The following statement is reprinted from http://www.farcep.org/?node=2,2883,1

May 9, 2007

Ninth Conference for the New Colombia, for the Great Mother Land and for Socialism!

Political Declaration

We give greetings to the Colombian people and inform you of the successful carrying out of our Ninth National Conference, which was prepared and took place in spite of the despicable increase and the actions of the gringo troops in the national territory and of the operations of the so-called Plan Colombia that, as it is known, it is mainly directed against the civil population.

We have concluded that today, just as it has been throughout the last century, the White House decides the essential policies of our country, imposes its conception of State, it elaborates, designs and directs the strategies and plans of the public force as well as the fundamental rules for the finances, the industry and commerce of Colombia, and that in face with these circumstances the different governments have remained on their knees and the presidents have tolerated this as true ‘cipayos’ (traitors).

Today, as during the XX century, the country is going through a deep crisis which effects strike not the rich but the common people through the day to day economic, social, military and moral violence which is the consequence of a corrupt political ordering, barely justified by a deceitful electoral system and by a great ordinary and manipulated press.

Today, just as always, the natives, peasants, settlers and the different afro-descendent communities undergo the criminal attack of landowners and large estate owners who seek their land no matter what it takes.

Today, as it has happened for a half century, the owners of power, of the great ranches and money, organize bands of criminals in charge of attacking the people and seeding terror in the population, bands that operate side by side and are siamese to the official police and military forces, in order to secure themselves in government for eternity, now nourished with the never ending finances of the drug trafficking thus conforming a paramilitary and mobster State of fascist characteristics. For all this, today, as it was half a century ago, the illegitimacy of the Regime and the State terror give relevance to the popular uprising and validate before the world the sacred right to rebellion of the Colombian people.

The currently undergoing process known as para-politics demonstrates the deep and solid links between political power, militarism, administrative corruption and drug trafficking, just as years back the deep roots of the mafia capos Pablo Escobar Gaviria, don Berna and the Castaño Gil brothers had been evident in the regional policy when Alvaro Uribe was Mayor of Medellín, Governor of Antioquia and Director of the Civil Aeronautics Department, when they brought the Israeli mercenaries and when they formed the Convivir groups, that shameless articulation was visible as well during the so-called process 8000. It happens that Colombia has always been governed in such bad way.

With the Ralito farce the oligarchy wanted to hide the increased power of the mafias embedded in the State apparatus, to flood the national market with their narco-dollars and to obtain impunity for some capos protected in a legality approved in parliament by the paramilitary themselves with the laborious and invaluable aid of the national government and the Uribismo.

The deep crisis facing the traditional parties and the State institutions is a reflection of the serious existing economic and social imbalances that can only be overcome when we are able among the majorities to forge new relations based on principles of sovereignty, true democracy, social justice and administrative ethics that can withstand any test.

But the crisis will persist and it will increase so long as the mercenary gringo troops and their Generals are the ones who sustain the Colombian institutions; so long as the paramilitary strategy is the back bone of the State and it imposes directives through their puppets in the 3 branches of public power; so long as the pillage of the land of natives, afro-descendents, settlers and peasants persist and with it the displacements; so long as neo-liberalism is the official strategy and the State companies continue to be privatized as they want to do now with ECOPETROL, which we all must prevent as an act of dignity and defence of the collective patrimony; so long as the DANE (National Statistics Department) continues acting as the department of manipulation and deceit; so long as corruption and personal enrichment are the governing principle of policy in Colombia.

The FARC-EP maintain the flag for the political solution to the crisis raised high, that with the participation of the majority of Colombians, it can define with sovereignty the construction of a new institutional government as that indicated in the Bolivarian platform for the new Colombia that can set the country on the path towards the full exercise of all its democratic and progressive potential.

Within that same spirit we reiterate our proposal for the exchange of political prisoners.

In order to initiate conversations it is essential that the State offers the necessary guarantees. The justification not to grant them only hides the vindictive spirit of a government incapable to accept the reality of the confrontation, a government that recklessly plays with the freedom and the life of the prisoners and is selfish with the future of the Mother country.

Plan Colombia and Patriotic Plan have failed and they have only served to facilitate greater interference and presence of the gringo government in our country, to increase repression and terror towards the civil dissidents of the Regime, to feed even more those corrupt ones at the administration, to subjugate the mass media and to militarize the national life.

The Ninth Guerrilla Conference reiterates, once again, FARC’s oath to struggle for a Colombia democratic, sovereign and with social justice. Our will to contribute to reach that objective has intensified at the heat of the current confrontation. The balance in regards to the fulfillment of the plans set for at the Eighth Conference is positive; our political and military force has increased, this fact cannot be hidden from the Colombians who are not satisfied with the official information on dead, prisoner and deserter guerrillas. Our force is active and mighty in all the national territory, the country and the international community are aware of it.

We will continue developing the clandestine building of the Bolivarian movement for the New Colombia as a vital tool that takes our political proposal to the masses, to organize yearnings and dreams around actions and daily tasks in all sectors that want to conquer them.

We will persist in the organization and strengthening of the Clandestine Communist Party as an indispensable instrument in the struggle for power and for the construction of the new Mother country.

We will continue tirelessly in our effort for the broadest unity against State Terrorism, the outrageous gringo interference, the abominable neo-liberalism, the curse of large landholdings and the cancer of corruption, as we will continue in our efforts to meet with all those who struggle in search for the same objectives in different scenarios and modalities. We will persist in our commitment with popular and democratic unity for the new Mother country. No truly democratic, patriotic solution, of deep popular content to the national crisis, will be able to progress in our country without the total participation of the FARC.

We maintain current our direction to strengthen all the methods of direct democracy that allow the community in each locality, district, small village, municipality, etc., to impose their will over those who only seek their personal benefit using the government institutions.

We salute the members of the guerrilla, the Bolivarian militias, those disabled by the war, the relatives of the fallen guerrillas, to the prisoners of war, to Sonia and Simón, the members of the Bolivarian groups, the clandestine cells, to our friends, all the members of the different popular organizations and unions of struggle, to those convinced of the need for the exchange and the political solution. We invite you to redouble your efforts to overcome this black night of hatred, of wars, lies, retaliations and of State Terror personified in Alvaro Uribe who in an act of transparency and realism should resign until clarifying his personal links with para-militarism as well as to quantify the magnitude of the voting manipulated by capos, mayors, governors and para-military congressmen that allowed him to be President.

We salute the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean who flood the continent with renewed winds of democracy. We salute those presidents who, unlike the Colombian, with their independent attitude represent today the dignity of our peoples in face with the shameless gringo pretension of interference with our sovereign life. We salute the Continental Bolivarian Movement symbol of unity and struggle that vindicates the ideas of the Liberator as a torch that illuminates the anti-imperialist future of Latin America.

We will continue to struggle to build for Colombia, a just State that advances towards social equality and not that deepens the abyss between rich and poor, as does the current one. To reach a social system according with the realities of the XXI century, that vindicates our better traditions, values and wealth, that maintains alive the dignity of our people for self-determination and against imperial interference, for justice, Latin American solidarity and the relevance of the Bolivarian ideas to achieve for our peoples the greatest sum of happiness possible.

New Colombia, Great Mother Land and Socialism are our flag!

Ninth Conference of the FARC-EP

Colombian mountains, january of 2007