Surprise in Colombia: Iván Márquez, a guerrilla leader previously presumed dead, reappears in a video supporting President Petro's controversial Constituent Assembly

The Colombian Revolutionary Forces (FARC) guerrilla Luciano Marín Arango, better known by his alias Iván Márquez, had been presumed dead after suffering an attack on the border with Venezuela in 2022. However, this Saturday, May 11, he reappeared in a video published by the newspaper El País from Spain in which he gave a tremendous boost to the Colombian socialist president Gustavo Petro and his idea of carrying out a Constituent Assembly. This proposal has generated strong rejection within Colombian society and the international press.

“No more privatization of public services, which today have become a vile business for national and foreign companies. We are going to rescue the majesty of the primary constituent, which is the people. He is the legitimate authority. Their will must be followed by all State institutions. It should never be forgotten that the sovereign is the people and the rights of the people prevail over the ambition for wealth of oligarchies and transnational corporations,” Márquez assured in the extensive video of more than 16 minutes initially shared at the Binational Peace Forum, an event in Puerto Carreño (Vichada), Colombia.

Throughout the video, edited with images of President Petro, the Liberator Simón Bolívar and the founder of the FARC Manuel Marulanda Vélez, alias Tirofijo, Márquez spoke about his ideals and also mentioned what the purpose of a Constituent Assembly should be: a more “Bolivarian” Magna Carta.

“We must find a democratic mechanism so that the spokespersons of the social and political sectors appointed in their internal events and not by the multimillion-dollar and corrupt money of the cocaine mafia reach the national constituent assembly,” said Márquez, a dangerous and controversial criminal sought by the Justice Department of the U.S. for drug trafficking and for whom the DEA has a reward of $10 million for identification and capture.

Throughout the video, Márquez praised Petro and his proposals, sometimes explicitly: “In this new moment when, thanks to divine providence and the brilliant idea of a president, Constituent winds are blowing, awakening the hope of the immense multitudes. No one, no one, should stay with their arms crossed.”

The guerrilla also supported one of Petro’s most controversial reforms: that of the Colombian health system. He also embarked on a message in favor of climate change, another of the conversation topics that Petro constantly promotes.

“We support all efforts aimed at generating clean energy that allows gradual progress in the decarbonization of the economy,” said Márquez, who would have recorded the video from the Orinoquia or the Amazon, according to Revista Semana, one of the most important media outlets in Colombia.

Likewise, in one of the most challenging moments of his video, where he clearly tried to remain calm while trying to convey a supposed message of “peace,” the dangerous guerrilla leader stated that he supports Palestine in the midst of the war between Israel and the Hamas terrorist group.

At that time, Márquez called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “war criminal” and also stated that President Joe Biden is an Israeli “accomplice.”

Who is Iván Márquez, and why is his reappearance important in Colombia?

Márquez is the head of the delegation of the FARC guerrilla group that negotiated the controversial peace agreement with the Colombian state in Cuba and was one of its signatories in November 2016.

However, Márquez, in August 2019, denounced that the Colombian government was supposedly not complying with the peace agreement and took up arms again, but this time led the “Second Marquetalia,” an organization closely linked to the FARC.

After years in the bush, returning to his guerrilla practices, the leader of the Second Marquetalia was the target of an attack on the Venezuelan border apparently directed by the Colombian Army and Police facilities on June 30, 2022.

At that moment, he was presumed dead. However, today, it was officially confirmed that Iván Márquez did not die, and the version of the Second Marquetalia, which at the time denounced the attack and stated that its leader was only injured, is also verified.

The reappearance of this dangerous guerrilla accused of drug trafficking by the United States comes at a momentous moment for Colombia.

Colombian president Gustavo Petro, the first openly progressive and left-wing president in the country’s modern history, is trying to carry out a series of profound social reforms and to achieve this, he is proposing a dangerous National Constituent Assembly reminiscent of the mechanism used by the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, the man who created and shaped the authoritarian Chavista state and of which Petro has expressed his deep admiration.

However, Petro’s proposal is causing tension in Colombian society like never before in its history, and the appearance of Márquez —a controversial character repudiated by a large part of the citizenry but who may become popular within the most radical base of the Colombian president— could deepen and further damage the social fabric in Colombia, a country that recently suffered intense revolts by the left during the pandemic.