Greetings from Extraordinary Meeting of FARC-EP Commanders: The struggle continues

We greet the guarantor and accompanying countries of the peace process — Cuba, Norway, Venezuela and Chile, the representatives of the United Nations, the European Union, the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross], other international bodies and individual and collective organizations of other countries, reiterating our appreciation for their work in trying to bring to fruition a peace process in which they believed and invested their expectations by giving of their time, skills and optimism with detachment. We hope that in the future we will find ourselves together again under circumstances in which the other side acts without the perfidy which it did in this attempted reconciliation, when it tore to shreds the Agreements that it signed with the insurgency, without regard for the words and commitments that they entailed to the international community.

We greet the Bolivarian Continental Movement, the labor and trade union movement, young people, women, peasants, Afro-Colombian, Indigenous and ethnic peoples in general, environmentalists, the communal and neighborhood movement, the LGBTI community, Christians and members of other religious creeds, academic and scientific, sports, artistic and cultural sectors; with whom we hope to continue combining wills to reach a new, just social order that embraces, with the force of love, the dreams of dignified life and good government that the people yearn for; to all the inhabitants of our beautiful communal land.

We greet the members of the Clandestine Communist Party and the Bolivarian Movement, the Colombian Communist Party, the Patriotic Union, who have remained in their trenches of combat despite adversity. And to the Party of the Rose [the Common Alternative Revolutionary Force (FARC) political party], we express with firm militancy — as Comandante Marulanda said — that if we are revolutionaries, sooner or later we will have to meet along the way.

We greet the organizations and social movements, the members of Defendamos La Paz and the universe of the dissatisfied, whom we call upon now more than ever to maintain and multiply their heartfelt commitment and relentlessly struggle for change, motivated by the great cause of peace with social justice and sovereignty, for a total peace that involves all armed actors and forges a New Alternative Government to save the country from the general crisis.

We salute the National Liberation Army (ELN), for we value their persistent struggle and continued search for a just and sovereign Colombia, recognizing the efforts they have made to chart a path of peace through dialogue, which has been truncated by the treachery of the State; the same one which now makes us wield our weapons again. We express with sincere fraternity that we will spare no effort in continuing to open roads for the unity of the guerrilla movement as a factor in the unity of the revolutionary struggle and as a devastating battering ram against the fascist regime.

With deep affection and solidarity we greet the political prisoners and prisoners of war, reiterating the firm decision to continue seeking their freedom, for which we will redouble actions in the legal and humanitarian field. Through you, we also greet the social prisoners with our wishes that they can resolve their judicial situation, improve prison conditions and respect for human rights. And we greet the INPEC [National Penitentiary and Prison Institute] guards who recognize their exploited status as part of the excluded sectors, and call on them to identify themselves with the cause of emancipation and show solidarity with those who are deprived of their liberty by raising their voices to demand justice.

We salute and extend the hand of friendship to those who have remained under arms, defending the ideals of a different homeland without further misery, inequality and political exclusion, and we recognize in you the capacity for firmness in your decision to fight and to safeguard principles in spite of all vicissitudes. We reiterate once again our decision to join forces for a New Colombia.

We greet the men and women of this homeland, who believe that another Colombia is possible and who have fought and continue to fight with patience and intelligence for peace, from different political and social perspectives: Iván Cepeda, Álvaro Leyva , Roy Barreras, Piedad Córdoba, Juan Fernando Cristo, Gustavo Petro, Ángela María Robledo, Angélica Lozano, Ernesto Samper, Jorge Enrique Robledo, Aida Abella, Father Bernardo Hoyos, Pablo Catatumbo, a Antonio Sanguino, Jaime Caicedo, José Luis Arias, the Afro-descendant and Indigenous peasant leadership, Professor Alfredo Molano, the defenders of political prisoners and human rights, Imelda Daza and those who boldly joined the Voces de Paz, among many other personalities, who became the moral fire of the cause of reconciliation. We hope to find ourselves together in that great coalition of the forces of life, social justice and democracy that drives a new dialogue to achieve true, definitive, stable and lasting peace, for which the country cries out, having as its premise that only through an Open Constituent Process and an Alternative Government imbued with humanism can we pave the way towards a scenario of coexistence in which the interests of the people and true national development are prioritized.