The M-19: A Report on Colombia’s Unorthodox Guerrillas

Introduction

The M-19, the guerrilla group that operated in Colombia from 1974-1990, seems to be a hybrid of new war and old war groups, occurring in the gray period of the 1980s where Kaldor argues the tactics and goals of guerrilla groups began to shift from politics of ideology and tactical civilian avoidance to politics of identity and active civilian targeting and engagement.[1] In support of her theory, the M-19 had a rather indistinct ideology and used somewhat non-traditional tactics to fund themselves, but they also actively relied on (and sought to increase) civilian support and willingly negotiated with the government to achieve concessions rather than continuing fighting as a means of survival. These will be discussed more in length in subsequent sections.

From the moment they announced themselves to the world in 1974, storming the national museum and stealing the country’s symbol of freedom and independence, it was apparent the M-19 was unlike other guerrilla groups, not only in Latin America, but arguably the world abroad. They were bold, brash and young, extremely creative and unorthodox, and surrounded by an air of mystique and excitement that captivated the minds of many in Colombian society. From the raid on the museum to other increasingly impudent and brass acts of resistance -- such as the kidnapping of diplomats from a fete at the Dominican embassy and the massive theft of weapons from the military’s largest cache -- these were the mischievous kids of the country’s most influential families. Rich, educated rebels armed with guns and panache -- but these simple appearances were somewhat deceiving. These kids, despite the twinkle of mayhem that glinted in their eyes, were well armed, well funded, and increasingly violent, culminating in their boldest (and ultimately most costly) action, the seizure of the Palace of Justice, which left close to 100 dead and effectively signed the group’s death notice.

During its operations the group employed an increasingly bold, violent, and desperate policy of kidnapping to fund themselves in the latter half of the 70s, which incurred a relentless and vicious holy war on its members by cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar and the authorities, who targeted, arrested, tortured, and killed M-19 members almost to extinction under the auspices of MAS, the paramilitary style group created by Escobar to hunt and kill them.[2] By the time the group signed their final ceasefire in 1990, ending their term of operations, their numbers had been cut in half[3] and support and morale had been decimated.

History

The group’s formal emergence on January 17, 1974 was announced with the theft of legendary liberator Simon Bolivar’s sword and spurs from the Bogotá Museum – a symbol worth more than 100,000 rifles, according to their leader.[4] Their creation is tied to the disputed election of four years prior, the April 19, 1970 defeat of populist candidate and former military dictator Gustavo Rojas Pinilla. This event, in addition to providing the group with a concrete historical foundation for their otherwise vague ideology, also was the source of its resulting moniker. (Its full name is Movimiento 19 de Abril, or the April 19 Movement.) In this election, Rojas Pinilla, running as the ANAPO (Alianza Nacional Popular) party candidate, lost the close election to Misael Pastrana by only 1.5%.[5] Carlos Toledo Plata and Jaime Bateman Cayon, eventually the group’s two principal leaders, were incensed and formed the M-19 in response four years later.[6]

The group primarily drew its members from two sources, intellectual circles and ex-guerrillas, culling them from universities, unions, and well-to-do families across Colombia, in addition to pools of former members of the FARC.[7] Bateman, for example, was a onetime FARC member whose militant aspirations were affected by childhood experiences with the United Fruit Company and their policies of exclusion of its workers[8] in addition to the 1970 election involving Rojas Pinilla.[9] Bateman parted ways with the FARC in mid-1972[10] when he was kicked out for fervently advocating a shift of the group’s focus from the jungles and rural areas, traditional areas of control for the organization, to that of the cities and various urban centers. (These would later turn out to be the strongholds of the M-19.)[11]

As a result of their points of origin, M-19 members were young -- they were the sons and daughters of the doctores (the intellectuals, elites, and professionals who long controlled the country), heavily influenced by the Summer of Love, rock and roll, and a jetset lifestyle of fast times and international flavor.[12] Statistics vary, but at the peak of its operations in 1985, the total number of members ranges from 1,500-2,000, making it the second largest guerrilla group in Colombia behind the FARC at the time.[13]

Goals

From its inception, it was clear the M-19 was bent on making a splash in Colombia with its unorthodox tactics and flair for the dramatic. It carried with it a sense of freshness and creativity that were almost undeniable, and which stood out in stark contrast to the well established, inflexible, and somewhat dated methods of the FARC.[14] An excellent illustration of this lies in how the group announced itself to the world. For weeks before their assault on the Bogotá Museum, the group covered the capital with a cryptic advertising campaign bearing such slogans as “Listless…sluggish? Wait for the M-19,” and “The M-19 is coming,”[15] piquing the interest of the populace before seizing it firmly several weeks later with the museum action.

