Description
Starting with the founding of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—People’s Army (FARC-EP) in 1964, we trace this organisation’s clandestine origins in the broader context of the peasant movement and contentious strategies against the Colombian state. This helps understand how a clandestine organisation, marginalised in isolated regions of Colombia in the 1960s and 1970s, evolved, from the 1980s onwards, into an irregular army. This wartime transformation combined internal dynamics, including recruitment of committed cadres, their socialisation, discipline, and organisational cohesion, with external dynamics, particularly the flow of economic resources, rebel governance, international support, and interactions with other armed groups. As a result, the FARC-EP was able to dispute territories with the Colombian military in the 1990s and early 2000s. However, the FARC-EP’s organisational changes and the Colombian state’s strengthening of its counterinsurgency capacities in the 2000s affected the FARC-EP internally and externally. Both were decisive for the negotiations between 2012 and 2016 in Cuba, which ended in a peace agreement. Over 90% of the FARC-EP demobilised and the organisation transformed into a political party. Yet, splinter groups emerged, complicating the implementation of the peace agreement in the midst of ongoing conflict with a range of armed groups in Colombia.
