Marquetalia Republic

Plan Lazo

In October 1959, the United States sent a "Special Survey Team" composed of counterinsurgency experts to investigate Colombia's internal security situation. Among other policy recommendations the US team advised that "in order to shield the interests of both Colombian and US authorities against 'interventionist' charges any special aid given for internal security was to be sterile and covert in nature."  In February 1962, three years after the 1959 "US Special Survey Team", a Fort Bragg top-level U.S. Special Warfare team headed by Special Warfare Center commander General William P. Yarborough, visited Colombia for a second survey.
The new anti-terrorist policy was instituted as Plan Lazo in 1962 and called for both military operations and civic action programs in violent areas. Following Yarborough's recommendations, the Colombian military worked to combat communist terrorism and bandits guided by Liberal and Conservative parties.
At the behest of the United States, the Colombian government began attacking many of the terrorist Communist organizations so-called "self-defense communities" in the early 1960s, attempting to re-assimilate the territories under the control of the national government. FARC was formed in 1964 by Manuel Marulanda Vélez and other PCC members, after a military attack on the community of Marquetalia. 16,000 Colombian troops, backed by the U.S., attacked the village of 1,000 inhabitants, only 48 of whom were armed. Marulanda and 47 others fought against government forces at Marquetalia, and then escaped into the mountains along with the other fighters. These 48 men formed the core of FARC, which quickly grew in size to hundreds of fighters.

The "Marquetalia Diary"

Jacobo Arenas, surviving the invasion of Marquetalia, 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.
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 Andes, at around 6000 feet above sea level, with the presence of monsoon rainfall. One of the snowed mountains in the department of Huila is more than 12,000 feet high.
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 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 1964 as part of a United States initiative called Plan LASO (Latin American Security Operation), allegedly meant to suppress dissent and possible communist rebellions that might spring up in the region. In Colombia, Arenas claims that the offensive against Marquetalia was designed with assistance from the Pentagon and alleges that some 16,000 Colombian Army troops, with the support of military helicopters and airplanes, took part in the operation (the terms used in the book are: 16,000 "Bloodhounds" commanded by the Pentagon "Hawks"). The number of peasant communist fighters was thought to be much smaller, but  a previous CIA  intelligence report argued that it could reach as many as 2,000, though other estimates and claims have since differed, with most saying 1,600 Colombian troops were involved.
Arenas tells how the fighters scattered,  soon regrouped to give birth to the FARC, the former fighters of Marquetalia hide in jungles and remote villages throughout Colombia, reorganizing to fight a  war by using irregular techniques in order to some day seize power.

Aftermath: the Birth of FARC

After the implementation of Plan LASO's military phase in May 1964, the survivors of the Marquetalia "commune" held a meeting on May 27, with key leaders such Manuel Marulanda and Jacobo Arenas. The agenda of this meeting was to create a more formal insurgent organization with the main goal of seizing power from capitalists and directing Colombian society according to Marxist doctrine. At the end of the meeting, clearly defined ideas were in place, which continued to be used for the later birth of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC in 1966. According to the leftist insurgents, their plan was to spread all over Colombia into areas such as remote villages and jungles for security reasons, while others traveled throughout Latin America to gain experience as part of their armed struggle.
The FARC's Seventh Guerrilla Conference was held in 1982 under the guidance of Jacobo Arenas and Manuel Marulanda. The Conference added the term "People's Army" to the group, resulting in the new name being FARC-EP. The Seventh Guerrilla Conference was a turning point in the FARC's struggle, as it provided them the opportunity to fine-tune their policies and plans in order for them to build their desired socialist state in the future. The FARC's Conferences, as seen by Marxists and Leninists, can be interpreted as similar to the International conferences previously held in Europe with the participation Karl Marx, Fredrick Engels, Vladimir  Lenin and Leon Trotsky.
Today the FARC-EP is considered the oldest guerrilla group in the world. They continue to carry out attacks in various parts of Colombia.