Blended Legacies: Vietnamese and Other Foreign Influences on the FARC-EP

Abstract

The article analyzes the phenomenon of blended legacies. It is defined as the local synthesis of foreign guerrilla warfare traditions that the FARC-EP adopted to gain the advantage in their own war. We focus on Vietnamese influence within FARC-EP. The text tracks three types of connections between the FARC-EP and the guerrilla warfare legacies: first, early influence of Vietnamese and Maoist guerrilla political, strategic and tactical literature, as well as Soviet influence through the Colombian Communist Party; second, training in Vietnamese methods from secondary and tertiary parties, particularly instruction the M-19 and ELN received in Cuba and El Salvador respectively that they later passed on to the FARC-EP; and third, direct training the FARC-EP received in Vietnam in 1990. The text also demonstrates the local synthesis through an analysis of the FARC-EP special forces development, as well as their use of improvised explosives.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Gilberto Rocha, “Percepciones del General Gilberto Rocha” (unpublished memoirs, Bogotá, 2006). General Rocha was the commander of the Omega Joint Task Force in 2005–2006. Omega was the main joint force confronting the FARC-EP in south-east Colombia. See: Centro de Estudios Históricos del Ejército. Fuerza de Tarea Conjunta Omega. Dios y Victoria. Las FARC: de la guerra de movimientos a su Punto de Inflexión (Bogotá: Planeta, 2015).

2 The authors acknowledge that the FARC-EP have had diverse influences involving, among others, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA). See: Benedetta Berti, “Colombiás FARC and the Basque ETA: Exploring the Tactical and Economic Partnership,” Terrorism Monitor 7, no. 2 (2009). https://jamestown.org/program/colombias-farc-and-the-basque-eta-exploring-the-tactical-and-economic-partnership/; John F. Murphy Jr., “The IRA and the FARC in Colombia,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 18, no. 1 (2005): 76–88, https://doi.org/10.1080/08850600590905753.

3 Cragin et al. describes 1-Types of knowledge/technologies moving from one place to another: explicit/tacit, teachable/nonteachable, observable in use/nonobservable, simple/complex, independent/system, general/specialized, and easily aggregated/idiosyncratic. 2-Characteristics of the receiving and source organizations: absorptive capacity, level of trust, and level of match. 3-Modes of exchange: vicarious, descriptive, physical and person-to-person. 4-Factors affecting the adoption process: comparative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, price, internal group decision structure, communication channels, and external environment. Kim Cragin, Peter Chalk, Sara A. Daly, and Brian A. Jackson, Sharing the Dragon’s Teeth: Terrorist Groups and the Exchange of New Technologies (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2007), https://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG485.html.

4 Forest includes in his analysis characteristics like the role of leaders, training camps, places of conflict, the Internet, open-source resources, trust issues, ideological alignment, and imitation/emulation dynamics. James Forest, “Knowledge Transfer and Shared Learning among Armed Groups,” in Armed Groups: Studies in National Security, Counterterrorism, and Counterinsurgency, ed. Jeffrey Norwitz (Newport, RI: Naval War College, 2008).

5 Organizational learning is described as a four-part model including acquiring, interpreting, distributing, and retention of information and knowledge. See: Forest, “Knowledge Transfer”; Cragin et al., Sharing the Dragon’s Teeth; Chris Argyris and Donald Schön, “Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective,” Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas, no. 77/78 (1997), 345–348, https://doi.org/10.2307/40183951; Brian A. Jackson, John C. Baker, Kim Cragin, John Parachini, Horacio R. Trujillo, and Peter Chalk, Aptitude for Destruction. Organizational Learning in Terrorist Groups and Its Implications for Combating Terrorism, vol. 1 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2005), https://doi.org/10.7249/MG331; Brian A. Jackson, John C. Baker, Peter Chalk, Kim Cragin, John V. Parachini, and Horacio R. Trujillo, Case Studies of Organizational Learning in Five Terrorist Groups, vol. 2 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2005), https://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG332.html; Michael Kenney, “Organizational Learning and Islamic Militancy,” National Institute of Justice Journal, no. 265, 2008, https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/organizational-learning-and-islamic-militancy.

