COLOMBIA'S REBELS KEEP THE MARXIST FAITH

SAN VICENTE DEL CAGUAN, Colombia, July 22 -- The dream of a Marxist-Leninist
revolution remains improbably alive amid the rolling cattle pastures and
steamy coca fields of southern Colombia.

Guerrillas in crisp, starched fatigues wear Che Guevara buttons, strum old
leftist jeremiads on guitars and pledge to bring Yankee imperialism down to
defeat once and for all. Three portraits of Lenin grace the press office of
the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in this boisterous
small ranching town, including one of the founder of the Soviet Union
petting a kitten. The pitted roads that run through the countryside are
spruced with signs that read "No more torture" and "No More Gringo Military
Advisers."

Marxist guerrillas in nearby Central America laid down their arms years ago,
and those in neighboring Peru have been nearly annihilated. As former
guerrillas serve in the parliaments of Venezuela, Bolivia and Uruguay and a
Socialist serves as president of Chile, the left has remodeled itself as a
moderate, democratic force throughout South America.

But here in Colombia, Marxist guerrillas are fighting back history, pushing
around an established army, battling a right-wing paramilitary force and
drawing the United States into a growing military role.

"I haven't read the book, but I have seen the movie, and we are like the
last of the Mohicans," said Comandante Alfonso Cano, a 52-year-old member of
the seven-man secretariat than rules the FARC, the largest and oldest of
several guerrilla groups still operating in Colombia. "There is a theory
that socialism is dead and history ends with capitalism. But have the
people's problems ended? No. With globalization, there's more poverty than
ever, and a crisis is coming."

The guerrillas might seem quaint if it were not for their efficiency at
making war and dealing with cocaine traffickers. Numbering more than 15,000
rebels, they have satellite phones that give them a communications edge over
the armed forces. They are wily at wiretapping and cloning cellular phones,
enabling them to anticipate the government's moves. They even use computers
at roadblocks to check the bank accounts of drivers, allowing them to pick
out the richest for kidnapping.

Human rights and church groups accuse them of forcibly recruiting young
teenagers, kidnapping children as young as 4 and executing suspected
right-wing paramilitaries after secret trials.

Parts of the guerrilla territory are open to travelers and news reporters
and serviced by a commercial airline owned by the Colombian Air Force. Over
a weekend visit to this ranching town and Los Pozos, which was not arranged
with the FARC, the guerrillas were in a carnival-like mood as they sponsored
a youth conference complete with clown acts and acrobatics.

A string of rebel military victories forced the Colombian government in 1998
to give the guerrillas a demilitarized zone the size of Switzerland as an
enticement to negotiate, and the guerrillas are using the zone to show what
they can do even as they stall at the talks.

In what is dubbed "Farclandia" by some locals, the guerrillas jawbone
merchants to keep down prices of fuel and basic foods, press workers to
repair local roads and bridges, and mediate family and property disputes in
small claims courts they have organized under military tents. They decree
strict controls on guns and dry laws to stop drinking late at night, and
counsel prostitutes, juvenile delinquents and husbands who abuse their
wives.

According to recent national polls, the guerrillas have the support of less
than 5 percent of the population and virtually no support outside a few
universities and coca-growing areas. But with coca fields growing in their
zones as bountifully as corn in Kansas, they are surrounded by a lucrative
cash crop. By their own admission, the guerrillas "tax" traffickers and
protect coca growers from campaigns to eradicate the crops.

"It's logical that the revolutionary army has to finance itself," said
Comandante Mariana Paez, 37, who is a middle-level commander. "These coca
growers are poor farmers, and the traffickers exploit them. So the
traffickers need to be taxed."

Whatever the winds of change blowing around the world, the FARC's platform
remains largely the same as when it broke from the Colombian Communist Party
to make war on the state in 1964, with the group still demanding a radical
redistribution of land and wealth and a foreign policy that is independent
of Yankee imperialism.

"Socialists around the world supported perestroika, but we knew better and
criticized it," Comandante Paez said. Several young guerrilla fighters,
apparently parroting political lessons learned in their daily indoctrination
sessions, condemned Mikhail S. Gorbachev as an undercover United States
intelligence agent who single-handedly sabotaged the entire Soviet bloc.

The young rebels, many poor peasants who worked in the coca fields before
fumigation campaigns destroyed their livelihood, admit that they know little
of Marxist philosophy. But they praised the guerrilla group for providing
them with fresh clothes, good food, free birth control, jewelry and
self-esteem.

After the Central Intelligence Agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration
and the Colombian police captured the top leadership of the Cali drug cartel
in the mid-1990's, smaller trafficking organizations took its place and
moved into the guerrilla group's zones for protection, according to American
and Colombian military and law enforcement officials. The Colombian
government estimates that the the guerrilla group now earns more than $400
million a year as an acolyte of the drug trade, even while it does not
itself traffic in narcotics.

Aerial photographs of the region indicate that coca fields have expanded and
clandestine airstrips have multiplied since the rebels were granted control
of the area.

With the FARC and a couple of small rebel groups now loosely controlling 40
percent of Colombia's rugged territory, and coca cultivation mushrooming,
the Clinton administration persuaded Congress last month to pass a $1.3
billion aid package for the Colombian armed forces. Most of the aid will go
to outfitting a new anti-narcotics brigade with 60 attack helicopters,
training and intelligence tools to operate in the southern provinces of
Putumayo and Caqueta, a remote but extensive FARC stronghold and now the
center of the country's coca cultivation.

In several interviews this week at a compound built for negotiations with
the government in nearby Los Pozos, guerrilla commanders said they would
continue to protect coca growers from the coming "invasion" even as they
spread the war to other regions. "The FARC is not going to stop fighting,"
said Comandante Raul Reyes, a 50-year-old member of the group's secretariat
and main rebel negotiator at the talks with the government. "We don't have
to live in the jungle. We are growing in the population centers like Bogota,
Medellin and Barranquilla."

But as the rebels speak boldly of future victories, the people who live in
their zone of control grumble and express fears of trigger-happy guerrillas
at road checkpoints as well as the knock at the door at night.

"We are cannon fodder to them," said Guillermo Lombano Gutierrez, a
46-year-old rancher who lives here. Mr. Lombano said he watched four
guerrillas come to his door on April 16, 1999, and take away his 16-year-old
son at gunpoint, accusing him of being a paramilitary. Breaking down in
tears, Mr. Lombano said the accusation was a lie. He said he had been
writing letters to guerrilla commanders to find his son, and had not
received a reply. "They care nothing for us as people," he added.

The local office of the congressionally-appointed ombudsman has documented
41 disappearances at the hands of the guerrillas in the demilitarized zone
since its creation two years ago. "But we don't know all the cases," said
Alvaro Castel, the local office director, "because people are afraid to
denounce."

Meanwhile, local Roman Catholic Church workers have documented 15 cases of
child recruitment by the guerrillas in the demilitarized zone, including a
13-year-old girl who was simply used for sex by a comandante before a nun
persuaded the rebels to release her.

"There is not a lot of rule of law," Joanne Mariner, a deputy director of
the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch, said of the
guerrilla-controlled zone. "We have documented four disappearances and saw
no evidence in any of the cases that the people had ties to the
paramilitaries."

Asked about the disappearances and forced child recruitment, Comandante
Reyes snapped, "Is this an interview or an investigation?" Then he said
human rights groups that charged the guerrillas with such crimes were
"misinformed by black propaganda."