Small Wars & Insurgencies

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fswi20

The M-19’s ideological Sancocho: the reconciliation

of socialism and Colombian nationalism

Francis O’Connor & Jakob Meer

To cite this article: Francis O’Connor & Jakob Meer (2021) The M-19’s ideological Sancocho: the
reconciliation of socialism and Colombian nationalism, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 32:1, 127-151,
DOI: 10.1080/09592318.2020.1829861

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09592318.2020.1829861

Published online: 07 Oct 2020.

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SMALL WARS & INSURGENCIES
2021, VOL. 32, NO. 1, 127–151
https://doi.org/10.1080/09592318.2020.1829861

The M-19’s ideological Sancocho: the reconciliation

of socialism and Colombian nationalism
Francis O’Connora and Jakob Meerb
a
COSMOS, Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence, Italy; bInstitute of Political Science, Goethe
University, Frankfurt, Germany

ABSTRACT
The Movimiento 19 de Abril (M-19) combined the socialist discourse of the
revolutionary left with explicit calls to Colombian nationalism. This paper will
question how and why the M-19 framed its insurgency in explicitly Colombian
Nationalist terminology, in particular by referencing the historic figure of Simón
Bolívar. As well as how the M-19 balanced its ideological preferences with the
norms and expectations of its supporters. The paper argues that the M-19
strategically fused socialism with Colombian nationalism to strengthen its
appeal in urban areas, as a means to distinguish itself from the other armed
groups and to maintain internal cohesion.

ARTICLE HISTORY Received 13 May 2020; Accepted 6 September 2020

KEYWORDS Colombia; insurgency; Marxism; nationalism; M-19

. . . we are pro-Colombians, our identity is the nation, we dance bambuco,1 we

do not sing the International, we are not Marxists-Leninists, we have nothing
against Marxism, nor Leninism, but that’s not what we are.2

M-19 Commander3

Introduction
In many respects, upon its emergence the Movimiento 19 de Abril (19th of
April Movement, M-19) neatly fitted into the pantheon of revolutionary Latin
American movements of the Left. It concisely expressed its politics by declar­
ing that its struggle was for ‘workers, peasants and grassroots sectors’, while
its enemies were ‘North American Imperialism and the Colombian
Oligarchy’.4 The movement emerged from a small group of dissenters who
left or were expelled from the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia
(Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC) in the early 1970s. It was

CONTACT Francis O’Connor Francis.oconnor@eui.eu COSMOS, Scuola Normale Superiore,

Cologne 50677, Germany
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
128 F. O’CONNOR AND J. MEER

heavily influenced by several other left-wing Latin American insurgent groups

like the Tupamaros in Uruguay and the Montoneros in Argentina and colla­
borated actively with many of its Colombian revolutionary counterparts. Yet,
notwithstanding its overlap in identified adversaries (North American
Imperialism and its local agents), ideological genesis and repertoire (armed
insurgency) with its insurgent contemporaries, it chose to frame its insur­
gency in an ideological discourse largely alien to prevailing Colombian revo­
lutionary rhetoric. It promoted the theretofore the acknowledged
conservative figure of Simón Bolívar as its revolutionary ideal, explicitly
rejecting the international fixations and ideological dogmatism of the Left,
asserting that its campaign was simply to implement democracy in Colombia.
While at first, this was seen as an unconventional stance, the recuperation
and reframing of Bolívar as a symbolic reference point did not undermine the
M-19’s efforts to collaborate with other more expressly socialist revolutionary
movements.
The founders of the M-19 became convinced of two key failings which
impeded the consolidation of a revolutionary movement capable of seizing
power in Colombia. They felt that the excessive focus on revolutionary dogma
rooted in and adapted for distant lands like the Soviet Union was simply
unsuited for Colombia: in terms of national character, political economy,
regional geo-political dynamics and history. In the late 1960s and 1970s
revolutionary movements like the Ejército Popular de Liberación (Popular
Liberation Army, EPL) and the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (National
Liberation Army, ELN) because of their ideological stance and related strat­
egy, became isolated in remote rural areas which prevented them obtaining
mass support. The M-19 was explicit in its view that ‘ideology only makes
sense, if in the political terrain it’s capable of building movements, planning
projects and outlining tasks’.5 Accordingly, it had a very pragmatic under­
standing of ideology, oriented toward action rather than principle, and con­
text rather than content. An understanding easily reconciled with
contemporary conceptualisations of ideology as more than ‘just a handful
of core principles or beliefs but as elaborate and bourgeoning cultural
edifice – historically sculpted networks of values, meanings, narratives,
assumptions, concepts, expectations, exemplars, past experiences, images,
stereotypes, and beliefs about matters of fact.6 Building on their experiences
in these movements, some of the M-19’s founders promoted an ideological
stance rooted in a decidedly Colombian political imagination which would
simplify and extend interactions with the masses in both cultural, spatial and
political terms. Thus, leading to the M-19’s establishment of a territorially
diffuse supportive constituency, and consistent with bringing the war ‘to
where it hurts the state the most’,7 a strong presence in many of its urban
centres.8
 SMALL WARS & INSURGENCIES 129

This paper analyses the logic underlying the M-19’s ideological strategy,
how it was formulated and practically implemented. Firstly, it outlines the role
of Nationalism in Colombia, and then briefly discusses the use of ideology
and guerrilla strategies amongst Colombian insurgent groups in the 1970s. It
then looks in detail at the strategic re-appropriation of Simón Bolívar, and
how Colombian oriented symbolism resonated and generated a form of
nascent legitimacy with potential supporters. Thirdly, it analyses how its
aversion to the internecine ideological factionalism of the Left, contributed
to maintaining internal cohesion in its own ranks and eased its relationships
with its revolutionary contemporaries. Finally, it focuses on how its ideology
shaped its presence and interactions in urban centres. It concludes by sum­
marising the M-19’s approach, considering its legacy and pointing out further
avenues for research.

Nationalism in Colombia
The work of Benedict Anderson9 that argued that 19th century Creole elites
were pioneers in the emergence of Nationalism in their campaigns against
Spain and Portugal,10 is one of the few works concentrating on Latin American
Nationalism. The literature on Nationalism and its mobilisational power has for
the most part, tended to downplay or ignore its importance in Latin America,11
with a widespread view that the former Spanish and Portuguese colonies are
at best, incomplete nations.12 According to Centeno, Latin America lacked the
three components which shaped Nationalism in Europe, any semblance of
ethnic and racial coherence, the lack of an identifiable other, and the absence
of any glorious shared past.13 Firstly, unlike most European nation-states, most
Latin American states were not constructed around any supposed ‘primordial
identity’.14 An internal incoherence hinted at by the 20th century Peruvian
Marxist theorist José Carlos Mariátegui: ‘the feudal or bourgeois elements in
our countries feel the same contempt for Indians, as well as for Blacks and
mulattos, as do the white imperialists’.15 Secondly, as confirmed by the
broader literature, nationalism always emerges in juxtaposition to an external
other.16 In its most extreme iteration, this reciprocally formative rivalry is
expressed in armed conflict. As Weber argued, ‘War creates a pathos and
a sentiment of community’.17 However, with the exception of Paraguay,
most Latin American nation-states were not shaped by such bellicose circum­
stances and most of its conflicts have taken intra-national rather international
forms.18 This also links to the first point regarding the lack of a core primordial
community or a demos. It has been argued that ‘the arrival of nationalism in
a distinctively modern sense was tied to the political baptism of the lower
classes’.19 Yet, most Latin American states, lacking the need to mobilize the
masses for international war efforts, simply preferred to marginalise them.20
Regionally centred patronage networks were used by political elites to serve
130 F. O’CONNOR AND J. MEER