6 The factors relevant to terrorist innovation addressed by Dolnik are: 1-The role of ideology and strategy. 2-The dynamics of the struggle. 3-Countermeasures. 4-Targeting logic. 5-Attachment to weaponry/innovation. 6-Group dynamics. 7-Relationship with other organizations. 8-Resources. 9-Openness to new ideas. 10-Durability. 11-Nature of technologies. Adam Dolnik, Understanding Terrorist Innovation: Technology, Tactics and Global Trends (Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2007).

7 Dolnik, Understanding Terrorist, 213.

8 Román Ortiz, “Renew to Last: Innovation and Strategy of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC),” in Teaching Terror: Strategic and Tactical Learning in the Terrorist World, ed. James Forest (Oxford: Rowman & Littlfield Publishers, 2006), 213.

9 Bruce E. Seely, “Historical Patterns in the Scholarship of Technology Transfer,” Comparative Technology Transfer and Society 1, no. 1 (2003): 7–48, https://doi.org/10.1353/ctt.2003.0011.

10 Nicholas Martland, “Book Publishing and Bookselling in Vietnam” Logos 12, no. 1 (2001): 29–32, https://doi.org/10.2959/logo.2001.12.1.29.

11 Van Luong Nhan, “Translation and Politics in Vietnam,” in The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Politics, ed. Fruela Fernández and Jonathan Evans (London and New York: Routledge, 2018), 518.

12 Xing Zhao, “Internationalizing Chairman Mao: Creation of the Mao Cult in China Reconstructs and Its Reception in Latin America,” Journal of Contemporary Chinese 4, no. 2–3 (2017): 161–81, https://doi.org/10.1386/jcca.4.2-3.161_1; Emily Lygo, “Translation and the Cold War,” The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Politics, ed. Fruela Fernández and Jonathan Evans (London and New York: Routledge, 2018). This publishing work carried out from Hanoi was complemented by diplomatic strategies among not only the communist bloc, but also neutral governments and internal American allies to seek help and discredit the war adversary. See: Robert Brigham, Guerrilla Diplomacy: The NLF’s Foreign Relations and the Viet Nam War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999); Pierre Asselin, “Forgotten Front: The NLF in Hanoís Diplomatic Struggle, 1965-67,” Diplomatic History 45, no. 2 (2021): 330, https://doi.org/10.1093/dh/dhaa091.

13 During the 1990s and 2000s, the author David Spencer accompanied the Colombian military and was particularly interested in examining captured documents, to which he was given free access, at first in paper format found in abandoned backpacks, and increasingly, after 2000, found on laptop computers carried by guerrilla combatants.

14 W. A. C. Adie, “China, Russia and the Third World,” The China Quarterly, no. 11 (1962): 200–213, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741000020348; William R. Garner, “The Sino-Soviet Ideological Struggle in Latin America,” Journal of Inter-American Studies 10, no. 2 (1968): 244–255, https://doi.org/10.2307/165389.

15 Richard Gott, Guerrilla Movements in Latin America (New York: Doubleday, 1972); Jorge G. Castañeda, Utopia Unarmed: the Latin American Left after the Cold War (New York: Vintage Books, 1994); Timothy Wickham-Crowley, Guerrillas and Revolution in Latin America: a Comparative Study of Insurgents and Regimes since 1956 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).

16 José Arizala, “Sobre un artículo de Ho Chi Minh,” Documentos Políticos: Revista del Partido Comunista 72 (1968): 76–84.

17 Regarding the influence of the Chinese principles of guerrilla warfare on the Vietnamese repertoire of warfare, ÓDowd points out that the initial source was the participation of Hồ Chí Minh in the Red Army/Eighth Route Army operations of 1937–1939 during the second Sino-Japanese War. Hồ Chí Minh “joined the faculty of the school and served, in the rank of major, as the administrative officer and radio operator for several months. These events shaped Ho’s familiarity with Chinese military affairs (…) As a Vietnamese, he shared a similar view of the Chinese military tradition and could easily understand the tradition of Asian peasant rebellion. It was but a small step to adapt the recent successes of the Chinese communist military to the tactical problems he faced in Vietnam”. Then, the theoretical and political texts of Võ Nguyên Giáp and Trường Chinh written in the late 1940s consolidated the Chinese-Vietnam guerrilla link and strengthened the Vietnamese version of the Chinese strategy. See: Edward C. O’Dowd, “Ho Chi Minh and the Origins of the Vietnamese Doctrine of Guerrilla Tactics,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 24, no. 3 (2013): 564–565, https://doi.org/10.1080/09592318.2013.802606.

