its own model based on national ideas, whose paradigmatic figure was to be Simon Bolivar. After Arenas' death in 1990, Cano succeeded him, joining the seven-member Secretariat that led the group, and remaining as the second in command for about two decades. He was chief negotiator during failed peace talks in 1991 and 1992. However he had little role in the long running 1999–2002 FARC–Government peace process with the government of Andres Pastrana. Pastrana later said that Cano never attended the peace talks. In 2000, Cano founded and became the leader of the Clandestine Colombian Communist Party. Leader of FARC On 26 March 2008, Manuel Marulanda Vélez, the founder and leader of FARC, died of a heart attack and Cano succeeded him as commander-in-chief. During the same month two other members of the Secretariat, Raul Reyes and Ivan Rios, were killed in action. In July 2008, the Colombian Army rescued fifteen of FARC's highest-profile hostages, including Íngrid Betancourt, in Operation Jaque, further weakening the rebels' position. As commander in chief, Cano spread his views about the guerrillas, and the nature and solution to the political conflict in Colombia. He believed that the conflict was a class struggle, and that it should be the rich and multinational companies that should fund the war, encouraging blackmailing and kidnapping of politicians and the rich. Mass kidnappings were used to press the government into exchanging hundreds of guerrilla members in jail. The most outstanding example of this practice was the kidnapping of 12 deputies from the Valle del Cauca department, an action that he coordinated with Pablo Catatumbo. Death On 6 March 2008, the Miami Herald stated that the national daily El Tiempo had reported troops were pursuing Cano, and he was believed to have been wounded in a 21 February helicopter attack. This attack on Cano took place on the border of the two departments of Tolima and Valle del Cauca, rainy weather hampering the effort. Cano was shot and killed by army forces on 4 November 2011 in the southwestern Cauca Department in what the Colombian government dubbed "Operation Odysseus." President Juan Manuel Santos confirmed his death on television, claiming the Colombian army dealt the FARC "the biggest blow in the history" of the guerrilla organization. The FARC leader's death came months after he fled his stronghold in the south of Tolima, being pursued by armed forces since. FARC responded to Santos'