their political imperatives such as voting in elections or battling political rivals

but without ever collectively mobilising them as a nation. The final criteria of
nationalism, drawing on a shared glorious past is of course mostly inapplicable
as the continent’s historic civilisations were undone by the genocide of its
indigenous peoples by the settler populations which now make up the
majority of the population.21 An alternative interpretation of Latin American
nationalism suggests that it has played a significant role and has been inher­
ently left-wing in direct contrast to that of North America and elsewhere.22
With the fusion of the Left and nationalism evident in different instances of the
so-called pink tide of the 2000s.23 Accordingly, Latin American Nationalism has
played a different role and taken different forms to the way it shaped nation-
state emergence and consolidation in Europe and its colonies.
More specifically in Colombia, Nationalism and nationalist imagery has
been defined by the looming historical presence of Simón Bolívar.24 Bolívar
and his legacy were long harnessed by Colombia’s political elite to legitimise
the status quo, its often-stark injustices and authoritarianism. Although
Bolívar and much of his political thought reflected the political norms of
Latin American white elites of the time – for example his inconsistent position
on slavery25-, he never expounded an ethnically grounded form of national­
ism. Collier argues that ‘the absence of a genuine ethnic or cultural dimension
in Bolivarian nationalism is perhaps worth underlining’.26 Accordingly,
although he was far from a natural symbolic figurehead for a modern revolu­
tionary movement, he was not beyond redemption. His re-framing was
accomplished by the dual strategy of appropriation by capture and resurrec­
tion: the former is the means by which ‘reputational entrepreneurs [in this
case M-19 leaders] [. . .] contest the existing ownership claim while associating
the figure with their own group’,27 and resurrection is the effort ‘to revive and
reconstruct the memory of such a figure’.28 The M-19 re-appropriated and
revived Bolivarianism, reconstructing him as an emancipatory vehicle to
symbolise the movement’s mobilisation in the 1970s and 1980s. Simón
Bolívar symbolic heft became a form of neutral signifier onto which political
meaning was projected according to the preferences of the audience: taking
the form of nationalism, anti-imperialism, proper democracy, or a form of
‘“Socialism Colombian-style”’.29 Importantly, the M-19 was the first move­
ment to recast Bolívar as a contemporary revolutionary icon, before the
strategy was adopted by other groups such as FARC from 1982.30
Therefore, the M-19’s ideological innovation has had lasting consequences
far beyond its own armed campaign, influencing broader left-wing politics in
Latin America including its revolutionary movements and of course the
Chávez regime in neighbouring Venezuela.
 SMALL WARS & INSURGENCIES 131

Overview of the M-19

The M-19 emerged in the second wave of Colombian guerrilla movements in
the 1970s, after the establishment of the first generation of groups like the
EPL, ELN, FARC in the 1960s.31 The M-19 emerged from the revolutionary
milieu shaped by these movements but its founders were determined the
avoid their forebearers’ errors: ideological fastidiousness and the inability to
consolidate a comprehensive support base.32 Several factors contributed to
rendering the 1970s in Colombia a period of revolutionary foment, the theft
of the 1970 Presidential election from the populist candidate Rojas Pinilla
from the Allianza Nacional Popular party (National Popular Alliance,
ANAPO),33 the wave of leftist revolutionary movements across the continent,
the immense poverty and inequality in Colombia, massive urban migration
and the perception that conventional politics could never result in relevant
reforms or changes. The M-19 was the first of these movements to concen­
trate on urban mobilisation in order to harness the massive discontent of
impoverished masses living in ‘occupied neighbourhoods’ and the frustra­
tions of an emergent increasingly better educated middle class, particularly
amongst the youth. However, by as early as 1977 it had also begun to
establish militarily potent rural fronts in the south of the country.34
In fact, the M-19’s rural mobilisation is often overlooked in the literature,
with the movement simplistically characterised as an urban movement. In
large swathes of Cauca, the Valle de Cauca, and Caquetá, the M-19 patrolled
openly in uniform and provided forms of governance ranging from schools to
justice systems.35 However, its embedding in rural communities never
reached the scale and duration of FARC.36 The M-19’s military prowess was
such that when the Colombian military confronted its guerrillas in a pitched
battle for twenty-one days in 1985 in Yarumales, the M-19 was victorious.37
Nevertheless, its urban mobilisation was unprecedented and comprehensive,
in Cali it openly controlled a number of neighbourhoods. In other cities
including Bogotá it operated a form of ‘semi-public clandestinity’38: leading
housing struggles, backing trade union struggles and other forms of popular
mobilisation. Following a negotiated peace process along with a number of
other guerrilla forces, the M-19 de-mobilized in 1990, participated in the re-
writing of a new Colombian constitution and in the early 1990s, it was
a significant electoral force.39
The movement’s ideological position cannot be easily superimposed upon
existing paradigms. Its Marxist origins are undeniable, its early leaders
emerged from a conventional Marxist tradition in FARC and the Partido
Communista Colombiano (Colombian Communist Party, PCC). Jaime
Bateman, the M-19’s first commander had been a founding member of
FARC in 1965 and had spent substantial periods of time in the USSR.40
Article One of the M-19 party statutes in 1977 simply stated that its objective
132 F. O’CONNOR AND J. MEER

was ‘to destroy the current oligarchic state through a war in which all the
exploited will participate until the liberation of our people is achieved and
socialism is installed’.41 Its first comprehensive document outlining its struc­
tures and political goals after its Sixth National Conference in 1978 explicitly
referenced socialism. It described its programme as ‘anti-oligarchic and anti-
imperialist towards socialism’,42 and positioned itself as part of the ‘popular
struggle for national liberation and socialism’.43 Some former members were
equally explicit: ‘Between 1976 and 1978, everyone in M-19 supported
socialism’.44 Yet, Bateman explained that in his understanding ‘the word
revolution means change, permanent change’. He argued that ‘it seems to
me that Marxism is a theory and the same time a movement practice. And
that today, more than ever, it must evolve and change’.45
However, by 1983, in its National Executive report there is not a single
mention of the word socialism. Its ideology is described rather as ‘nationalist,
popular and revolutionary’.46 There was a clear decline in the use of socialist
rhetoric throughout its mobilisation.47 Its use of the term `nationalist´ should
not be conflated with the state-seeking nationalism of the late de-colonial
period or broader understandings of ethno-nationalism, but rather as
a counterpoint to the international ideological underpinnings of its revolu­
tionary Left contemporaries. It rather reflected the widespread Latin American
tendency to view and use ‘nationalism as a crucial defence against the
encroachments of international capital and its avatars’.48 As one of its senior
commanders explained they tried to ‘elaborate a proposal that resembled the
country, that they called nationalism, which was not the Soviet line, not the
line of Mao’s China nor the line of Cuba but rather that which was best known
from the experiences of being a guerrilla in Colombia’.49