18 Miguel Ángel Urrego, “China y la Disputa por América Latina: Guerra Fría, Maoísmo y Relaciones Comerciales,” Izquierdas 50 (2021), https://doi.org/10.4067/s0718-50492021000100223.

19 Central Intelligence Agency. Intelligence Report: the Sino-Soviet dispute within the communist movement in Latin America (1967), https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/5077054e993247d4d82b6a9b.

20 Urrego, “China y la Disputa”.

21 William E. Ratliff, “Communist China and Latin America, 1949-1972,” Asian Survey 12, no. 10 (1972): 846–863, https://doi.org/10.2307/2643063.

22 Mario Aguilera, “Las FARC: auge y quiebre del modelo de guerra,” Revista Análisis Político 77 (2013): 85–111.

23 Eduardo Pizarro, Las FARC (1949-2011). De Guerrilla Campesina a Máquina de Guerra (Bogotá: Norma, 2011); Carlos Ospina Ovalle, Los años en que Colombia recuperó la esperanza. Cómo la aplicación coordinada de política y estrategia logró la recuperación social, económica y de seguridad de la nación colombiana (Medellín: Editorial Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, 2014); Darío Villamizar, Las guerrillas en Colombia. Una historia desde los orígenes hasta los confines (Bogotá: Debate, 2017).

24 David Spencer and Hugo Acha Melgar, “Bolivia, a New Model Insurgency for the 21st Century: from Mao back to Lenin?,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 28, no. 3 (2017): 629–60, https://doi.org/10.1080/09592318.2017.1307617.

25 Gott, Guerrilla Movements in Latin America; Wickham-Crowley, Guerrillas and Revolution in Latin America; Castañeda, Utopia Unarmed.

26 Thomas A. Marks, “FARC, 1982-2002: Criminal Foundation for Insurgent Defeat,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 28, no. 3 (2017), 492, https://doi.org/10.1080/09592318.2017.1307612.

27 FARC-EP, “Octava Conferencia Nacional de Guerrilleros” (internal document, May 3–April 3, 1993), under the subheading “Relaciones Internacionales”.

28 FARC-EP, “Séptima Conferencia Nacional de Guerrilleros” (internal document, Guayabero, May, 1982).

29 Jacobo Arenas [pseud.], “Curso de estrategia” (internal document), 45.

30 Jacobo Arenas [pseud.], Diario de la resistencia de Marquetalia (Ediciones Abejón Mono, 1972), 5.

31 FARC-EP, 45 años. Manuel Marulanda Vélez. El héroe Insurgente de La Colombia de Bolívar (Agencia Bolivariana de Prensa, 2009), 26.

32 Trường Chinh, Primer for Revolution: The Communist Takeover in Viet-Nam (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1963); Thomas Marks, “Insurgency in a Time of Terrorism,” Desafíos 12 (2005): 9–34, https://revistas.urosario.edu.co/index.php/desafios/article/view/671.

33 Gilberto Vieira, “Colombia: Combinación de Todas Las Formas de Lucha,” interview by Marta Harnecker (Cuba: Biblioteca Popular, 1988).

https://rebelion.org/docs/90193.pdf.

34 Vladimir I. Lenin, “The Question of Guerrilla Warfare,” Lenin Collected Works 11 (Mocow: Progress Publishers, 1965), 224.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1906/sep/30c.htm.

35 The text of the 1961, 9th Conference quoted by Trejos and González states: “The revolution can advance a distance on the peaceful path. However, if the dominant classes force it, through violence and systematic persecution of the people, they can be forced to adopt the path of armed struggle, as the main form, even though not exclusive in another time. The path to revolution can become a combination of all forms of struggle”. See: Luis Trejos and Roberto González, “El Partido Comunista colombiano y la combinación de todas las formas de lucha. Entre la simpatía internacional y las tensiones locales 1961–1981,” Revista Izquierdas, no. 17, December, 2013, https://www.izquierdas.cl/ediciones/2013/numero-17-diciembre.

36 Dirk Kruijt, Eduardo Rey Tristán, and Alberto Martín Álvarez, “Origins and Evolution of the Latin American Guerrilla Movements,” in Latin American Guerrilla Movements. Origins, Evolution, Outcomes (New York: Routledge, 2019), https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429244063; Villamizar, Las Guerrillas en Colombia.

