Colombia Solidarity Campaign is affiliated to the European Network of Friendship and Solidarity with Colombia, which has eleven affiliates in Spain and ten from other countries.
Will the release of Ingrid Bettancourt - arguably the world's most
famous hostage, and FARC's main bargaining chip - along with 14 other
hostages - mean the end of FARC and the beginning of serious peace
negotiations with the Colombian government?
In what is perhaps
the mortal blow in a series of declining fortunes for the 44 year old
insurgency movement - the release of the hostages has left the already
weakened FARC with no negotiating power and has vindicated President
Uribe in his hard line policy against the movement.
FARC lost
its leader - Manuel Marulanda - earlier this year, as well as suffering
the assassination of two senior commanders and a withdrawal of support
from former proponent Hugo Chavez. Facing constant combat, the
insurgency is losing members in record numbers and popular support is
dissipating.
Is this now the beginning of the end for FARC? Will
we see the return to the negotiating table and the commencement of mass
demobilisation?
Malcolm Deas is Director
of Graduate Studies at the Latin American Centre, University Lecturer
in the politics and government of Latin America, Fellow of St Antony's
College, Oxford. His Colombian articles have been published under the
title Del poder y la gramática (1993) and his recent works are an essay on Colombian violence in David Apter's collection, The Legitimisation of Violence, London, Macmillan, 1997, and Vida y opiniones de Mr William Wills, 2 vols, Bogota, Banco de la República, 1996.
Andy Higginbottom is Secretary of the Colombian Solidarity Campaign and Senior Lecturer in Politics and Human Rights at Kingston University. Andy is editor of Frontline Latin America. His essay Globalization, Violence and the Return of the Enclave to Colombia is in Development, 2005 and his Killer Coke is a chapter in Dinan and Miller (eds) 2007 Thinker, Faker, Spinner, Spy London, Pluto.
Hernando Alvarez was
born in Bogota, Colombia. In 1996 he moved to London. He wrote for
various magazines and newspapers while doing a Masters in History at
the London School of Economics. In 2000 he joined the Latin American
Section of the BBC World Service, where he is now the current affairs
editor.
Alice O'Keeffe is arts editor at the New Statesman
magazine and regularly reports on Latin America. She worked for the
British Council in Colombia for two years 2001-2003, and has
subsequently returned many times as a journalist. She reported from
Bogota during the recent diplomatic crisis between Colombia and
Venezuela, where she conducted extensive interviews with former
combatants from the FARC and other armed groups. She has previously
written reports from Brazil, Venezuela and Cuba.
Isabel Hilton has
covered a wide range of Home and Foreign Affairs. She covered the
Falklands War from Buenos Aires, and subsequently reported extensively
from Central and South America. In 1986 Isabel Hilton joined The Independent newspaper, pre-launch, as Latin America Editor.
Hilton joined The Guardian in 1997, where she has contributed a regular column. She contributes extensively to BBC World Service and BBC Television Current Affairs, particularly in Foreign Affairs.
