The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla organisation was officially created in 1964. Marxist-inspired and totalling some 15,000 men, it made up the most significant guerrilla force in Colombia, well ahead of the National Liberation Army (ELN) which was inspired by the influence of Che Guevara, and numbered about 6,000. The FARC have been led by Pédro Antonio Marin since their creation. His pseudonym is Manuel Marulanda, and his alias ‘Tirofijo’ (the one with the accurate aim). Each member of FARC’s senior staff has a pseudonym and an alias or nom de guerre.

Manuel Marulanda was born in 1928 and became a member of a guerrilla group in the Tolima region at the age of 22. This was a peasant self-defence force which did not take part in kidnappings or racketeering. He has been a member of the Communist Party since 1957, and was very active in peasant self-defence forces throughout the 1950s. Between 1949 and 1952, a period when the popular armed defence was beginning to bear fruit, the Communist Party ordered that self-defence committees should be created. But it was the youth wing of the Liberal Party which pitched into armed reprisals against the forces of public order. Those who took part later included the communist guerrilla elite: Juan de Jesus Trujillo Alape, alias Ciro Trujillo Castano; Jacabo Prias Alape; and Pedro Antonio Marin, alias Manuel Marulanda, the FARC’s future leader.

The FARC have been in evidence since the 1950s. They began to make their presence felt alongside the Liberal Party, which was one of the two major, traditional political movements in Colombia. For a long time ‘Tirofijo’ had been seeking to put together a coherent armed group in order to become a key player in a country which had for long been locked in a political and armed confrontation between the Conservative and Liberal Parties. He created a very structured guerrilla organisation.