Methods
This paper draws on several different data sources, primarily a period of
fieldwork where 15 interviews50 were completed with former M-19 militants,
commanders and sympathizers in Bogotá in spring 2018. The sample includes
interviewees with experiences of both rural and urban mobilisation. This
interview data is supplemented with an extensive analysis of M-19 primary
sources.51 All issues of the M-19’s newsletter Oiga Hermano available in the
digital archive of the Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica (National Centre
for Historical Memory) and an ongoing M-19 website also named Oiga
Hermano containing a wealth of primary source data from the 1970s and
1980s have also been analysed. Additionally, a series of biographies, memoirs
and autobiographies of former militants have been analysed,52 along with
several comprehensive interviews conducted during their mobilisation in the
1980s.53 All of these primary and semi-primary sources are embedded in the
academic literature in Spanish and English on the movement.
 SMALL WARS & INSURGENCIES 133

Revolutionary ideologies in Colombia

Reflective of global trends of political contestation of the 1970s, opposition to
the Colombian state was almost completely framed in international leftist
terminology. The various armed movements differentiated themselves
according to their positioning vis-á-vis international intra-leftist tensions.54
FARC emerged from rural self-defence groups in the period after La Violencia
and was as a consequence organically embedded in several rural commu­
nities. It was very focused on agrarian campaigns as befitted the concerns of
its supporters.55 Indeed, it has been argued that FARC in its early decades was
‘little more than the advance guard of a colonizing peasantry . . . whose
objective [was] the establishment of a democratic statute concerning the
agrarian question’.56 Through its alignment to the PCC it was heavily influ­
enced by the Soviet Union, at least until the early 1980s.57 It did not avail of
the foco strategy preferred by many insurgent groups in Latin America, it
rather focused on consolidating its support bases rather than directly challen­
ging the state until it subsequently adopted a more ambitious stance at its
Seventh Congress in 1982.58 The EPL was explicitly Maoist59; it thus based its
strategy around a protracted people’s war,60 before shifting to a more
nuanced version of it by prioritising the rural proletariat which only enjoyed
some minor success amongst banana workers in Urabá in the 1980s.61 It
degenerated into ideological strife and violence between pro-Albanian and
pro-China factions following the death of Mao Tse-Tung in 1976,62 resulting
in numerous units splitting to form smaller equally unsuccessful armed
groups.63 The ELN was closely oriented towards the Cuban regime and
prescriptively followed Guevara’s foco model, resulting in little success and
it was almost completely annihilated by the military in the early 1970s.64
By the 1970s, the foco model had been demonstrated on multiple occa­
sions unlikely to replicate the success it had apparently wrought in Cuba. ‘As
a brand, Focismo was a form of Maoism-lite or protracted war without the
tears. It promised an easy and quick approach to organising a revolutionary
effort and one that did not need the long-term Maoist-type mobilisation of
popular support among rural peasantries’.65 On the other hand, the urban
guerrilla model expounded in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay,66 which came to
prominence precisely as a response to failings of the foco model, had also
been demonstrated to be unsuccessful.67 Notwithstanding certain military
successes a degree of popular support, particularly in Uruguay, the limits of
urban guerrilla campaigns and their inevitably under-developed and under-
politicised popular support networks had been exposed.
Accordingly, the M-19 was confronted with the dilemma of choosing
between rural guerrilla strategies (guerrilla foco or protracted people’s war),
which the experiences of the first generation of Colombian guerrillas had
demonstrated to be unpropitious. Or to adopt an urban based model inspired
134 F. O’CONNOR AND J. MEER

by the fortunes of groups like the Tupamaros and the EPL in Argentina. The
M-19 eventually adopted a syncretic strategy, which renders it difficult to
classify its strategy in comparison to its revolutionary counterparts.68 It incor­
porated the cellular structure of its urban counterparts for its guerrillas based
in the cities. And it broadly endorsed the ethos of urban guerrilla warfare
emphasising ‘action over deliberation’,69 downplaying the political dimen­
sions of its campaign70 and having learned from the pressure endured by its
predominantly urban counterparts in Argentina and Uruguay, it also devel­
oped a rural guerrilla campaign. In spite of the ‘extreme nomadism of its
military actions’71 from 1977 it did attempt to govern rural areas or ser
gobierno in parts of the south of the country, albeit with little enduring
success.72 Its preference for the constant acceleration of the revolutionary
process”73 rendered it impossible to dedicate the time necessary to develop
the insurgent institutions more commonly observed in protracted war stra­
tegies. The M-19 thus rejected the rural imperative of the foco strategy by
comprehensively mobilising in urban environments74 but broadly pursued its
precepts in its own rural campaigns.

The unexpected revival of Simón Bolívar

The M-19’s military strategy was clear: what it lacked was a political ideology
or symbolic imaginary in which to root it in. As a former M-19 commander
explained: ‘until the 1970s we did not have our own history, if not in leftist
terms’.75 All of the political reckoning of the country’s political challenges was
understood through leftist paradigms imported from elsewhere. In order to
generate a new revolutionary paradigm, the M-19 sought out reference
points from the country’s past paralleling similar developments in
Nicaragua where historic national symbolism centred on figures like
Sandino were prioritised over the ideological gymnastics performed by pre­
ceding waves of insurgent movements.76 In the movement’s incipient phase
before it formally adopted the M-19 moniker, it was loosely known as the
Comuneros, which as a senior member explained, ‘introduced an element that
from then on characterized the movement: its recovery of the national at
a time when the Left in Colombia still looked primarily to China, the USSR, and
Cuba more than our own national situation’.77 This national orientation
progressed with the formal adoption of Bolívar as the key symbolic reference
point of the movement. As a founding member detailed, ‘There was people
that were studying Marx’s Capital, we knew the doings of Lenin, we were
reading Mao’s philosophical theses [. . .]. But [. . .] we were not reading our
own history, so Bolívar was thought of as the need to claim our own, to start
to have our own history [. . .]’.78
Simón Bolívar was one of the leading figures of the Latin American fight for
independence. Under his command and with the vision of a ‘unitary state’,79
 SMALL WARS & INSURGENCIES 135

Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru were freed from Spanish
rule.80 His hopes for an independent country was not limited to the borders
of contemporary Colombia but rather a ‘continental nation’.81 Bolívar was
a complex historical figure, ‘at once liberal, conservative and centralist’.82
What is undeniable is that his nationalism was not one rooted in any variation
of the ‘blood and soil’ dogma of subsequent European forms of Nationalism.
In 1821 he stated that ‘for us, everyone is Colombian, and even our invaders, if
they wish, can be Colombians’.83 His legacy was therefore sufficiently ambig­
uous and broad enough to provide resonance for contrasting political tradi­
tions. Nevertheless the most popular framing was the ‘conservative Bolívar’.84
The image of Bolívar as the sole leader, who successfully fought for the Latin
American independence was used to legitimize the dictatorship of Juan
Vicente Gómez in Venezuela.85 The argument being that the centralisation
of power in one person had worked during the Bolivarian revolution, so it was
accordingly also a justifiable strategy for authoritarian leadership in other
modern contexts.86 Notwithstanding that ‘the figure of Simón Bolívar until
then was considered a hero who did not belong to the subaltern classes’,87
the M-19 centered its symbolism on him.88 The M-19 was aware of his
decidedly non-revolutionary connotations, as Villamizar observed it was
‘inconceivable that a revolutionary organisation would be on the side of
ANAPO as well as reviving Bolívar’.89 Therefore, a systematic re-
interpretation of Bolívar as a historical and emancipatory figure was required
if he was to serve as the symbolic totem for the movement. This was achieved
by emphasising Bolívar’s historic and geographical proximity to the M-19 and
its potential supporters. As a M-19 former commander highlighted, ‘Bolívar
was a man much closer to us than Karl Marx. And as a youth born in Sativa,
I am a friend of Bolívar since birth, because in a village, in Sativa and Socha,90
villages like this, they are [places] where Bolívar arrived, after coming from the
Páramo of Pisba. So, in these villages Bolívar is normally present’.91
However, mere geographical proximity would have been insufficient of its
own accord to produce a convincing revolutionary narrative. It was necessary
to retrospectively imbue his campaign with a revolutionary framing. The
M-19 claimed that Bolívar ‘constructed Republics from the grassroots’,92
they diverted attention away from his privileged upbringing to the sacrifices
he made on behalf of Colombia. An M-19 bulletin rhetorically questioned its
readers: ‘Did you know that when the Liberator was exiled in 1812 in Curaçao,
he was starving to death’ and was obliged to sell some shiny buttons from his
clothes and his last jewellery to purchase the ship which he sailed to
Cartagena to launch the campaign of liberation.93 The implicit, if profoundly
false equivalence between a member of Creole elite selling sufficient jew­
ellery to be able to purchase a ship, and Colombians actually dying of
starvation, clearly demonstrates the concerted efforts taken to re-frame
Bolívar as a hero of the downtrodden. A further reason why Bolívar resonated
136 F. O’CONNOR AND J. MEER

with the M-19’s struggle were the parallels between his military strategies
and those of the guerrilla forces of the 1970s and 1980s. He advanced
a method of irregular warfare,94 which was a precursor to guerrilla warfare
tactics. Even his military setbacks were viewed as a form of encouragement to
the outgunned revolutionary forces of the time.95
Another striking similarity between Bolívar and the M-19 was the framing
of their respective conflicts as ones between Latin American forces against
external oppressors. The M-19 emphasised the idea that Bolívar planned two
struggles, one against oppressors and the other against exploiters.96
Transposed into 1970s Colombia, the ‘oppressors’ can be understood as the
Colombian oligarchs and the ‘exploiters’ as the foreign powers interfering in
national politics and the Colombian economy.97 While the main enemy that
Bolívar encountered during his life and his countless battles was the Spanish
military, the M-19 was fighting against the ‘imperialists’ from the north, the
United States of America.98 Both actors therefore railed against the imperialist
structures of their times, making an ‘anti-imperialista’ Bolívar, a hero of the
M-19.99
The nationalisation of the M-19’s struggle was not achieved by simply
making rhetorical declarations as inheritors of the Bolivarian struggle. On the
17th of January 1974 an M-19 commando unit stole Bolívar’s sword on display
in his former house in Bogotá, thus announcing the existence of the
movement.100 In a declaration, the M-19 declared that ‘Bolívar’s struggle
continues. Bolívar is not dead. [. . .] [His sword] is passed into our hands. To
the hands of the people in arms. And now aims at the exploiters of the
people. Against the national and foreign bosses’.101 Accordingly, the M-19
materially demonstrated its claim to be the authentic heirs to the Bolivarian
legacy by possessing the sword until it was returned intact when the M-19
demobilised.102 Throughout the conflict, the M-19 made constant reference
to Bolívar, for example, one of the squatter neighbourhoods it organised and
in substantial part actually constructed, in Zipaquirá was named Barrio
Bolívar.103 Its popular militias formed in the mid-1980s, particularly in urban
environments were known as the Milicianos Bolivarianos (Bolivarian Militia).

Guerrilla unity and cohesion

As outlined above, the M-19 adopted an ideology beyond the parameters of
the revolutionary Left in Colombia. This had a few distinct advantages for the
movement. It helped it maintain internal cohesion as ideological disputes
were never sufficient grounds for factionalism. It also allowed it to collaborate
with the broader universe of guerrilla groups within Colombia and indeed
take the lead in co-ordinating united guerrilla fronts, albeit not necessarily
with lasting success. Finally, the use of both a national and international – at
least in the region – figurehead facilitated the building of international
 SMALL WARS & INSURGENCIES 137

collaboration with other Latin American movements.

It has been argued that the movement’s promotion of ‘personal autonomy
and undogmatic ideology that respected the individual inspired strong per­
sonal commitment to the organization’.104 It facilitated the co-existence of
different ideological tendencies and differences within its cadres, including
senior figures who asserted that in the struggle for democracy one ‘should
least of all follow Marx and Lenin or Stalin and Lenin, because they are the
principal anti-democrats that can exist’ and that ‘the dictatorship of the rich
[. . ..] or the dictatorship of the proletariat, it’s the same bullshit. They are both
dictatorships’.105 While others were immersed in reading groups, studying
Marx, the writings and poetry of Ho Chi Minh alongside the history of
Colombia.106 Albeit there was a clear tendency where the priority of socialist
doctrine declined over the years of its existence, it remained ever present and
co-existed alongside the more tangible demands for democracy and social
justice. The movement was in the words of Bateman ‘a big national
sancocho107 which meant that everybody could belong’.108 Unlike its fractious
revolutionary rivals, the M-19 never suffered from any substantial factionalism
and no splinter groups detached themselves from the movement.109

Collaboration with national groups

From the outset the M-19 was intent on promoting guerrilla unity across the
different armed forces fighting the Colombian state. At its National Conference
in 1977, Bateman explicitly called for ‘unity of the revolutionary forces’, men­
tioning FARC, EPL and the ELN by name.110 It even offered to subsume itself
under the leadership of the ELN in 1976 and to operate as its urban wing, an
offer which was rejected.111 The M-19s efforts to unite the revolutionary forces
in Colombia led, after a lengthy ‘process of recognition and rapprochement’,112
to the establishment of the Coordinadora Nacional Guerrillera (National
Guerrilla Coordinator, CNG) in 1985, a coordination mechanism bringing
together the majority of Colombian guerrillas. This result was facilitated by
the nationalization of the revolution and conflict, a step that helped minimalise
ideological disagreements.113 As the first multilateral agreement between
Colombian guerrillas was successfully made, the CNG and its members aimed
to establish an even more complete guerrilla umbrella organization that the
FARC would be willing to join, as they were not part of the original CNG.114 Two
years later, in 1987, all Colombian guerrilla organisations created a joint co-
operation organism, the Coordinadora Guerrillera Simón Bolívar (Simón Bolívar
Coordinating Board, CGSB) .115 It was the first time in Colombian history, that all
the substantial Colombian revolutionary groups had joined forces, gathering an
estimated 7.500 fighters under their command.116
138 F. O’CONNOR AND J. MEER

