Popular Liberation Army
| Popular Liberation Army Ejército Popular de Liberación |
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|---|---|
| Participant in the Colombian armed conflict | |
Flag of the EPL
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| Active | 1967–present |
| Ideology |
Communism, Anti-Revisionism Marxism–Leninism, Hoxhaism; formerly Maoism |
| Leaders | David León (presumed), Francisco Caraballo (captured), Megateo † |
| Area of operations | Colombia, above all in Norte de Santander |
| Strength | 90 - 200 (Various estimates) |
The Popular Liberation Army (Spanish: Ejército Popular de Liberación, EPL), is a Colombian guerrilla group created in 1967. Most of its former members demobilized in 1991, forming the Esperanza, Paz y Libertad (Hope, Peace and Liberty) party, but a dissident faction, led by Megateo, continues operating. Victor Ramon Navarro Cervano, alias "Megateo," the leader of the last faction of the Popular Liberation Army (EPL), was killed in a military and police operation in Norte de Santander department in 2015.
The EPL was founded by the Communist Party of Colombia (Marxist–Leninist), PCC(ml), a 1967 offshoot of the main Colombian Communist Party that disagreed with the Soviet Union's ideological tendencies.
The new party created the EPL that same year, and implemented its strategy of promoting socialist revolution from a rural base in the countryside in order to launch a future offensive against urban centers, where it tried to insert urban cells, while simultaneously engaging in sabotage.
The EPL's first military operations were in the Córdoba Department, on the Caribbean, during the late 1960s. Internal dissension and the deaths of some of its key leaders during the 1970s weakened the EPL's operational capabilities.
The EPL's efforts were initially unsuccessful, some of the group's main leaders were killed in military operations during the 1970s, and it apparently did not gain as much intellectual sympathy or recruits as the larger guerrilla organizations (FARC, 19th of April Movement and ELN), even after the group announced in 1980 that it would abandon orthodox Maoism in favor of Hoxhaism. A small splinter group, the Pedro León Arboleda Movement, named after a deceased 1975 commander, had been created in 1979.
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