37 Sapper Command, Excerpts from Official Vietnamese Sapper Handbook, trans. Merle Pribbenow (Hanoi: 1992). https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/113922.

38 Sapper Command, Excerpts from Official, 136.

39 Kiêm Viện Nguyễn, “Defence Relations Meet the Requirements of Protecting the Fatherland of Vietnam and Cuba in the Period 1975–1995,” Tạp Chí Quốc Phòng Toàn Dân, November 25, 2020, http://tapchiqptd.vn/vi/su-kien-lich-su/quan-he-quoc-phong-dap-ung-yeu-cau-bao-ve-to-quoc-cua-viet-nam-va-cuba-giai-doan-1975-1995/16378.html.

40 Người Lính, “Did the Cuban Black Wasp Learn from the Vietnamese Special Forces?,” 2015, https://tienphong.vn/dac-nhiem-o-den-cuba-co-hoc-hoi-dac-cong-viet-nam-post805528.tpo; United States Department of State. Cubás Renewed Support for Violence in Latin America (Washington, DC, 1981).

41 Sapper Command, Excerpts from Official, 130.

42 Sapper Command, Excerpts from Official, 131.

43 Merle Pribbenow, “Vietnam Trained Commando Forces in Southeast Asia and Latin America,” Cold War International History Project E-Dossier Series, no. 28 (n.d.), https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/vietnam-trained-commando-forces-southeast-asia-and-latin-america.

44 Uriel Páez, [pseud.], (former explosives expert, FARC-EP), interview by Óscar Moreno-Martínez, June 23, 2017.

45 Uriel Páez, [pseud.], interview.

46 Ricardo Téllez, [pseud.] (former International Relations Commander, FARC-EP), interview by Oscar Moreno-Martínez, August 17, 2017.

47 Uriel Páez, [pseud.], interview.

48 Pribbenow, “Vietnam Trained Commando Forces”.

49 Uriel Páez, [pseud.], interview.

50 Uriel Páez, [pseud.], interview.

51 Uriel Páez, [pseud.], interview.

52 The Special Jurisdiction for Peace is the Colombian transitional justice mechanism that is responsible for investigating and judging FARC-EP members, among others. In war times, Diego Ardila Merchán was also known as Leonel Páez.

53 Special Jurisdiction for Peace of Colombia, “Versión voluntaria de Diego Ardila Merchán” April 12, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNeEUA0b6Ro.

54 According to Alberto Martínez [pseud.], former leader of personnel of the Eastern Bloc, another international influence for military specialization was the Company Commanders course in 1989 delivered by Chilean Internationalist instructors. Alberto Martínez, [pseud.] (former FARC-EP member), Semblanza de un comunista, Mono Jojoy héroe de La Macarena (Montañas del Perijá, May 2016).

55 Uriel Páez, [pseud.], interview.

56 FARC-EP, “Octava Conferencia”, under the subheading “Military conclusions”.

57 Uriel Páez, [pseud.], interview.

58 FARC-EP Escuela Efraín Guzmán, “Cartilla Fuerzas Especiales” (internal document, n.p., n.d.), 3.

59 Kunta Kinte, [pseud.], (former FARC-EP commander), interview by Óscar Moreno-Martínez, June 20, 2017; Special Jurisdiction for Peace of Colombia, “Versión voluntaria de Diego Ardila Merchán”.

60 Fiscalía General de la Nación, “Columnas, Compañías, Bloque Sur FARC-EP,” Informe Génesis, Tomo 28, (n.p., 2016), 20.

61 A company is made up of 54 combatants. A column is made up of 110 combatants. In other words, a column is made up of 2 companies. For a company to become a column means that it has doubled in number of combatants.

62 Fiscalía General de la Nación, Informe Génesis.

63 Centro de Recursos para el Análisis de Conflictos, “Las Columnas Móviles de Las FARC: La Amenaza Terrorista Del Conflicto Interno,” Semanario de análisis en seguridad 16, Bogotá, 2015.

