From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Colombia

This article is part of the series: Politics and government of Colombia

Constitution President Council of Ministers Vice President Congress Senate Chamber of Representatives Political parties Elections 2006 legislative 2006 executive Departments Military of Colombia Armed conflict Foreign relations

Other countries · Politics Portal view • talk • edit

The Colombian Communist Party (in Spanish: Partido Comunista Colombiano) or PCC 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.

The PCC is part of the Social and Political Front (FSP) party coalition, and also participates in the Democratic Alternative (AD) movement and the Alternative Democratic Pole (PDA) alliance.

PCC publishes the weekly newspaper Voz.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Relations with FARC 2 Persecution 3 See also 4 External links

During and following the La Violencia civil war that erupted in Colombia from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s, 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 (FARC-EP), which initially was considered as the official armed wing of the Communist party. The PCC leadership mostly operated in the cities during the 1960s and 1970s, but it supported the operations of the FARC, regularly holding solidarity and donation rallies for FARC members and units, as well as occasionally providing other forms of aid (supplies, equipment, intelligence, political cadres or ideological literature).

The PCC justified the operations of the guerrillas as the armed component of the fight against capitalism and imperialism in Colombia, while at the same time it continued to participate in legal electoral activities independently. Both activities were considered to have their own place within the so-called "combination of all forms of struggle", a concept often employed by PCC and FARC.

Gradually the PCC and FARC-EP grew apart politically, in particular during the later 1980s. Both organizations had their share of internal debates, for example as to which entity would have greater influence and control over the Unión Patriótica (in the end the PCC accepted FARC supremacy in this regard) during its formation, and later on the issue of continuing to participate in elections as the UP suffered violent suppression (the FARC began to separate itself from legal UP activities starting in 1987).

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. After the Berlin Wall fell, confusion among the two sides increased. The principle of the "combination of all forms of struggle" was also brought into question at the time by some members of the PCC and UP leadership. The PCC officially broke with the FARC in 1993.

As a result, a separate Clandestine Colombian Communist Party was officially formed in 2000, though some sort of separate FARC-based internal party structure had been in de facto existence during most of the 1990s. Both organizations have remained completely distinct in their activities, though individual members of both parties may have continued to maintain working relationships on occasion.

During most of its history the PCC has been the subject of repression and persecution (both by private individuals, active and retired government agents, as well as paramilitary death squads). For the last three decades the PCC has been targeted by paramilitary forces as documented by Colombian and international organizations and press reports.

A recent example is the assassination of a leading PCC figure, Arturo Díaz García, on December 21, 2005 in Toche.

During the last ten years, about 6000 people, members of PCC and other left-wingers, have been murdered.^{[citation needed]}

Leftwing sources accuse the government of attempting to exterminate the PCC, but this has not been proven. Despite this, human rights organizations and PCC members argue that some Generals and their subordinates in the Colombian Army have contributed either indirectly or directly to many of the violent actions of druglords, paramilitaries and death squads against the PCC. Occasionally these individuals have been brought to justice, but the majority of the crimes remain unsolved.

• Communism in Colombia

• PCC Party website (in Spanish)