Collaboration with Latin American revolutionary movements

Collaboration between guerrillas was not only pursued by the M-19 at
a national, but also at a regional level. By taking up Bolívar’s narrative of
a united Latin America, the M-19 not only facilitated the inclusion of foreign
fighters from other Latin American states into their organisation, but also
legitimized revolutionary efforts in other parts of the continent.117 It pio­
neered the Batallón América (American Battalion), which consisted of two
Colombian representatives, the M-19 and the Movimiento Armado Quintín
Lame (Quintín Lame Armed Movement), members of the Movimiento
Revolucionario Túpac Amarú (Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement) from
Perú and the Alfaro Vive, ¡Carajo! (Eloy Alfaro Popular Armed Forces) from
Ecuador. Although the force led joint conducted successful operations such
as the conquest of the city of Popayán in the Cauca Region and the temporary
seizure of much of Calí in 1986, the political objective of the Batallón América
to create unity between Latin American guerrilla organizations was arguably,
at least as important as the military intentions of the group.118

Standing out from the revolutionary crowd and winning popular

support
The M-19’s founders had diagnosed that the two main, interrelated problems
holding back revolutionary forces in Colombia were their use of ideologies
that poorly fitted the Colombian context which led to their second problem,
an inability to mobilize mass support. The necessity of popular support was
a core tenet of most 20th century revolutionary theory. Prominent M-19
members who had spent time in FARC’s ranks were dismayed by the isolation
of its guerrilla forces. As Iván Marino Ospina recounted his time as a FARC
guerrilla; when he reached the unit, he was to join in Urabá, he ‘found the
guerrillas in a lamentable state. They were dying of hunger; they were
isolated, and they had not won the support of the people’.119 This directly
confirmed Bateman’s understanding that ‘wars are conducted by people,
many people. [. . .] And in order to triumph, you have to gather huge masses
of them’.120 In an evocative metaphor, the M-19 claimed that ‘they were not
willing to eat monkeys’, meaning they refused to fight in areas so removed
from society in the jungle that they would be obliged to eat monkeys to
survive.121 This led to the natural conclusion, that in a rapidly urbanizing
country like Colombia that the insurgency could not just be centred on ever-
less populated rural zones, but in urban environments. In fact, Colombia
stood out from other Latin American countries due to its large number of
territorially diffused large towns and cities.122 An early article in the Comunero
journal in 1973123 outlined the perspective of the nucleus who went on to
establish the M-19 the following year: ‘it is certain that the rural guerrilla has
 SMALL WARS & INSURGENCIES 139

proved itself to be ineradicable, since it feeds on a social reality that is

favorable to it and it moves amongst a peasant population that fundamen­
tally sympathizes with it.’ But that without corresponding urban support, ‘it
seems condemned to exist in isolation or an expansion that is just too
slow’.124 Accordingly, the M-19 focused on winning mass support in the
places where such support was most readily available, in the cities. Its
particular ideological stance also enabled this because as it did not abide
by the premises of Maoist protracted mobilisation in the countryside.
As a first step to break from its clandestine urban existence in the
Comuneros period from roughly 1972–1974, the early cadres of the M-19
targeted the ANAPO party as a favourable arena to obtain mass support.
ANAPO’s candidate in the 1970 Presidential election, the former dictator and
general Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, had broken with the Conservative-Liberal par­
ties’ duopoly in power in the so-called National Front since the late 1950s.
Rojas Pinilla was on course for a clear victory prior to an electoral fraud which
bestowed the election to the Conservative Misael Pastrana Borrero.125 ANAPO
was a broad party, ‘bringing together everyone, as there were only the two
traditional parties in Colombia, Liberals and Conservatives, ANAPO emerged
as an alternative party, gathering many tendencies which were opposed to
the Liberals and Conservatives’.126 In the early 1970s, it resembled ‘a modern
mass party, complete with myriad barrio-level organizations, regular dues
and carnets, mass rallies, party training schools, more or less regular party
media, a centralized command structure, and strict party discipline’.127
Additionally, reflecting Rojas Pinilla’s military background, the party was
structured into commando units which facilitated the M-19 members and
sympathizers in the party’s recruitment.128 This activism within the ANAPO
Socialista tendency – a faction within the party – allowed the M-19 to
generate a broad range of social ties within sectors opposed to the govern­
ment, many of which were subsequently transformed by the late 1970s into
the M-19’s incipient insurgent constituency.129 This embedded the move­
ment in a broad sympathetic milieu in the cities of Colombia unlike the social
and geographic isolation of their revolutionary counterparts in the country­
side. However, the M-19 was fully opposed to any form of dual strategy
combining electoral politics with armed revolution. Bateman was blunt
about his views on elections in the Colombian context of the time: ‘elections
were the greatest tool the Colombian bourgeoisie possessed to extend its
privileged regime’.130 After the death of Rojas Pinilla and his replacement by
his daughter Maria Eugenía, the M-19 detached itself fully from the party in
1975 but it had at that stage sufficiently consolidated its presence to mobilize
autonomously and in co-ordination with a range of actors such as trade
unions and campesino movements.131
Although the M-19 was in principle and practice, committed to furthering
guerrilla unity, it also required its own support base to furnish the movement
140 F. O’CONNOR AND J. MEER

with the recruits, supplies and more broadly, political legitimacy. In the 1970s,
the febrile far-left scene in universities, contained several clandestine would-
be armed movements, their legal political fronts and associated publications,
exacerbated by regular splinters, it was thus difficult for incipient armed
movements to distinguish themselves from their rivals. As one of its former
senior officials, Maria Eugenia Vásquez Perdomo outlined: ‘For quite a while
I didn’t know what group I belonged to. I had a feeling it was the ELN, but it
turned out that I was part of a new project of Jaime Bateman’s, before he was
expelled from the FARC, to bring the war into the cities’.132 Two factors
helped the M-19 carve its own recognizable identity notwithstanding its
clandestinity, firstly the fact it began to conduct actions in the cities unlike
the other main revolutionary groups and secondly, the manner in which it
promoted its ‘Socialism Colombian-style’ replete with Bolivarian symbolism. It
became famous for its high-jacking of milk trucks or other consignments of
basic necessities and taking them to poor neighbourhoods and distributing
them in the name of the movement.133 These actions were viewed as point­
less attention seeking and populist by other revolutionaries134 but were
popular with locals.
The M-19 communicated its presence and ideology in urban areas through
a range of strategies. Montonero militants that had fled to Colombia taught it
the technology through which it could interrupt TV signals in circumscribed
geographical radiuses and make announcements directly to TV viewers. They
usually choose transmissions with large audiences, such as matches of the
Colombian soccer team, strategically interrupting the coverage at half-time to
avoid irritating the spectators watching the match.135 M-19 militants repeat­
edly seized newspaper offices and obliged them to print entire batches with
M-19 propaganda.136 They combined this with more conventional forms of
armed propaganda such as the temporary hijacking of buses transporting
workers around cities, whereby armed guerrillas would board the buses
disguised as workers before making announcements and distributing leaflets.
All of these tactics were only possible in urban environments. In the rural
areas where FARC and others were mobilized, there were no televisions nor
the electricity required for them to function, newspapers were not widely
read by the commonly illiterate population and the majority worked in
agriculture and had no transportation to and from their workplaces.
Two remaining elements of the M-19’s strategy also helped it distinguish
itself from other groups and embed itself in the masses. The first was its
absolute aversion to the dogmatic language and discourse which character­
ized groups like FARC. ‘Regarding their language, they claimed that their
audience were not the Left (who demanded the use of the prevailing inter­
national leftist vocabulary) but the common people, and that therefore they
must use a language that was comprehensible to them’.137 At the micro-level,
this involved interacting with the general public in a language which was
 SMALL WARS & INSURGENCIES 141

