The FARC dissidents, led by ‘Iván Mordisco’, have announced the creation of the Commander Isaías Pardo Central Block through a video addressed to the public. This new structure, according to Marlon Vásquez, commander of the self-proclaimed Central General Staff, will operate in the departments of Valle del Cauca, Huila, Tolima and Quindío.
The announcement of this formation comes in response to what they have described as a “military aggression” in recent days against the Western Bloc Commander Jacobo Arenas. In these operations, carried out by the Fifth Division of the National Army in the departments of Huila and Tolima, 7 people lost their lives, 22 were captured and 6 people were recovered, including minors.
“We want to announce to the Colombian people the formation of the Commander Isaías Pardo Central Block as a response and in solidarity with the Commander Jacobo Arenas Western Block, on whom a major military offensive is publicly announced,” said alias Marlon Vásquez, who will lead this new structure.
Iván Jacobo Idrobo Arredondo, his real name, is one of the men closest to alias Iván Mordisco, the top commander of the EMC Farc. Previously, he had been appointed head of the Western Coordinating Command, operating in the departments of Nariño, Cauca and Valle, precisely where the ceasefire agreed upon in the midst of peace talks between this guerrilla and the Government of President Gustavo Petro was suspended.
In his statement, Vásquez compared the suspension of the ceasefire with historical moments of the war of the extinct FARC that led to rethinking its structure since its formation. «It was the military offensive against 48 peasants on May 27, 1964 that forced the deployment and creation of the largest revolutionary army on the continent. It was the breakdown of the Caguán talks in February 2002 that tripled the presence of the FARC EP in the national territory, and recently it was the announcement of bombings, machine gunning and annihilations against the first commander Armando Ríos in 2016 that forced the deployment political and military of this front to lead the national plan for the reconstruction of the FARC EP, of which we are heirs,” he assured.
Although the EMC Farc maintains that they have been planning the new bloc for two years, they attribute its formation to the partial breakdown of the ceasefire, ordered by the national government after a violent attack by that organization against the indigenous communities in Cauca.
«Today again, out of arrogance and military pride, in search of victories that they have not achieved in these more than seven years, they unilaterally break the ceasefire with our organization and to this we respond again with a political and military deployment and the formation of the Central Block,” said Vásquez in a video released by the armed structure.