Talking About Colombia

In the past, the FARC have denied their involvement in drug trafficking.

But — finally — Iván Márquez, a FARC negotiator in the FARC-government peace talks currently taking place in Havana, said, “We saw ourselves obliged to establish a system to tax and regulate the transactions made by campesinos, always thinking about their rights, protecting them from abuses by intermediaries and drug dealers.”

He said the FARC consider the challenge of drugs, and generally of narco-trafficking, part of a problem in the “capitalist system” and “imperialism.”

He criticized the “so-called war on drugs” and said it was “a product of a geopolitical imperialist design,” which acquired greater importance after the fall of the Soviet Union because “the disappearance of a communist enemy made it necessary to invent a new enemy.”