comprehensible. Bateman explained that ‘if revolutionaries speak to them

[the people] about the contradictions between pacific coexistence and armed
struggle, or the advantages of China over Social-Imperialism, or of the demo­
cratic-bourgeois revolution, or of the international proletariat, or similar
things, they do not understand shit’.138 As a female militant explained ‘you
had to speak as the people spoke, explain rights in a way that was of interest
to the people, speak in the language of ordinary Colombians’.139
A final defining characteristic of the movement was its irreverence and
disregard from some of the rigid, self-righteous behaviour common in revo­
lutionary milieus. As one senior commander recounted, the M-19 believed
that ‘No, the revolution cannot be perfect, [. . .] Because of this breaking with
the myth of the perfect men required to be revolutionaries. It ended and
something better emerged. That we did not come here to suffer, the revolu­
tion is a party’.140 The movement rejected this austere character of revolution
as simply not fitting with Colombian society. Accordingly, it was determined
to conduct its struggle ‘like the people of Colombia, simple, tenacious, lively,
uncomplicated with a sense of humour and having a laugh . . . ’.141
Undoubtedly, this easy-going image is in part, also a projection of the M-19,
facilitated by many of its senior militants’ social capital and sympathetic
media coverage due to its middle-class origins and informal ties with many
journalists and academics. Notwithstanding its less dogmatic and more ‘easy-
going’ approach, the M-19 was a well-trained insurgent movement, battle
hardened, extremely capable and proficient in violence but it differed in how
it presented itself to its constituency.

Conclusion

“We wanted to rescue the concept of true democracy, understanding it as the

power to have a house, clothes, medicine, a job, rests, etc.; which is the power to
organise political parties, the power to call a lawyer when being arrested. In
summary, we believe that democracy means having the possibility to fight.”142

Jaime Bateman

In this article we have been relatively restrained in scope: simply analysing the
logic underpinning the M-19’s fusion of Colombian Nationalism and Socialism
through the revival of the figure of Simón Bolívar and then, demonstrating how
the M-19 actually gave substance to their ideology and summarising the
consequences in terms of internal coherence in the movement, interactions
with other movements and obtaining popular support. From a broader per­
spective, the re-utilisation of past heroic struggles in contemporary revolution­
ary politics was not unprecedented in Latin America from the 1960s onwards.
Yet, no movement or party had theretofore revendicated any of Colombia’s
historical figures, and its emergent leftist milieu was dominated by
142 F. O’CONNOR AND J. MEER

international socialist dogma, discourse and symbolism. Curiously, as a strongly

Latin American oriented movement, in its efforts to reconcile socialism with the
prevailing political culture in Colombia, the M-19 seemingly ignored other
efforts by 20th century Peruvian social theorists like José Carlos Mariátegui
and Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre,143 who had consciously tried to forge
a socialism better equipped for the continent’s political exigencies. It rather
promoted Bolívar to the centre of its political framework, successfully for the
most part, re-presenting him as an ardent defender of the downtrodden which
was for its time, a rather singular position to have adopted.
However, a minimalist understanding of ideology as an issue of core princi­
ples and doctrine would dramatically fail to understand the its role in the M-19’s
mobilization. A broader understanding of how specific elements of insurgent
ideologies resonate or not with particular constituencies and their normative
expectations is critical.144 It was not simply the M-19’s objectives or specific
critiques of Colombian society that garnered it legitimacy but rather how they
communicated it to their constituency. In reality, many of its goals were not so
different from the demands of other revolutionary movements, better living
conditions, redistribution of wealth and enhanced democracy, but in contrast
to the others, it framed and communicated it in a locally resonant fashion. And
central to this local resonance was the symbolic vector of Simón Bolívar, which
served as a comprehensible embodiment of the M-19’s societal vision for the
masses. Furthermore, in congruence with its Colombianised message, the M-19
strategically communicated with its would-be supporters in a non-dogmatic
locally appropriate fashion. This was not the mere downplaying of certain
typically Marxist language but also by avoiding the pieties and pseudo-
evangelical attitudes which alienate less politicised societal groups. It further
avoided the ingraining of unsustainable standards of revolutionary purity
within the movement by abandoning any pretensions of the ‘perfect revolu­
tionary’ thus rendering internal morale and discipline much easier to maintain.
The M-19’s ideological innovations have had lasting consequences, as
mentioned Bolívar has been reclaimed by other socialist revolutionary move­
ments like FARC145 and the Bolívarian revolution in neighboring Venezuela.
Beyond, the specific figure of Bolívar, the broader strategy of re-claiming
historical figures not simply rhetorically but also through armed actions,
was also adopted by the Ecuadorean movement Alfaro Vive, ¡Carajo! when
it stole Eloy Alfaro, the former president of the country’s sword.146 Yet, it is
important to recognize that notwithstanding its originality and success in
many respects, the M-19’s ideology and how it impacted its insurgency was
flawed in many regards. It combined tactical success with strategic errors and
the intensity of its campaigns impeded its ability to consolidate an enduring
social base.147 Reflecting its focus on national symbolism, the M-19 dismayed
by the collapse of the peace process in the mid-1980s, attempted to seize the
Colombian High Court, the Palacio de Justicia and use its detained judges to
 SMALL WARS & INSURGENCIES 143

put the government on trial. The move was a dramatic failure, resulting in the
deaths of the M-19’s commando unit, several judges and senior juridical
officers along with many workers in the building.148 The fiasco lost the
M-19 a substantial amount of popular legitimacy, as many sympathizers
were angered by the movement’s disregard to the safety of what was at
that point a widely respected national institution.149 Additionally, although it
avoided ideological tensions with other movements, that did not preclude it
from violent clashes with them. It clashed with FARC in localized disputes in
the south of the country150 and violently intervened to put a stop to a spiral of
killings by another armed movement, Commando Ricardo Franco, with which
it had enjoyed fraternal relations .151 After its demobilization, the M-19’s
successor party the the Allianza Democrática M-19 (M-19 Democratic
Alliance) initially experienced electoral success, winning nine seats in the
national senate in the 1991 elections. However, this success at the collective
level was relatively short lived and by the mid-1990s the party had fragmen­
ted, albeit individual former M-19 members like Senator Antonio Navarro
Wolff and former Presidential candidate and mayor of Bogotá Gustavo Petro
have made lasting national political contributions. The question whether the
M-19’s ‘Colombian-Style Socialism’ was better suited as an insurgent rather
than institutional political ideology remains an open question and an inter­
esting avenue for further research.

