Briefings & Intelligence

23-04-2015: Latin American Weekly Report

  • LatinNews

Farc attack damages Santos and guerrillas

Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos is resisting intense pressure to suspend the peace process with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc). Renewing aerial bombing was his immediate response to the killing of 11 soldiers in a military patrol by Farc guerrillas on 14 April but as details of the savagery of the attack which violated the terms of the indefinite unilateral ceasefire declared by the Farc last December have come to light public indignation has mounted and Santos was compelled to deliver a strong message demanding that the Farc pick up the pace of negotiations and show a genuine commitment to peace. The Farc can risk pushing Santos but if the public attitude hardens against a peace deal then whatever is agreed in Cuba will be academic when it comes to an eventual referendum on the accord.

Nearly 4,000 soldiers have died in the last 10 years of Colombia’s armed conflict but few if any of those deaths have received such widespread and virulent condemnation as that of the 11 soldiers (a further 20 were injured) who were “ambushed”, according to the armed forces, with grenades, explosives and firearms while sleeping in a gym in the municipality of Buenos Aires in the south-western department of Cauca. President Santos attended one of the funerals in Bogotá, where he even acted as a pallbearer, but he has been jeered at every public event he has attended over the course of the last week.

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