Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia; FARC) is a leftist Colombian guerrilla group whose troops currently control more than 40 percent of the country and present a grave threat to the Colombian government.

Between 1948 and 1958, Colombia saw its the two leading political parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives, engage in a civil war that plunged the country into near anarchy; the period is called La Violencia—the violence. During that decade and continuing into early 1960s, the Colombian Communist Party began organizing peasant militias to defend villages in the rural south. After the war was ended with the political parties agreeing to share power exclusively between them, the government began to act against the peasant groups, considering them to be a communist threat to their newly formed political hegemony. In response to the Army's crackdown, in 1964 the ...