Colombian Communist Party
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The Colombian Communist Party (in Spanish: Partido Comunista Colombiano) is the legal Communist party of Colombia. It was founded in 1930, as the Colombian section of the ComIntern. It is currently led by Jaime Caicedo.
During and following the La Violencia civil war that erupted in Colombia from the late 1940's to the mid-1950's, the communists developed organic links to several liberal guerrilla and irregular rural forces, most of whom nominally depended on the official Colombian Liberal Party and eventually demobilized by the end of that period. Those groups with more direct relations with the PCC tended to not demobilize, keeping their weapons and organizational structures mostly intact.
Later, in 1964, a section of these guerrillas would develop into the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - People's Army (FARC-EP), which initially was considered as the official armed wing of the Communist party.
Gradually the PCC and FARC-EP grew apart politically, for example on the issue of participating in elections after the violent suppression of the Unión Patriótica. Other disagreements would include that the PCC may have allegedly tended to follow the changes that developed within the official Soviet line during the Cold War, which the FARC-EP did not consider as strictly binding.
As a result, a separate Clandestine Colombian Communist Party was officially formed in 2000, though some sort of separate FARC-based party structure had been in de facto existence during most of the 1990's. Some observers have considered that individual members of both parties may have continued to maintain working relationships on occasion but, for the most part, both organizations have remained completely distinct in their activities.
During most of its history the PCC has been subject to different degrees of repression and persecution (both by active and retired government agents, as well as paramilitary death squads), in addition to social and political discrimination, and throughout the last three decades it has become a target for paramilitary intimidations and assassinations, as chronicled by different Colombian and international authorities and press reports. It should be noted that the extermination of the UP has never been proven to have been a part of any official government plan, and although left-wing press denounces it as such, decisive evidence to support this case has never been presented. Generals in the Colombian Army contributing to druglords, paramilitaries and death squads have also frequently been brought to justice, as said actions are in flagrant violation to Colombian law.
PCC publishes the weekly newspaper Voz.
External link
- Party website (http://www.pacocol.org/)