Topic: Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (Spanish: Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo), also known by the acronym of FARC or FARC-EP, is a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary guerrilla organization.

FARC is a Violent non-state actor (VNSA), considered a terrorist group by the Colombian government, the United States Department of State, Canada and the European Union. Other governments, including the Cuban and Venezuelan governments, are more sympathetic to FARC. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez publicly rejected their classification as "terrorists" in January 2008, considering them to be "real armies", and called on the Colombian government and international community to recognize the guerrillas as a “belligerent force”, arguing that this would then oblige them to renounce kidnappings and terror acts, and respect the Geneva Conventions.

FARC was established in the 1960s as the military wing of the Colombian Communist Party and thus originated as a guerrilla movement. The group later became involved with the cocaine trade during the 1980s to finance itself, but remained closely tied to the Communist Party even as it created the Patriotic Union in the early 1980s and later a political structure it calls the Clandestine Colombian Communist Party (PCCC).