Colombia’s largest rebel group the FARC plan to offer free Spanish courses to foreigners, following world-wide recognition of the high level of Spanish spoken by a Dutch guerrilla who has been in the Marxist group since 2002.
According to a press release on the FARC’s website, the Spanish classes start every other Monday at 5AM and will continue until attacked by army forces.
“After this, the student can choose between physical training in the flight from enemy troops, or receive instant combat training and fight imperialist forces,” the press release said.
Angered urban language schools have protested the FARC’s new initiative to recruit foreigners and illiterate Colombians and say the guerrillas are killing their business.
“How are we supposed to rip off ignorant gringo students for $30 an hour and no results when those commies do it for free and even allow you to pick a local accent?” said an anonymous spokesman of a respected Medellin language institute.
“Not our problem,” responded Tanja Nijmeijer, alias “Teacher,” who has been in charge of setting up the mobile jungle language schools.
“The whole idea of a free market economy is to offer a good product for a competitive price and that’s exactly what we’re doing. The success of our courses only proves the lack of quality and service of the capitalist language institutes,” Nijmeijer added.
According to the guerrilla, the FARC classes are so well received that none of the enrolled students are willing to abandon their classes. “One of my students told me he prefers to die than to be submitted again to mediocre Spanish teachers and lose his ‘Pastuzo’ accent,” she said.
Foreigners who are interested in taking part in the FARC Spanish classes can enrol outside the political science department of the National University in Bogota, after which they will be taken to the location of the following Monday’s class.