64 Coordinadora Guerrillera Simón Bolívar, “Evaluación Conclusiones III Cumbre de la CGSB,” October 13, 1988.

65 FARC-EP, “Contenido” (internal manual captured by the National Army, n.p., n.d.).

66 FARC-EP, “Contenido”.

67 FARC-EP, “Contenido”.

68 Kunta Kinte, [pseud.], interview.

69 Centro de Recursos para el Análisis de Conflictos, “Las Columnas Móviles”.

70 “Las FARC matan a once militares en Cauca,” Revista Semana, April 15, 2015, https://www.semana.com/nacion/articulo/las-farc-matan-nueve-militares-en-cauca/424130-3/; Elizabeth Reyes, “Los 11 soldados asesinados por las FARC sufrieron una emboscada,” El País, April 16, 2015, https://elpais.com/internacional/2015/04/17/actualidad/1429230608_055517.html; “Once militares muertos en el Cauca tras ataque de las FARC,” El Tiempo, April 15, 2015, https://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/documento/CMS-15572175.

71 Colombian Navy, “Caso táctico: toma de la base naval Juradó, December 12, 1999,” (n.p., n.d.).

72 FARC-EP, “Abriendo caminos por la nueva Colombia. Operación El Billar.” (internal document captured by the National Army, n.p., 2005).

73 During the late 1980s and early 1990s the ELN, EPL, M-19 and the FARC-EP formed an alliance known as the Simón Bolívar Coordinator. The idea was similar to the front organization in El Salvador, the FMLN; or Nicaragua, the FSLN. The Simón Bolívar Coordinator broke up because the organizations couldn’t agree. The EPL and the M-19 demobilized. The FARC-EP and the ELN parted ways around 1992.

74 Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, Tomas y Ataques Guerrilleros, 1965–2013 (Bogotá: Imprenta Nacional, 2016).

75 Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica. Tomas y Ataques Guerrilleros.

76 FARC-EP, “Casos tácticos” (internal document captured by the National Army, Las Morras, 1992).

77 FARC-EP, “Abriendo caminos”.

78 FARC-EP, “Casos tácticos”.

79 Colombian Navy, “Caso Táctico”.

80 FARC-EP, “Casos tácticos”; FARC-EP, “Abriendo caminos”; Colombian Navy, “Caso Táctico”.

81 Colombian Navy, “Caso Táctico”; FARC-EP, “Casos tácticos”.

82 FARC-EP, “Abriendo caminos”.

83 FARC-EP, “Casos tácticos”; Colombian Navy, “Caso Táctico”.

84 FARC-EP, “Abriendo caminos”.

85 Uriel Páez, [pseud.], interview.

86 David Spencer, From Vietnam to El Salvador. The Saga of the FMLN Sappers and other Guerrilla Special Forces in Latin America (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 1996), 24.

87 Uriel Páez, [pseud.], interview.

88 FARC-EP, “Cartilla Grigelio Almarales” (internal document, Arauca, n.d.).

89 The FARC-EP explosives manuals do not have these images, but the descriptions are very similar to those of the ELN. These images were taken from: Ejército de Liberación Nacional de Colombia, “Cartilla para especialistas en explosivos” (internal document, Montañas de Colombia, 2002); Ejército de Liberación Nacional de Colombia, Bloque Sur, Frente Timanco, “Cartilla de Explosivos” (internal document, n.p, n.d.). FARC-EP, “Cartilla de explosivos” (internal document, n.p, n.d.).

90 Department of the Army, “Viet Cong Boobytraps, Mines, and Mine Warfare Techniques. Training Circular 5-31,” Headquarters, Department of the Army, December, 1969, https://www.bulletpicker.com/pdf/TC-5-31-1969.pdf.

91 Department of the Army, “Viet Cong Boobytraps”.

92 Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional, “Guía Del Combatiente, uso combativo de las minas” (internal document, n.p., 1985).

93 FARC-EP, “Cartilla Grigelio Almarales”; Liliana Duica-Amaya, “Paisajes minados en Colombia: los artefactos y su vida natural, social y técnica” (Doctoral Thesis, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, 2020).

94 César Chaparro, “Video revela cómo las Farc instalan minas y trampas en zonas rurales,” Caracol Noticias and El Espectador, October 1, 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhkSZ_VmcF0.

95 United States Marine Corps, “Vietcong Mines and Booby Traps. Gained from Operational Experience in Vietnam. Special Issue Mines and Booby Traps,” (n.p., 1967), https://www.bulletpicker.com/pdf/USMC; FARC-EP, “Explosives handbook”.

96 Forest, “Knowledge Transfer”.

97 Dolnik, Understanding Terrorist.