On July 4, 1964, 60 years ago, the first guerrilla march of what is now the National Liberation Army of Colombia (ELN) began.
At the end of the 1950s, several young rebels and social leaders began processes of armed uprising, which ended in mistakes and failures that cost valuable rebel lives.
Then, at the beginning of the ’60s, came the reflection and the resumption of a new path, with its own efforts and thought, born of the social struggles and of its own leaders. It would be on the basis of an ideology independent of the ruling classes and collecting the experiences of the nascent Cuban Revolution and other latitudes.
Much has been said and speculated about how the ELN was born in one way or another, but in particular it is the only Revolutionary Organization born in the ’60s, which remains unscathed both in Colombia and in the continent.
Of course, a more in-depth study will be required to allow analysts to understand the reasons for its existence, since it is no coincidence that all the other guerrillas have demobilized and only the ELN has remained up in arms, uninterruptedly, throughout these 60 years.
The ideological and political nature of the ELN was always different from the other organizations that were in arms, and that today are functional to the establishment after having demobilized and disarmed.
It turns out that the current times prove the ELN’s vision and actions in the last decade right. While the Exfarc were demobilizing, the country was convulsed by social outbursts, looking for paths of change long awaited by the majority of the population, massive mobilizations that needed the accompaniment of the armed insurgency, since the paths of peaceful mobilization or through parliamentary means have been a failure.
That period of social outbursts that gave birth to the possibility of change and the electoral triumph of the Historical Pact, which even in the midst of the mobilizations was called to suspend them, to take the reforms to parliament without being able to materialize them in that way. Despite this negative result, the majorities supported. Today, the reforms agitated in the campaign have had limitations to be implemented through institutional means.
Without a doubt, more paths open up by struggle and mobilization than the promises made by governments in processes of social negotiation or social and armed conflict.
The same is true in the world, where the armed uprising of the peoples is the only guarantee that their rights are recognized; that is why the National Liberation Movement is becoming more valid, as demonstrated before the world by the armed uprising waged by Palestine with the support of the Axis of Resistance; the same is happening with the successful struggle of half a dozen countries of the African Sahel against French colonialism. It is the reaffirmation of the flowering of a libertarian hope through the armed uprising and the massive struggles of the peoples, and therefore a good indicator of the strategic justice of the ELN to continue to rise up in arms, and reaffirming the validity of the commitment to serve the people and always be with them, in the struggle for national liberation and for a new society.
The recent culmination of the Sixth Congress confirms the political unity of the ELN and its unity of command, which continues to update its policies and its actions in correspondence with the new realities of the country and the world.
Honor and glory to the heroes and martyrs. We embrace and recognize the resistance struggle of our political prisoners, the courage and dedication to the struggle of all our commanders and combatants. In this way we will be a people that resists and perseveres to the end and therefore we will achieve victory.
Colombia… for the workers!
Not one step back… Freedom or death!
Central Command
National Liberation Army
Mountains of Colombia.
July 4, 2024