The group’s creation signaled the inception of a new phase of the guerrilla movement in Latin America, one whose rebellious military actions, coupled with its creative political ambitions and sense of style, were a response to Colombia’s closed political system that involved only Liberals and Conservatives, effectively precluding organization and agitation for change through passive legal channels.[16]

One of the overriding goals of these second wave organizations, the M-19 included, was to connect the country’s mass movement to the armed struggle -- to bridge the militants and the masses – and to break open the political system to force a truly representative, participatory form of democracy.[17] As the group co-founder Bateman said, “our idea was valid, and it still is: the people must exercise the fundamental right to arm themselves so as to confront the oligarchy which stole their victory from them through a disgraceful election fraud.”[18] This would tend to tie the group closer to old war groups by Kaldor’s definition because of their incorporation of Leninist motivations and thought.

Despite its adherence to this umbrella ideology, though, the M-19 was somewhat vague about the concrete steps it intended to employ to bring the former to fruition. However, three threads run through a majority of its communications and include the opening of the political system, the inclusion of popular groups in the running of government, and the establishment of the M-19 as a lasting political entity.[19]

Other aspects, such as its apparent hatred of the US[20] also appear sporadically and manifest themselves in the group’s targeting of American multi-national corporate heads (such as Donald Cooper, a Sears executive, that was kidnapped and ransomed for $1 million in 1975)[21] or alleged American spies (such as Jose Raquel Mercado, a trade unionist that was kidnapped and killed in February 1976 for allegedly working for the CIA.)[22]

After the group’s initial success in captivating the capital and capturing a wide spread of popular support there, M-19 leaders began to bristle against the geographic constraints of the city and discussed moving into the countryside, a somewhat dangerous proposition as this was the longtime stronghold of the FARC.[23]

Strategy/Tactics

The M-19 was a compelling mix of complexities, a fact contradicted by their seemingly simple, and arguably lunatic, tendencies. They were young, naïve, and moneyed intellectuals with a penchant for displays marrying violence, mischief, and flair – as Bateman said, they were “armed propagandists”[24] who were “always convinced that the Colombian oligarchy only understands force. It understands through blows -- hard blows.”[25]

Despite a similar dependence on violence, though, in Colombian resistance they were the FARC’s polar opposite -- M-19 members were the products of thee thinkers and cognoscenti of Colombian society that learned to fight once their formative years had passed; FARC members, on the other hand, were fighters virtually from the cradle that became strategists and thinkers far later.[26]

The group’s formal strategy was called the Organizacion Politico Militar (OPM) and it was designed to combine political and military actions against the state to pressure it into opening the political system.[27] Upon achieving this there was to be subsequent dialogue between the masses and the state, something that was typically absent in other Communist/Socialist models.[28] The OPM avoided the strict, rigid dogmas of other Leninist groups and wanted to distance itself from Lenin’s idea of the intellectual vanguard, which looks to separate the mass movement, the party, and the people’s army in deference to the intellectual superiority of the leader.[29] A distinguishing characteristic of the OPM and the M-19 itself was that it actually sought to consolidate these entities into one powerful unit.

Two phases to the group’s strategy can be discerned, one prior to 1981 and one from 1981 until its effective demise in 1990. Before 1981, they attempted to form a strong political wing in the cities while also forming an armed military wing.[30] (The creation of FIRMES, a political movement that looked to form an alliance between all leftist political parties and organizations, was the group’s attempt at the former.)[31] After 1981, the group took on a much more militant bent, emphasizing penetration into rural communities.[32]

Early operations of the group started in 1972, two years before the theft of Bolivar’s sword, and centered mainly on bank robberies.[33] Yet to achieve their umbrella goal of opening the political system, the M-19 knew it needed a broader strategy and a large support base in order to effectively pressure the government to listen to their demands. The group therefore looked to build support from the country’s popular sectors, utilizing audacious acts of defiance and Robin Hood-style operations.[34]

For the former, the group enacted a series of increasingly daring actions: they stole close to 7,000 weapons from a military depot nicknamed the Blue Whale, the military’s largest arms depository,[35] by digging a 246’ tunnel underneath the grounds to a nearby house;[36] they stormed the embassy of the Dominican Republic in Bogotá and held over a dozen diplomats, including the American ambassador and 40 others, hostage, demanding the release of over 300 political prisoners;[37] and they took over the Palace of Justice in Bogotá, holding dozens hostage, including the country’s chief justices, when they accused the government of violating the terms of their first ceasefire.[38]

For the latter – the Robin Hood-style actions -- they would steal trucks transporting various necessities -- candy, chicken, or toys,[39] bottles of milk,[40] or clothing[41] -- and hit various civilian locations – health stations (for drugs and equipment) and banks[42]-- and deliver them to the poorest communities. As a result, they appealed to the more disillusioned and marginalized sectors of the urban poor and middle class.[43] These repeated attempts to win over and incorporate the civilian population further supports the assertion that the M-19 is one of the bridge groups from Kaldor’s gray area of the 80s.

