted a strict hierarchy and concentrated on building up their military power, the ELN members split their efforts between military and social work. The ELN did not move into the drugs trade in the same way as their more powerful cousins, in part due to the moral objections of the former priest Perez. This is another explanation for their failure to enjoy the same explosive military growth as the FARC. They also hit the headlines with a series of mass kidnapping operations starting in April 1999, during which they hijacked a domestic airliner, forced it to land on a deserted jungle airstrip and kidnapped the passengers and crew. This was swiftly followed by the abduction of an entire church congregation during a service in the city of Cali. Guerrillas burst into the church and herded 150 worshippers and the priest into waiting trucks. The ELN has shown a will to make peace since June 1998, when rebel leaders met with Colombian civilian representatives in Germany.
In December 2005, the ELN and the Colombian government began a new round of exploratory talks in La Habana, Cuba, with the presence of the ELN military commander Antonio García, as well as Francisco Galán and Ramiro Vargas. This was considered the direct result of three months of previous consultations with representatives of different sectors of public society through the figure of a House of Peace or Casa de Paz in Spanish. Representatives from Norway, Spain and Switzerland joined both parties at the talks as observers. The latest round of talks took place in Habana Cuba in May 2007 altough the two parties have yet to make a formal statement observes of the talks say the chances for a positive outcome are high.