A series of archival photos of the FARC were released by Colombian magazine Semana, providing an unprecedented look into the daily life of Latin America’s oldest guerrilla group.
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The photos, obtained from the confiscated computer of late FARC commander Guillermo Leon Saenz Vargas, alias “Alfonso Cano,” are thought to date back to the time of the organization’s founding in 1964. The computer was seized following a November 2011 Colombian military operation in which Cano was killed.
Among those seen in the black and white shots are the FARC’s founder and ideological leader, Luis Alberto Morantes Jaimes, alias “Jacobo Arenas,” the late commander Pedro Antonio Marin Marin, alias “Manuel Marulanda,” and the FARC’s current supreme leader Rodrigo Londoño Echeverri, alias “Timochenko.”
The revealing pictures also showed guerrillas during lighter moments, playing volleyball and eating birthday cake.
The FARC is Latin America’s largest guerrilla group and has been locked in armed combat with Colombian government forces for over four decades. The Marxist-Leninist militant organization controlled over 30% of Colombian territory at the height of its power in the late 1990s and early 2000s but has suffered significant blows since the presidencies of Alvaro Uribe and current head of state, Juan Manuel Santos.