Notes
1. Colombian folk music
2. All translation from Spanish (interview transcripts, internal documents, second­
ary literature) into English by the authors.
3. Interview 11
4. M-19, “Concepcion y Estructura de La Organizacion Politico Militar Del M-19”, 2.
5. Ibid., 9.
6. Maynard, “Rethinking the Role of Ideology in Mass Atrocities”, 824.
7. Bateman in Lara, Siembra vientos y recogerás tempestades, 122; and Patricia
Lara’s book “Siembra vientos y recogerás tempestades. La historia del M-19,
sus protagonistas y sus destinos” (2002) has been published in multiple edi­
tions. It gathered the testimonies of several M-19 commanders such as Jaime
Bateman, Álvaro Fayad, Iván Marino Ospina and Antonio Navarro Wolff at
different stages throughout the 1980s. It is thus a contemporary account of
the conflict and the M-19.
8. Navarro Wolff in Jiménez Ricárdez, “Entrevista Antonio Navarro Wolff M-19”.
9. Anderson, Imagined Communities.
10. Malešević, Grounded Nationalisms, 98.
11. González, “Nationalism in Latin America”, 1.
12. Miller, “The Historiography of Nationalism”, 201.
13. Centeno, Blood and Debt, 171.
14. Centeno et al., “Internal Wars and Latin American Nationalism”.
15. Mariátegui in Helleiner and Rosales, “Toward Global IPE”, 682.
144 F. O’CONNOR AND J. MEER

16. Calhoun, “Nationalism and Ethnicity”, 216.

17. Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, 335.
18. See note 14 above.
19. Nairn, The Break-up of Britain, 29.
20. Centeno, Blood and Debt, 77.
21. There are some partial exceptions to this unwillingness to focus on indigen­
ous history, notably in Mexico Ibid., 197. and in Bolivia when it was governed
by Evo Morales Oikonomakis, Political Strategies and Social Movements in Latin
America.
22. Goebel, “Introduction”, 312; and Castañeda, Utopia Unarmed, 273.
23. Goebel, “Introduction”, 311.
24. Centeno, Blood and Debt, 205.
25. Lynch, Simón Bolívar (Simon Bolivar), 288.
26. Collier and Collier, “Nationality, Nationalism, and Supranationalism”, 43; and
Brown, “Not Forging Nations but Foraging for Them”, 236.
27. Jansen, “Resurrection and Appropriation”, 985.
28. Ibid., 986.
29. Durán, Loewenherz, and Hormaza, “The M-19’s Journey from Armed Struggle to
Democratic Politics”, 10–11.
30. Olave Arias, “El Bolívar de las FARC. Usos de la memoria bolivariana en el
discurso guerrillero”, 161; Some authors have failed to the acknowledge the
M-19’s responsibility for the revolutionary re-framing of Bolívar to the M-19
Andrade and Lugo-Ocando, “The Angostura Address 200 Years Later:
A Critical Reading”, 78; and Bushnell, The Making of Modern Colombia, 246.
31. Pizarro, Insurgencia sin revolución, 95.
32. Ospina and Fayad in Lara, Siembra vientos y recogerás tempestades, 110.
33. Dix, “The Varieties of Populism”; and Le Blanc, Political Violence in Latin America,
112.
34. Interview 8; Posada and Bejarano, “Conflictos agrarios y luchas armadas en la
Colombia contemporánea”.
35. Interviews 6 & 12
36. Gutiérrez Danton, “Insurgent Institutions: Refractory Communities, Armed
Insurgency and Institutionbuilding in the Colombian Conflict”.
37. Rojas Pacheco, “Yarumales’.
38. Interview 6.
39. Durán, Loewenherz, and Hormaza, “The M-19’s Journey from Armed Struggle to
Democratic Politics”; Le Blanc, Political Violence in Latin America; and
Söderström, “The Resilient, the Remobilized and the Removed”.
40. Lara, Siembra vientos y recogerás tempestades, 41.
41. Villamizar, Jaime Bateman Biografia de un Revolucionario, 329.
42. M-19, “Concepcion y Estructura de La Organizacion Politico Militar Del M-19”,
25.
43. Ibid., 39.
44. Durán, Loewenherz, and Hormaza, “The M-19’s Journey from Armed Struggle to
Democratic Politics”, 10.
45. Bateman in Lara, Siembra vientos y recogerás tempestades, 128.
46. M-19, “Reunion de La Direccion Nacional Conclusiones Febrero de 1983”, 23.
47. Narváez Jaimes, “La Guerra Revolucionaria Del M-19 (1974–1989)”, 65–66.
48. Miller, “The Historiography of Nationalism”, 203.
49. see note 38 above
 SMALL WARS & INSURGENCIES 145

50. One interview was conducted on Skype prior with a former militant based in
Cartagena in 2017 and a series of extended interviews with a former guerrilla
based in Germany had also been conducted prior to the fieldwork in Colombia.
51. M-19, “Concepcion y Estructura de La Organizacion Politico Militar Del M-19”;
and M-19, “Reunion de La Direccion Nacional Conclusiones Febrero de 1983”.
52. Loewenherz, Razones de vida; Mariño Vargas, Y Después de Todo . . . El Perdón.
Sobre La Vida, La Tortura y Seguir Viviendo; Patiño, Historia privada de la
Violencia; Vásquez Perdomo, My Life as a Colombian Revolutionary; and
Villamizar, Jaime Bateman Biografia de un Revolucionario; Not all of these
books are explicitly auto-biographies, but all are heavily informed by the
authors personal experiences in the conflict.
53. Jiménez Ricárdez, “Entrevista Antonio Navarro Wolff M-19”; Lara, Siembra vien­
tos y recogerás tempestades; and Martin, “Entrevista | Carlos Toledo Plata, líder
de la guerrilla urbana colombiana”.
54. Bartoletti, “Organizaciones Armadas Revolucionarias Latinoamericanas”, 9.
55. Gutiérrez Danton, “Insurgent Institutions”, 144.
56. Ramirez Tobón in Chernick and Jiménez, “Popular Liberalism, Radical
Democracy, and Marxism”, 69.
57. Rosero Trejos and González Arana, “El Partido Comunista Colombiano y La
Combinación de Todas Las Formas de Lucha. Entre La Simpatía Internacional
y Las Tensiones Locales, 1964–1981”.
58. Gutiérrez Danton, ‘Insurgent Institutions”, 145.
59. Villamizar, Las Guerrillas en Colombia, 303.
60. Marks and Rich, “Back to the Future – People’s War in the 21st Century”.
61. Zamosc, “The Political Crisis”, 58.
62. Villamizar, Jaime Bateman Biografia de Un Revolucionario, 297–98.
63. Pizarro, Insurgencia sin revolución, 98.
64. Chernick and Jiménez, “Popular Liberalism, Radical Democracy, and Marxism”,
64.
65. Rich, “People’s War Antithesis”, 477.
66. Marighella, Mini-Manual of the Urban Guerrilla; and Guillén, Philosophy of the
Urban Guerilla.
67. Richard Gillespie, “A Critique of the Urban Guerrilla”.
68. Pizarro, Insurgencia sin revolución, 84.
69. Marighella, Mini-Manual of the Urban Guerrilla, 5.
70. Tobón, “La liebre mecánica y el galgo corredor”, 57.
71. Pizarro, Insurgencia sin revolución, 86.
72. O’Connor, “Clandestinity and Insurgent Consolidation”.
73. Narváez Jaimes, “La Guerra Revolucionaria Del M-19 (1974–1989)”, 61.
74. Ibid.
75. Interview 14
76. Pizarro, Insurgencia sin revolución, 105.
77. Perdomo, My Life as a Colombian Revolutionary, 57.
78. See note 75 above.
79. Centeno, Blood and Debt, 51.
80. M-19, “M-19 Celebró Natalicio de Bolívar”.
81. Zeuske, Simon Bolivar, 52.
82. Lynch, Simón Bolívar (Simon Bolivar), 177.
83. Bolívar in Brown, “Not Forging Nations but Foraging for Them”, 236.
84. Zeuske, Simon Bolivar, 62–66.
146 F. O’CONNOR AND J. MEER