Funding

When the M-19 first began, despite being the products of rather well to do families, they had very little money or weapons and thus had to engage in activities to rapidly fund themselves.[44] As mentioned earlier, this initially revolved around bank robberies, but eventually changed to a policy of kidnapping starting in 1979,[45] a strategy they would employ over 400 times in the next two years. [46] Bateman explains the group’s logic behind the strategy:

“Since the state does not have a tax used to finance the revolution of the poor, and since those with money do not willingly let go of it, and since we do not want to be a revolutionary organization financed by the Soviet Union or any other foreign country and dependent on it, we have no recourse other than to kidnap a few oligarchs…Kidnapping must be aimed against the enemies of the people. Otherwise, it does not serve a political purpose. And what’s more, we prefer to hold in custody the representatives of the multinational companies which are taking millions of dollars out of the country rather than kidnap a Colombian industrialist who, despite the fact that he has made his fortune based on the exploitation of his workers, has accomplished something for the nation.”[47]

They started small in their targets, but kidnappings rapidly became more high profile – the embassy kidnappings of the diplomats was accompanied with a $1million ransom, for example.[48] -- as their costs of operation increasedd[49] and as the burgeoning cocaine trade became a source of potential income the group could no longer avoid tapping into.[50] 

This mental shift manifested itself tactically when the group started kidnapping traffickers and their family members in 1979. The policy was a huge failure, though, both strategically and effectively, and led to the group’s ultimate demise. The first abductee, Carlos Lehder, a coke pilot for Escobar, escaped shortly after capture.[51] Their next quarry, the three children of Carlos Jader Alvarez, an established drug trafficker, were taken next, but negotiations over the ransom were protracted and the children were eventually killed while in custody. This, coupled with the abduction of Martha Nieves Ochoa, the sister of drug kingpin Juan David Ochoa, led to the formation of MAS, Death to Kidnappers, by fellow drug kingpin Escobar and a massive war on M-19 members by the paramilitary-style group.

Despite the M-19’s heavy reliance on kidnapping, though, some of its leaders expressed doubts over its efficacy, almost going as far as calling it counterproductive -- “Kidnapping is not the proper type of struggle for attaining the workers’ demands. [One of the group’s core motivations],” Bateman said.[52] Yet while circumstances may have forced them to continue using a strategy that conflicted with their ideological holdings, the group was careful to treat the majority of their abductees well and to avoid employing the torture methods the state would later use on M-19 members.[53]

To formally track the group’s finances, pinpointing hard numbers and following flows of cash, is extremely difficult, as Bateman explains:

“M-19 manages money as the capitalists do. We have companies, we invest in stock of major firms, we do business…[but] it is impossible to establish centralized accounting when one is working with illegal status…We have collective leadership bodies which discuss and approve spending, but since the regional ones also hold up banks and…manage the money they obtain, it is impossible to ascertain exactly how much money M-19 has acquired and spent.”[54]

Efforts to End Violence

During the group’s rather short term of operation they had two somewhat successful rounds of negotiations and ceasefires with the government. The first ceasefire resulted in the creation of the National Dialogue, a reform of the government that instituted popular elections of mayors, who previously had been appointed, but this minor decentralization of power was only felt in rural areas with longstanding ties to the Communist Party.[55] As a result, the M-19 broke off the ceasefire shortly thereafter, alleging the government to be uncooperative.[56]

The second and final round of negotiations, that which resulted in the effective termination of the group’s operation, occurred in 1990 and led to the creation of the Constitutional Assembly, a body that was to reform various government institutions and hasten the inclusion and representation of popular groups and organizations,[57] yet affected only minimal gains and largely left the power of the ruling Liberals and Conservatives intact.[58]

Political gains were short-lived, though, and the group attempted one last time to achieve its final goal of political permanence by running Carlos Pizarro for the presidential election in 1990.  After gaining some electoral support with their surrender,[59] their hopes were dashed when Carlos Castano and the AUC assassinated Pizarro along with Patriotic Union candidate Bernardo Jaramillo.[60]