With the transition from Colombia’s longest-living guerrilla group to a Marxist political party, the FARC also changed leadership, which is now in hands of Luciano Marin, a.k.a. “Ivan Marquez.”
Marin will be the leader of the 111-member leadership of the Revolutionary Alternative Forces of Commons, the body that replaces the 61-member Central Command that led the FARC when the group was still in arms.
The decision was made last week when the FARC elected its first National Commons’ Council, newspaper El Tiempo reported Saturday.
Marin was long the unofficial number two of the FARC, behind “Timochenko,” who had been elected military leader in 2011 after the killing of “Alfonso Cano.”
Timochenko, whose real name is Rodrigo Londoño, was elected the number five in the FARC’s political hierarchy, according to El Tiempo.
The FARC finalized its first party congress in Bogota on Friday, formally kicking off its legitimate political career and the campaign for the 2018 elections.
In the group’s first attempt to legitimate politics since 1985, the group bartered 10 congressional seats, approximately 3% of seats, but can be granted more if warranted by votes.
Marin has long been considered the group’s most politically savvy leader and led negotiations with the Colombian government to end the FARC’s 52-year-long armed conflict with the State between 2012 and 2016.
The new FARC leader was elected into Congress in 1986 for the Patriotic Union party, but went underground again shortly after when paramilitary groups and state forces began assassinating the party’s members and supporters.
The killing of thousands in the FARC’s previous attempt to join politics further radicalized the group and marked the beginning of the bloodiest period in Colombia’s armed conflict.