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FARCs: Undiscovered contra-guerilla.Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it.
by Luiz Castro | July 7, 2008 at 03:12 am | 305 views | 4 comments | 17 recommendations
by Luiz Castro
Watching the World stunned by how Colombia have rescued Ingrid Betancourt, using undiscovered military unfiltered on the FARCS guerillas makes me remember how a similar movement was defeated in Brazil on the 70's. It is never too late to remember that Marxists or/and Maoists guerilla’s movement has started in Latin America as a result of a cold war, supported by the Soviet Union and Cuba. Fidel Castro was the main coordinator of these movements, until the Soviet Union bankrupted leaving all its disciples orphans.
In Brazil the Araguaia guerilla started also in the Amazon jungle, on the late 60’s, following the communists trends of Latin America (FARCS, Sendero Luminoso, ETC).
Brazilian army has managed 3 big operations to defeat the Araguaia guerilla, only succeeding on the last one. The two first offensives were coordinated by massive occupations of the region; about 10.000 soldiers were mobilized and failed. Guerillas have disappeared at the jungle and the army could not find men to fight against.
The 3rd operation, called Operation Marajora, was an intelligence operation, Brazilian Army have trained its officials and they start move to the guerrilla area undiscovered as farmers, business man, priests, etc.
Elio Gaspari, a journalist and former communist explains in his book “A Ditadura Derrotada", how Brazilian military offices, undiscovered mapped all guerilla and how the army used that track to exterminate all guerillas members.
Nowadays guerillas member's families are receiving pensions from the Federal Government. Several advisors, ministers and assessors of the actual Brazilian president, Lula da Silva, were former guerilla members, including Dilma Rousseff, Lula's favorite for his succession.
Although the guerilla have been "exterminated" by the Brazilian army under a brutal military regime, Brazil did not wait for 30 year to defeat the guerillas, did all at once.
That is my message for the FARC's leaders: Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it.
The entire force (including Air Force personnel) operated undercover in civilian clothing. Under a "cover story," the soldiers acted as if they were elements of the Federal Police. This decision was taken, principally, to avoid the recognition that the Brazilian Armed Forces were being used in an internal defense problem of this nature.
Brazilian Armed Forces deployed more than 10,000 soldiers in this rugged region where the Araguaia and Tocantins rivers converge. What became known as the Araguaia guerrilla war ended only after more than 60 combatants from the Communist Party of Brazil, hoping to carve out a Maoist ''liberated zone'' in the Amazon, were hunted down and executed. Some were beheaded, and many were killed after surrendering to troops and being tortured.
As many as a score of local peasants, caught in the cross-fire and under pressure from both sides to collaborate, are also believed to have been killed, according to residents and human rights groups. Hundreds more were displaced.
To this day, those villagers remain uncompensated and barred from returning to their small farms, which the military summarily expropriated or bombed with napalm three decades ago.
That the military carried out a deliberate policy of exterminating the rebels, thereby sweeping up many local peasants as well, is supported in a new best-selling book, ''The Dictatorship Defeated,'' which has renewed interest in the conflict.
The author, Elio Gaspari, gained access to official audiotapes recorded by Gen. Ernesto Geisel, Brazil's president from 1974 to 1979, in which top military leaders spoke uninhibitedly about their decision not to capture the guerrillas and put them on trial, but to eliminate them.
''This business of killing people is a barbarity, but I think it has to be done,'' General Geisel said during one discussion early in 1974 with his soon-to-be minister of the army. ''We can't let go of this war.''
See also: Fidel Castro in Farc hostage plea but not for a lay down on its weapons
July 7, 2008 at 03:12 am by Luiz Castro, 305 views, 4 comments
Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (4)
at 06:20 on July 7th, 2008
lfcastro, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 06:50 on July 7th, 2008
lfcastro, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 06:53 on July 7th, 2008
lfcastro, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 07:03 on July 7th, 2008
Thank you all for the flags!