BOGOTA—Latin America’s largest guerrilla army has suffered a devastating setback with the combat death of its leader, who was discovered and felled by three bullets after his camp was bombed, officials said Saturday.
The body of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebel commander, Alfonso Cano, is seen in this handout photo. Colombian forces killed Cano on Friday in the biggest blow yet to Latin America's longest insurgency.
Friday’s killing of Alfonso Cano, a bookish 63-year-old from Bogota’s middle class, was celebrated by President Juan Manuel Santos as “the hardest blow to this organization in its entire history.”
“I want to send a message to each and every member of this organization: demobilize. Because if you don’t, as we’ve said so many times and as we’ve shown, you will end up in jail or in a tomb,” Santos said in a brief televised address late Friday.
The killing, however does not finish off the nearly half-century-old Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish initials, FARC.
Financed mostly by drug trafficking, it is made up largely of peasants with few other opportunities in a country where land ownership is highly concentrated in the hands of a few.
Cano was killed in a remote area of the southwestern state of Cauca along with three other rebels, two men and a woman, hours after his hideout in forested hills was bombed, officials said. They had initially said four other guerrillas were killed.
Cano was found unarmed, said Maritza Gonzalez, director of the chief prosecutor’s office’s investigative unit. Her agents positively identified the body by fingerprints. He had shaved off his trademark beard.
Cano had been the top target of Colombia’s armed forces authorities since September 2010, when they killed the insurgency’s military chief, Jorge Briceno, in a bombing raid in the southern Macarena massif.
Troops recovered seven computers and 39 thumb drives belonging to Cano as well as a stash of cash in currencies including U.S. dollars, euros and Colombian pesos, said Defence Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon.
The death of Cano, whose real name was Guillermo Leon Saenz, does not signal the imminent demise of Latin America’s last remaining major leftist rebel army, analysts said.
“This is a blow to the FARC’s morale,” said Victor Ricardo, Pastrana’s peace commissioner during the failed peace talks. “But by no means can people imagine that this can bring an end to the FARC.”
The FARC, which is believed to number about 9,000, has a disciplined military hierarchy and someone is always in line to advance, he said.
Ricardo said the next leader could be rebels known as Ivan Marquez or Timochenko. Both are members of the FARC’s ruling seven-member secretariat.
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