These factors eroded the once glorified image of the freedom fighters in the jungles of Colombia. The FARC was formed in the early 1960 's by a small peasant group in Marquetalia, Colombia, a small town southwest of the capital, Bogotá. The sixty plus peasants were angry at the government for directing military action against them five years earlier. The military invaded their village, burned down their houses, and razed their crops because the peasants wanted self governance. With the events from a successful Cuban revolution fresh in their minds, these peasants formed the FARC in 1966. This group envisioned a similar revolution would occur in their own country. In comparison to Cuba, Colombia has ten times the area, so a larger force was necessary to militarily challenge the Colombian government. In addition, the FARC needed widespread rural support for an effective revolution to succeed. For the next two decades, the FARC and its political arm, the Colombian Communist Party, gained support from the rural populace. They did this with their supportive views on land reform, opposition to foreign control of resources, democratization, and human rights. The FARC …show more content…
After the loss of the demilitarized zone in 2002 by a Colombian military aided by the United States, the FARC threatened and later shifted violence from the rural regions to urban cities. The FARC started a campaign of assassinations, bombings, and kidnappings of officials in order to grow their terror fueled sphere of influence. The transition from a Marxist insurgency to a drug cartel and indiscriminate attacks on civilians led to a retraction of popular support throughout Colombia. The FARC 's use of violence and inability to translate regional power to political power led many core supporters to revoke support. The FARC was now exploiting those that they originally protected from oppressors that they now resembled. Dr. Phillip A. Hough describes a "combination of increasing extractive demands and decreasing capacity to provide protection that delegitimated [sic] the FARC in the eyes of a significant portion of the local population and led to an upsurge in guerilla violence against civilian noncombatants" (Hough, 2011, p.382). The FARC incorrectly assumed that the support they garnered from rural areas was reflected in urban cities such as Bogotá, Cali, and