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Colombia The National Liberation Army
Founded in 1964 by Fabio Vásquez Castaño, the National
Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional--ELN)
adopted a
doctrine for insurrection inspired by the Cuban
Revolution. During
the mid-1960s, ELN activities centered on the department
of
Santander and included seizing temporary control of small
towns,
opening jails to free prisoners, robbing banks, and making
antigovernment speeches in small villages throughout the
country in
an effort to gain recruits. The guerrilla organization
gained
international notoriety in 1966 when it recruited Father
Camilo
Torres, a well-educated Roman Catholic priest from a
socially
prominent family. Torres joined the ELN following his
unsuccessful
efforts at organizing a political opposition to the
National Front
government. Only four months after taking up arms, Torres
was
killed in a confrontation with an army patrol
(see Trends Within the Church since the 1940s
, ch. 2).
Although the ELN was considered the most effective of
the
country's guerrilla organizations, in the early 1970s it
was
decimated by the military's counterinsurgency campaign. By
1973 the
armed forces claimed that they had "virtually destroyed"
the ELN.
Although the military severed the ELN's ties to its urban
support
network, the guerrillas had recouped their strength by
mid-decade.
In 1975 and 1976, the ELN engaged in several kidnappings,
bank
robberies, and assassinations, including the killing of
Inspector-General of the Army General José Ramón Rincón
Quioñes.
The ELN was the only major guerrilla organization that
did not
sign the 1984 cease-fire agreement. This refusal, along
with the
ELN's kidnapping of President Betancur's brother in an
attempt to
sabotage the peace talks, reportedly earned the
organization a
rebuke from Cuban leader Fidel Castro Ruz. Possibly as a
result of
Castro's stance of support for the peace talks, three ELN
fronts
reached a temporary cease-fire agreement with the
government.
In the late 1980s, the ELN's size was estimated at 500.
Its
theater of operations included vast stretches of
Colombia's eastern
plains and portions of the departments of Norte de
Santander,
Santander, Bolívar, Cauca, and Antioquia, and the
intendancy of
Arauca. The ELN's activities included kidnappings and
attacks on
petroleum installations, pipelines, and exploratory
drilling sites.
Such attacks were carried out not only to disrupt the
national
economy but also to draw attention to the exploitation of
Colombia's natural resources by foreign companies.
Data as of December 1988
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