The Colombian government gave “valid” on Wednesday the video in which several leaders of the FARC dissidents appear in the Second Marquetalia alleging that their top boss, Luciano Marin Arango, alias Ivan Marquez, survived an attack and assured that “he is being protected by the regime of Nicolás Maduro.”
“The information that has intelligence is that in these disputes one of these vendettas was presented in which his integrity was at risk,” Defense Minister Diego Molano told the press.
Molano added that Iván Márquez is “being protected by the Maduro regime and that he is in a hospital in Caracas.”
“He came out unharmed”
However, according to the dissidents who appeared in the video in a jungle area and surrounded by twenty men armed with rifles, Iván Márquez “was unharmed” and “only suffered damage that day,” and now he was already “enjoying good health.” ».
According to Molano’s statements, in the video “it is evident that there are second and third leaders of the Second Marquetalia”, among them is the son of one of the historical leaders of the FARC, Manuel Marulanda, aka Tirofijowhom the Colombian press had identified as Alberto Cruz Lobo, alias Enrique Marulanda.
Iván Márquez was the FARC’s chief negotiator in the talks with the government in Havana, which led to the signing of the peace agreement with that guerrilla on November 24, 2016.
However, in August 2019, Márquez abandoned the peace agreement and, along with other former guerrilla commanders, took up arms again, alleging that the Colombian government was not complying with the agreement.
In the statement read, the dissidents claim to have no doubt that behind the attack “there are the hounds of the CIA, the DEA and the government of President Iván Duque,” and points out that other leaders of the Second Marquetalia died in similar operations.
Versions about the alleged death of Iván Márquez
On July 2, in response to press reports on the alleged death of Iván Márquez in a confrontation with criminal gangs on the Venezuelan side of the border, the president of Colombia, Iván Duque, indicated that it was information that was being “verified.”
“We are working with our intelligence to verify that information and obviously as soon as we have any corroboration we will inform it in a timely manner,” the president added at the time.
Last week other press versions began to circulate according to which Iván Márquez had survived the attack and was hospitalized in Venezuela.
Luciano Marín Arango (real name of the guerrilla), 67 years old, of whom he has been in the guerrilla for more than 40, was born on June 16, 1955 in Florencia, capital of the southern department of Caquetá, and his record indicates that in the early 1980s he joined the FARC’s 14th Front.
The guerrilla was part of the FARC commanders, and even became one of the successors of the then head of that guerrilla, alias Alfonso Cano, who died in a military operation in 2011.
Dissidents killed in Venezuela
In the midst of the disputes in Venezuela, other FARC dissidents have been assassinated in the last year, such as Miguel Botache Santanilla, known as Gentil Duarte, whose death was confirmed by the dissidents last May, in a confrontation with another group of ex-guerrillas in Zulia state, bordering Colombia.
In Venezuela, supposedly, Henry Castellanos, alias Romaña, and Hernán Darío Velásquez, alias el Paisa, considered the two most bloodthirsty chiefs of the former FARC guerrilla and who were part of the so-called Second Marquetalia, were also assassinated.
In mid-May last year, the death of Seuxis Paucias Hernández Solarte, alias Jesús Santrich, another of the heads of the Second Marquetalia, was also reported.