An Interview with FARC Commander Simón Trinidad
Leech, Garry M.
In January 1999, newly elected Colombian president Andres Pastrana ceded an area of southern Colombia the size of Switzerland to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas...
...She is 14 years old...
...We recruit 15 year olds and up...
...In some fronts there may have been some younger, but [recently] we decided to send them back home...
...In January 1999, newly elected Colombian president Andres Pastrana ceded an area of southern Colombia the size of Switzerland to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas as part of an agreement to begin peace talks...
...Approximately 30% of the guerrillas are women, and the number is increasing...
...Why do you think the United States is focusing on the FARC and campesinos that cultivate coca here in southern Colombia instead of the paramilitaries and the narcotraffickers...
...Many international human rights organizations have demanded that the FARC stop recruiting children...
...The FARC] live in the country, and it is in the country that the coca, marijuana and the poppies have been grown for 30 years...
...For these reasons we are the principal target in the war against narcotraffickers...
...Colombia has 18 million people living in absolute poverty, [without] electricity, water, jobs, land, education or healthcare...
...She was better in the guerrillas...
...What will happen if the United States Congress authorizes increased military aid to the Colombian Armed Forces and they launch an offensive against the FARC here in southern Colombia...
...until sunrise...
...I don't want to think about a war in this region...
...This is the police, army and narcotrafficker version of the story...
...Who are those that are opposed to these social, economic and political changes...
...If the United States government really intends to combat narcotraffickers, all the people in Colombia know where they live: in Bogota, Medellin, Cali and Barranquilla...
...On June 14, Garry M. Leech traveled to Los Pozos to interview Simon Trinidad, a FARC commander and a spokesman for the guerrilla organization...
...It sounds beautiful when you say that children shouldn't be guerrillas, but children are in the streets of the cities doing drugs, inhaling gasoline and glue...
...But some do get pregnant...
...Two weeks ago I met this girl...
...We are 36 million Colombians living poorly out of a total of 40 million...
...Although there is no cease-fire agreement while the talks are being carried out, the Colombian Armed Forces and the National Police have withdrawn all their forces from the region known as the Zona de Despeje (Clearance Zone...
...They are the people who monopolize the riches and resources in Colombia...
...I asked what she was doing and she said, 'I attend to the customers.' When I asked [how], she lowered her head and started to cry...
...During the last year a girl arrived...14 years old and wanting to join the guerrilla...
...They are obligated to cultivate illicit crops because of a government that has neglected them for many years...
...She said she was working in a bar from six p.m...
...Also, between paramilitaries and the narcotraffickers, everybody knows this...
...The state has to offer people employment, honest work, and social justice to improve their lives...
...Another 18 million Colombians [earn] a salary that doesn't cover all their necessities...
...Because the FARC is the only political organization that is in opposition to the Colombian oligarchy that keeps Colombians in poverty, misery and a state of underdevelopment...
...This problem is caused by the economic model of the Colombian state, and it is the state that has to fix the problem...
...These children meet the guerrillas and they don't have parents because the military or the paramilitaries killed them, and they ask the guerrillas to let them join...
...Where does the FARC stand on this issue...
...The companies that make the chemicals for processing cocaine and heroin...
...The war won't resolve the problems for the hungry and unemployed in Colombia...
...How many women are there in the FARC, and what happens when they become pregnant...
...She is a whore...
...There are millions of others like this girl in Colombia who are exploited in the coal mines, the gold mines, the emerald mines, in the coca and poppy fields...
...Who else...
...We are carrying out our rule that no children younger than 15 years of age join...
...Some women have relationships with male guerrillas, and we provide contraceptives...
...We are the state's enemy, not their anti-narcotics poicle...
...According to the United Nations: 41% of Colombians are children, 6.5 million children live in conditions of poverty, another 1.2 million living in absolute poverty, 30,000 live in the streets, 47% are abused by their parents, and 2.5 million work in high risk jobs...
...Women guerrillas are treated the same as the men...
...the FARC office in San Vicente is run by a female...
...They work with the marijuana and coca leaf because they do not have any other work...
...Is the war going to resolve these problems...
...The FARC] will make better use of the natural resources and provide jobs, health care, education and housing so 40 million Colombians can live well...
...Will the war waged against poor campesinos solve these problems...
...But what is the cost...
...These companies are German and North American...
...We know the campesinos grow illicit crops out of necessity...
...In the guerrillas we have dignity, respect, and we provide then with clothes food and education...
...Who else benefits...
...A small group that monopolizes the banks, industries, mines, agriculture and international commerce, including some foreign companies, especially North Americans...
...However, there have been accusations that the FARC is forcing campesinos to grow more coca here in the Zona de Despeje...
...Last year, FARC spokesman Raul Reyes claimed that the FARC could eradicate coca cultivation in the regions it controls in five years...
...If they don't have an abortion, they have to leave the guerrillas...
...Those responsible for making Colombia a producer of narcotics are the people who have become rich from this business: the narcotraffickers...
...But we aren't narcotraffickers and the campesinos aren't narcotraffickers...
...But [the police] confront the poor campesino with repression that hurts not only the illicit crops, but also legal crops like yucca, bananas, and chickens and pigs because the fumigation kills everything...
...They prefer that children work in the coca and poppy fields because they pay them less and they work more...
...A child prostitute...
...We have made it clear that we will not take the food out of the mouth of the Garry M. Leech is the publisher of Colombia Report, a webbased magazine that provides analysis of the Colombian civil war...
...See http://www.colombiareport.org poor campesinos...
...In March she was sent back home because the FARC's Central Command said they would return to their parents all those younger than 15...
...Some FARC units have female commanders...
...Commander Sim6n Trinidad...
...War will not resolve Colombia's problems...
...The bankers and those who distribute the drugs in the cities, universities, high schools and discos of North America, Europe and Asia...
...Trinidad was a professor of economics at Jorge Tadeo Lozano University in Bogota for ten years before joining the FARC 16 years ago...
...We will not leave them without jobs...
...There is an alliance between narcotraffickers and common politicians, both Liberals and Conservatives...
Vol. 34 • September 2000 • No. 2
