By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, May 25, 2008

BOGOTA, Colombia, May 24 -- Manuel Marulanda, the leader of a guerrilla army that has bedeviled this country for more than four decades, has died of a heart attack, the Colombian government said Saturday.

Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos told the magazine Semana that a reliable intelligence source had revealed the March 26 death of Marulanda, based on information developed inside the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. The Defense Ministry later said in a statement that details from various intelligence sources informed the government's determination.

Officials in President Álvaro Uribe's government exulted in the news. Adm. David René Moreno, the military's chief of staff, called the death "the most serious blow that this terrorist group has suffered," while Vice President Francisco Santos said Marulanda, who was at least 76, would be remembered for the violence he helped generate in Colombia. "God will not forgive his sins," he told reporters.

ANNCOL, a Web site that carries FARC statements, mocked the government's announcement but did not deny or confirm it. "If he has died, his presence has not been in vain for the great fatherland of Bolívar," ANNCOL said. It cautioned that only the FARC's seven-member secretariat, the ruling body that Marulanda headed, could confirm his death.

A senior government official said Saturday that the main military intelligence source had been unfailingly accurate in the past with information about the FARC. Defense Ministry officials are mindful that the government, as well as journalists, has been reporting Marulanda's demise since 1965, when a newspaper stated that he had been killed in combat.

Marulanda's death would complicate command-and-control problems in a rebel group that has been hit hard by mass desertions and the deaths in March of two other senior commanders, one in an army raid and the other slain by his bodyguard. The FARC has also lost several important mid-level commanders and many of its more seasoned veterans. Nevertheless, it remains powerful, with the Defense Ministry pegging its overall strength at 11,000 fighters.

Marulanda would be replaced atop the guerrilla force by Guillermo Sáenz, an ideologue who has a long history in Communist Party politics. It is unclear whether Sáenz -- better known to Colombians by his alias, Alfonso Cano -- will generate the same kind of devotion in the rank and file as Marulanda, who achieved a legendary status within the FARC for his daring and skills as a military strategist.

Marulanda, born Pedro Antonio Marin in the town of Genova in central Colombia, had been at war since 1948, when a fratricidal conflict between armed bands allied with the Liberal and Conservative parties erupted in the countryside.

After leading a ragtag band of fighters to safety in the face of an army offensive in 1964, Marulanda founded the FARC as a peasant-based mobile guerrilla group, fighting for a more equitable distribution of land. The group would evolve by the late 1990s into a potent force with 17,000 fighters, along with thousands more urban militiamen.

A reclusive man, Marulanda was little known to most Colombians until the administration that preceded Uribe's, led by Andrés Pastrana, entered into peace negotiations with the rebel group. The leathery-faced commander, stooped and using a towel to wipe sweat from his brow, began to make appearances at talks that dissolved in 2002 after Pastrana accused the FARC of using a huge demilitarized zone to hide hostages, traffic cocaine, store arms and recruit fighters.

The FARC is blacklisted as a terrorist group by the United States and European nations, but Marulanda always characterized his group as a liberation force fighting a decadent, corrupt state. "We condemn kidnappings and extortion," he once told television reporters. "Ours is a political-military organization, and we have the support of the masses for change."