Ted Cruz asks Congress to return FARC to terrorist list

Republican Senator Ted Cruz presented a proposal before Congress to include the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) again on the list of terrorist organizations. Cruz also wants individual sanctions to be applied to Colombian Senator Piedad Córdoba and Sandra Ramírez Lobo, widow of the late FARC leader Manuel Marulanda (aka Tirofijo).

Ted Cruz asked the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to overturn President Joe Biden's decision (November 2021) to remove the FARC from the list of terrorist organizations to "repair the damage" caused by such a decision. "This Administration gave up a critical tool with which the U.S. was holding terrorists accountable for their role in half a century of armed conflict," he said.

The Texan legislator denounced the crimes committed by the FARC against civil society and specified the re-sanctioning of characters such as Fabián Ramírez, Jimmy Guerrero, Rubén Zamora, Julián Conrado and Rodrigo Granda, as well as the aforementioned Piedad Córdoba, member of the Historical Pact that supports the current president of Colombia, the ex-terrorist Gustavo Petro, and Sandra Ramírez Lobo. Córdoba played a prominent role as a negotiator in Colombia's controversial peace accords, signed by then President Juan Manuel Santos despite the rejection of the Colombian population.

If Ted Cruz's request is successful, the measures taken against terrorists could represent a major setback for the Administration of leftist Gustavo Petro.

Together with the Peruvian Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), also communist, the FARC has been one of the worst terrorist organizations that Latin America has ever suffered. Its fatalities number in the tens of thousands.