The top leader of Colombia’s main rebel group, the bookish ideologue Alfonso Cano, was killed on Friday in combat hours after his nearby camp was bombed, authorities said.
The death was a major victory for Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and comes just over a year after the military killed the rebels’ field marshal. However, it is anything but a fatal blow to the nearly half-century-old peasant-based Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
Cano, 63, was killed in a remote area of Cauca State along with four other rebels an hour before dusk about 200m from the bunker he apparently fled after the 8:30am bombing raid, Admiral Roberto Garcia said.
PHOTO: AFP
He had shaven off his trademark beard and his thick glasses were not found with him, Garcia said. Officials said he was positively identified by fingerprints.
Officials did not say whether Cano was armed when he died or how many bullet wounds he had or where. Garcia said five rebels were captured.
Santos called Cano’s killing “the hardest blow to this organization in its entire history” and cheered “Viva Colombia!”
Former Colombian president Andres Pastrana, who knew Cano from failed 1998-2002 peace negotiations he held with the rebels, said that the death “has to make the FARC think it’s losing the war.”
Cano had been the top target of Colombian authorities since September last year, when they killed FARC military leader Jorge Briceno in a bombing raid.
Troops found seven computers and 39 thumb drives in Cano’s bunker, as well as a stash of cash in currencies including US dollars, euros and Colombian pesos, Colombian Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon said.
Authorities released a photograph of the deceased rebel’s head. His face did not appear disfigured.
Cano’s body was taken to Popayan, the Cauca State capital, where Santos and the entire military high command planned to fly yesterday.
The death of Cano, whose real name was Guillermo Leon Saenz, does not by any means signal the imminent demise of Latin America’s last remaining leftist rebel army, analysts said.
The FARC, which is mostly financed by drug trafficking, is comprised largely of peasants from backwater areas who have few other opportunities in a country where land ownership is highly concentrated in the hands of a few.
Pastrana’s peace commissioner during the failed peace talks, Victor Ricardo, said Cano’s death did not mean the end of the rebels, who are believed to number about 9,000.
“This is a blow to the FARC’s morale, but by no means can people imagine that this can bring an end to the FARC,” Ricardo said.
The FARC has a disciplined military hierarchy and someone is always in line to advance, he said. Ricardo said the next leader could be the rebels known as Ivan Marquez or Timochenko. Both are members of the FARC secretariat.
The rebels’ leadership has suffered a series of withering blows beginning in March 2008, when FARC foreign minister Raul Reyes was killed in a bombing raid on a rebel camp across the border in Ecuador. That raid yielded authorities a treasure trove of information from computers and digital storage.
That same month, the FARC’s revered co-founder, Manuel Marulanda, died in a mountain hideout of a heart attack. He was believed to be 78. Cano, the rebels’ chief ideologist, was named to succeed him.
Several other top commanders were subsequently killed and rebel desertions, including of mid-level cadres, reached record levels.
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