Colombia Rebels Strive for Victory--at the Polls : Biggest Guerrilla Force Still Armed but Achieves Modest Political Gains

Guerrilla leader Braulio Herrera still dreams of the final victory, the revolutionary rise to power. But these days Herrera talks of victory at the polls, not on the battlefield.

In a classic switch from bullets to ballots, Colombia’s largest guerrilla organization has become a modestly successful and enthusiastically ambitious electoral force. Herrera, 35, has played a major role in the transformation.

He was a member of the command staff of the Colombian Armed Forces of Revolution in 1984 when the guerrilla army entered the first stage of a peace agreement with the Conservative government of President Belisario Betancur. Last year, the Marxist rebels and the Colombian Communist Party formed a new political party, the Patriotic Union, and Herrera was appointed its national coordinator.

Down From Mountains

Although the Armed Forces of Revolution has not completely embraced the peaceful approach to change--the guerrillas still retain their arms--the bearded Herrera has come down from the mountains to work within the system, preparing the Patriotic Union to compete in national elections.

On March 9, in the election for a new Parliament, the Patriotic Union won three of the 114 seats in the Senate and five of the 199 in the Chamber of Representatives.

This taste of success has whetted Herrera’s appetite for more. In a recent interview, he expressed hope of building a “movement of millions of Colombians” that will push for reform legislation and eventually seek power through elections.

“In less than one year, we have been able to forge the most important political force in the history of the left in Colombia,” he said. “In that period, we have produced a jump in quantity and quality that no one imagined.”

The party, Herrera said, will work with other “progressive forces” in the Parliament.

‘Ghetto of the Left’

“We don’t want to form an exclusive new group, a new ghetto of the left,” he said. “Rather, what we intend to forge is a front of democratic convergence among quite diverse sectors that we would all fit into.”

He predicted that the proposed bloc “will weigh heavily in the next Parliament,” presenting bills for political, electoral, judicial, agrarian, urban, labor, educational and health reforms.

“We are going to propose a new constitution for Colombia,” Herrera said. “We are going to give new dynamics, new blood to that Parliament.”

Meanwhile, he said, the Patriotic Union will continue working to spread its message and fashion the “tool” needed to accomplish its goals.

“We believe that this tool is a movement of millions of Colombians that would change the balance of political forces, make reforms possible,” he said.

The Ultimate Goal

Ultimately, the goal is government power. “We will continue to seek power,” he said. “That is our strategic objective for which we are going to struggle.”

He said his guerrilla organization will seek to consolidate the peace process under the next president, to be elected May 25. The favored candidate is Virgilio Barco of the Liberal Party.

Liberals and Conservatives have traditionally dominated elections in Colombia, a nation of 29 million. Critics say the two-party system is a stodgy political monopoly that resists reforms and shuts out more progressive forces.

“This is a restricted democracy, with a monopoly on national political life by conservatives and liberals--an absolute monopoly on everything, on the control of the state, the communications media,” Herrera said.

Elected to City Council

As a young leftist politician in 1974, Herrera was elected to the City Council in provincial Armenia. But persecution of the Colombian left began to increase, he said.

Police arrested him frequently, and thugs hired by a local Liberal boss harassed and threatened him, he said. “So with that situation of so much hostility and difficulties, I decided to join the guerrillas.”

He adopted the guerrilla code name he still uses, leaving behind his real name, Carlos Enrique Cardona.

Herrera used both names this year to run on a Patriotic Union ticket for an alternate position in the national Chamber of Representatives. He won.

Most Patriotic Union candidates were not guerrillas, although guerrillas did take part “massively” in the campaigning, especially in rural areas, Herrera said.

On Coalition Tickets

In some provinces, Patriotic Union candidates ran on coalition tickets with Liberal Party candidates. Under such arrangements, Patriotic Union candidates won two alternate positions in the Senate and four in the Chamber of Representatives.

Herrera said those coalition agreements will allow the alternate members from the Patriotic Union to sit in the Parliament for half of the the four-year term, giving the leftist party a total of as many as 14 members of the Parliament.

The seats have a high price in blood, according to Herrera. He said more than 100 activists in the Patriotic Union have been killed by death squads, which he said are directed by military officers.

And during the military truce, he charged, more than 200 members of the Colombian Armed Forces of Revolution--known as FARC, after its initials in Spanish--have been killed in assaults and ambushes by government troops.

‘Contrary to Peace’

“It is certain that there is an attitude in the high command of the armed forces contrary to the peace process,” he said.

Lt. Col. Eduardo Arevalo, the Defense Ministry’s official spokesman, denied that the armed forces are linked to any death squads. He said confrontations between government troops and FARC guerrillas during the truce have occurred when rebel units have been discovered in activities such as abductions, extortion and guerrilla recruiting.

Some guerrilla groups, including the April 19 Movement, pulled out of the peace process last year. Herrera said the April 19 Movement, known as M-19, returned to the armed struggle out of its own “erroneous political calculations.”

Early last November, M-19 guerrillas assaulted the Palace of Justice, the headquarters of the Colombian Supreme Court in downtown Bogota, and security forces crushed the operation in a fiery counterassault. More than 100 people, including justices of the Supreme Court and key guerrilla leaders, were killed.

Clashes With Army

Since then, M-19 has fared poorly in sporadic clashes with the army, mostly in rural areas.

The M-19 movement is believed to have 1,500 or fewer armed fighters, while the Armed Forces of Revolution’s fighting forces are estimated at 5,000 to 10,000. Herrera refused to give a number.