Marquetalia Republic - The "Marquetalia Diary"

The "Marquetalia Diary"

Jacobo Arenas, surviving the invasion of Marquetalia, wrote a book called "Diario de la resistencia de Marquetalia" ("Marquetalia Diary") in 1972. The book includes a chronicle of the events of the fight between the guerrilla fighters and the soldiers of the Colombian army brigade.

In the diary, Arenas describes the geographical location and the natural beauty of the Marquetalia area with many details, giving the reader a detailed mental picture of the area, made up of 800 square km in the Andes, at around 6000 feet above sea level, with the presence of monsoon rainfall. One of the snowed mountains in the department of Huila is more than 12,000 feet high.

The diary puts the guerrilla and peasant struggle in Marquetalia in context, happening six years after the triumph of the 1959 Cuban Revolution, which filled the minds of many worldwide with revolutionary fervor. While the events in Cuba absorbed most of the world's and the region's attention, information about the events in Marquetalia and their aftermath later began to be of great interest throughout Latin America.

The diary highlights some of the inner workings of Marquetalia as a sort of improvised commune or small socialist society, where not only the peasant fighters and Communist Party ideologues were present, but also several members of their families and some of their friends, who worked together as a community for both common socioeconomic and military/defense purposes.

Arenas describes the military operations against Marquetalia in May 1964 as part of an United States initiative called Plan LASO (Latin American Security Operation), allegedly meant to suppress dissent and possible communist rebellions that might spring up in the region. In Colombia, Arenas claims that the offensive against Marquetalia was designed with assistance from the Pentagon and alleges that some 16,000 Colombian Army troops, with the support of military helicopters and airplanes, took part in the operation (the terms used in the book are: 16,000 "Bloodhounds" commanded by the Pentagon "Hawks"). The number of peasant communist fighters was thought to be much smaller, but a previous CIA intelligence report argued that it could reach as many as 2000, though other estimates and claims have since differed, with most saying 1600 Colombian troops were involved.

Arenas tells how the fighters scattered, soon regrouped to give birth to the FARC, the former fighters of Marquetalia hide in jungles and remote villages throughout Colombia, reorganizing to fight a war by using irregular techniques in order to some day seize power.