Patriotic Union (Colombia) - Legacy

Legacy

The FARC-EP and its sympathizers have later repeatedly employed the destruction of the UP as a strong argument in order to justify its armed struggle against the Colombian state and its assuming positions that many on the Colombian and international leftwing consider to be radical. FARC officially considers that the UP's extermination was a clear sign of government intolerance, state terrorism and of the impossibility of legal political action in Colombia.

Several of the FARC's critics believe that, despite the unjustifiable bloodshed, it is debatable whether such positions are entirely a consequence of the UP's failure. Some believe that, at least partially, their basis was part of the FARC's preexisting ideological and political strategies. In addition, members of the legal leftwing parties in modern Colombia, such as the Independent Democratic Pole, while they are still subject to targeted threats and assassinations for which they blame paramilitaries supported by individual members of the state's armed forces, have stated that the legal political struggle that the UP fought and ultimately died for should not be given up in favor of the use of arms, which only extends the cycle of violence.

Most members of the Colombian left and the surviving victims, however, tend to agree that the Colombian state should provide an adequate resolution to the crimes, by giving reparations to the victims, implementing a degree of judicial punishment to those responsible, and most importantly, securing a public revelation of the full truth about the matter.

If it does not do so, as it has not yet been the case, then international tribunals or organizations, such as the IACHR, should assign it the proper responsibility. For these reasons, many are skeptical and highly critical of the demobilization negotiations that Álvaro Uribe's administration is holding with the AUC, because they fear that they might result in undue impunity.

The UP, among other minor parties that had been losing votes in recent years, formally lost its legal representative status as a political party (personería jurídica) in September 2002 after that year's national elections, due to the application of new electoral laws that conditioned such a status (or the regaining of the same) to either the signing of a petition with 50,000 signatures or to obtaining a certain minimum percentage of votes. Some UP members continue to identify themselves as such within the Social and Political Front.