85. Ibid., 64–65; and Zeuske, „Simón Bolívar in Geschichte, Mythos und Kult“, 256.
86. Zeuske, Simon Bolivar, 64–65.
87. Peña, “La memoria y los héroes guerrilleros”, 15.
88. The re-interpretation and reframing of historical figures associated with popular
struggles is common with other Latin American groups, notably the Sandinistas
in Nicaragua, the Zapatistas in Chiapas in Mexico Jansen, “Resurrection and
Appropriation”. and the Tupac Amarú Revolutionary Movement in Peru Baer,
Peru’s MRTA.
89. Villamizar Herrera, Aquel 19 Será, 55.
90. Small villages near Boyacá.
91. see note 38 above.
92. See note 75 above.
93. M-19, “Breves”.
94. Peña, “La memoria y los héroes guerrilleros”, 16.
95. Wolff in Jiménez Ricárdez, “Entrevista Antonio Navarro Wolff M-19”.
96. see note 94 above.
97. Ibid.
98. Villamizar, Las Guerrillas en Colombia, 788.
99. see note 94 above.
100. Grabe Loewenherz, Razones de vida, 56.
101. M-19, “A Los Patriotas: Communicado No.1”.
102. see note 87 above.
103. Interview 9.
104. Le Blanc, Political Violence in Latin America, 123.
105. Interview 7.
106. Interview 13.
107. Sancocho is a traditional stew in Colombia whose ingredients vary from region
to region.
108. Interview 10.
109. The only partial exception to this was the small Comando Jaime Bateman Cayón
(CJBC) which refused to lay down its weapons in 1990 and was eventually
subsumed into FARC in the 2000s (Danton 2018 427 and Interview 6)
110. Villamizar, Jaime Bateman Biografia de un Revolucionario, 329.
111. Ibid., 312–14.
112. Peña, ‘La memoria y los héroes guerrilleros’, 19.
113. Ibid.
114. Villamizar, Las Guerrillas en Colombia, 573.
115. Durán, Loewenherz, and Hormaza, “The M-19’s Journey from Armed Struggle to
Democratic Politics”, 14.
116. Villamizar, Las Guerrillas en Colombia, 538.
117. Grabe, La Paz Como Revolución, 333–34.
118. Peña, ‘La memoria y los héroes guerrilleros’, 17.
119. Ospina in Lara, Siembra vientos y recogerás tempestades, 115.
120. Bateman in Ibid., 123.
121. Durán, Loewenherz, and Hormaza, “The M-19’s Journey from Armed Struggle to
Democratic Politics”, 11.
122. McGreevey, “Urban Growth in Colombia”, 389.
123. The article was titled Polemica and was penned under the pseudonym Baltasar
de la Hoz (see Villamizar 2002, 264).
124. In Ibid.
 SMALL WARS & INSURGENCIES 147

125. Le Blanc, Political Violence in Latin America, 112.

126. Interview 8.
127. Dix, “The Varieties of Populism”, 344.
128. Interview 8; and Ibid., 345.
129. This article uses the concept insurgent constituency as defined by Stefan
Malthaner as ‘the real social groups in a society, whom the militants address
and to whom they refer, with whom they are actually involved in some form of
relationship, and who – at least to a certain degree – actually sympathise with
and support the militant groups’ Malthaner, Mobilizing the Faithful, 29.
130. Bateman in Lara, Siembra vientos y recogerás tempestades, 212.
131. See note 44 above.
132. Perdomo, My Life as a Colombian Revolutionary, 40.
133. These acts of armed propaganda were recounted by every single interviewee
that had been active in urban contexts. It is also central to many published
accounts of M-19’s mobilisation.
134. Interview 4.
135. Interview 15.
136. See for e.g. Villamizar, Jaime Bateman Biografia de un Revolucionario, 335.
137. Le Blanc, Political Violence in Latin America, 212.
138. Bateman in Lara, Siembra vientos y recogerás tempestades, 123–24.
139. See note 106 above.
140. See note 38 above.
141. Fayad in Lara, Siembra vientos y recogerás tempestades, 142.
142. Bateman in Villamizar, Jaime Bateman Biografia de un Revolucionario, 361.
143. See Helleiner and Rosales, “Toward Global IPE”.
144. O’Connor, Insurgent Support Networks; Popkin, “Political Entrepreneurs and
Peasant Movements in Vietnam”, 59; and Sluka, Hearts and Minds, Water and
Fish, 117.
145. Peña, “La memoria y los héroes guerrilleros”, 19.
146. Terán, “¡Alfaro Vive Carajo! Y La Lucha Por El Olvido”.
147. Narváez Jaimes, “La Guerra Revolucionaria Del M-19 (1974–1989)”, 63–64.
148. Navarro Wolff in Lara, Siembra vientos y recogerás tempestades, 296.
149. Chernick and Jiménez, “Popular Liberalism, Radical Democracy, and Marxism”,
74; and Interview 12: Bogotá 2018
150. See note 3 above.
151. Arias, “30 Años de La Masacre de Tacueyó”.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors
Francis O’Connor is a research associate at the Centre on Social Movement Studies at the
Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence. His research focuses on radicalisation, social move­
ments and insurgencies. He is currently working on a comparative project analyzing the
spatial strategies of the PKK in Turkey and the M-19 in Colombia.
148 F. O’CONNOR AND J. MEER

Jakob Meer is a student of the master programme International Studies/Peace and

Conflict Research at the Goethe University Frankfurt. He holds a bachelor’s degree in
Social and Cultural Anthropology and Political Science from the Freie Universität
Berlin.

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Appendix
Appendix of cited interviewees

Interviews Interviewee Description

4 Former EPL militant.
6 M-19 Commander active in urban mobilisation and rural insurgency.
7 Senior M-19 militant active in both urban and rural structures
8 Female M-19 Commander/founding member active in urban and rural mobilisation
9 M-19 Commander in the urban structure in Bogotá
10 Female M-19 militant in the urban structure in Bogotá
11 M-19 Commander in rural areas
12 M-19 Commander in rural areas
13 Female M-19 militant in the urban structure in Bogotá
14 M-19 Commander and founding member
15 Senior M-19 militant in the urban structure in Cali