Carlos Pizarro Leongómez
Carlos Pizarro Leongómez was the fourth commander of the Colombian guerrilla group 19th of April Movement. Pizarro ran for president of Colombia after the demobilization of M-19 that transformed the group into the political party, M-19 Democratic Alliance. Pizarro was assassinated on 26 April 1990, he was the son of Margot Leongómez Matamoros. Raised in the city of Cali, He studied in several high schools and a boarding school in Bogotá where he graduated as Bachelor, he was admitted in the faculty of Law of the Pontifical Xavierian University where he participated in the only student strike of the institution, was expelled as a result. Pizarro-Leongomez entered the National University of Colombia, where he completed his studies in Law and participated in political left-wing activism, he joined the Communist Youth Party. He was sent to violent areas to undertake social work, he enlisted in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia ) at the age of 18. Because of disagreements with the group's leaders, he left FARC and with Jaime Bateman, Álvaro Fayad "the Turk", Luis Otero Cifuentes, Vera Grabe and others, founded the April 19 Movement, at the end of 1973.
The M-19 was an urban and social democratic guerrilla group. On 17 January 1974 the M-19 stole Simón Bolívar's sword from the Quinta de Bolívar; the sword became the symbol of the guerrillas' fight under the slogan of "Bolivar your sword returns to the fight". In 1979 Pizarro was detected after a crude attack of the army, he and several companions were taken to a military base. Soon they transferred to the jail of La Picota of Bogotá, he remained in jail for three years. He and his companions were freed in 1982 at the beginning of the government of Belisario Betancur after being approved by absolute majority in the Congress under an amnesty law. After the amnesty, Pizarro continued his guerrilla activities insisting that the government establish a dialogue of peace. On 24 August 1984 the sign of the Agreements of Corinto, after an attack that suffered during an ambush of the army he got hurt next to its companion. In spite of the intention to lay down the arms, Pizarro ordered new battles against the army after they attacked his main amnestied heads or in truce and the camping in truce in Yarumales.
At the beginning of 1985 in quality of supreme commander, Pizarro announces defeat the truce and the resumption of operations of the guerrilla. On 6 November of that same year, Alvaro Fayad orders the taking of the Palace of Justice in Bogotá kidnapping to the magistrates of the high courts, the objective of the taking was the judgment of the president to fail to fulfill the Agreements of Corinto; the government ignoring the requests of the group orders the army to attack the building, without surviving the guerrillas nor the hostages who requested ceasefire and the respect to the life. Pizarro became commander of M-19 following the Palace of Justice siege. Prior to 1986, Pizarro was the movement's military commander and credited with moving the group in a more militant direction. In January 1986, from the Cauca Andes mountains, Pizarro announced the organization of the "America" Battalion, composed of fighters from the National Guerrilla Coordinating Group and foreign fighters from other Latin American countries.
The "America" Battalion was to operate much like the CNG, but on an international level that would include fighters from all over Latin America. The group however was unable to operate and consolidate due to deportation of suspicious foreigners in the Cauca Department; the group's victories included the seizure of neighboring areas such as Belalcázar in August 1986 and Inza in September 1986. After 19 years in operation the group, commanded by Pizarro, began negotiating with the Colombian government, in April 1989, for demobilization conditional on certain grounds; the primary request of the group was a full pardon for all prior activities as well as the right to form a political party. M-19 in return agreed to turn over all weapons and not to return to violent activities, the demobilization date was set for mid-December 1989; the accord was signed in the town of Santo Domingo by Jaime Pardo Rueda, adviser to the president, Raul Orejuela Bueno, Minister of Interior and Pizarro, Commander of M-19.
Following the signing of the accord, M-19 announced Pizarro would run as the group's presidential nominee in the 1990 elections. He was assassinated shortly thereafter aboard an Avianca Airlines Boeing 727 plane flying from Bogotá to Barranquilla on April 26, 1990 by a young paramilitary thug named Gerardo Gutierrez Uribe, aka "Jerry". Gutierrez Uribe himself was shot dead by Pizarro's security detail during the shoot-out. During the 1990 presidential campaign, three candidates were assassinated: Luis Carlos Galán, the leading Liberal candidate, Bernardo Jaramillo Ossa for the political party Unión Patriótica, Pizarro. Following the assassination, Antonio Navarro Wolff accepted the nomination of AD/M-19. Wolff would finish third in the race, with 12.7% of vote, losing out to César Gaviria who appointed him the position of health minister. Chief Prosecutor Alfonso Gomez would charge Carlos Castaño, former leader of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, for the deaths of Jaramillo Ossa and Pizarro on May 24, 1999.
Carlos Pizarro is portrayed by actor Tiberio Cruz in the Colombian TV series Escobar
EE-9 Cascavel
The EE-9 Cascavel is a six-wheeled Brazilian armoured car developed for reconnaissance. It was engineered by Engesa in 1970 as a replacement for Brazil's ageing fleet of M8 Greyhounds; the vehicle was first fitted with the Greyhound's 37mm main gun, subsequently, a French turret adopted from the Panhard AML-90. Models carry unique Engesa turrets with a Belgian 90mm Cockerill Mk.3 cannon produced under licence as the EC-90. The Cascavel shares many components with the EE-11 Urutu, its armoured personnel carrier counterpart. Rights to the design were sold to the United States via the FMC Corporation. About 2,767 Cascavels and Urutus were manufactured before Engesa ceased operations in 1993. Throughout the early 1960s, Brazil's bilateral defence agreements with the United States ensured easy access to a postwar surplus of American military equipment, including a number of World War II-vintage M8 Greyhound armoured cars; the Brazilian arms industry limited itself to restoring and maintaining this obsolete hardware until 1964, when American involvement in the Vietnam War placed restrictions on the amount of defence technology available for export.
Brazil responded by creating an indigenous import substitution programme in 1968 aimed at reproducing US equipment in service. By 1970 the Brazilian Army was developing an updated Greyhound known by its Portuguese initials, CRR. Engesa an obscure civilian engineering firm, took over the project and by November 1970 a prototype was completed; the new EE-9 Cascavel entered the pre-production phase between 1972 and 1973. Assembly lines for the Cascavel and its armoured personnel counterpart, the EE-11 Urutu, were opened in 1974; the hulls were purchased by the Brazilian Army, but mounted the same antiquated 37mm cannon and turret recycled from its elderly Greyhounds. To compete with more formidable armament available on the international market, Engesa marketed a modified Cascavel with an automatic transmission and the same 90mm low-pressure gun found on the Panhard AML; this model, intended for export, drew interest in the Middle East and twenty were purchased by Qatar. The Qatari Cascavel sale proved to be a major success for Engesa, Brazil's first successful inroad into the Arabian arms trade.
Abu Dhabi followed suit with an order for two hundred Cascavels in 1977. Both Iraq and Libya chose the Cascavel in preference to the Panhard AML-90 or ERC-90 Sagaie, with the former negotiating a $400 million deal for the delivery of two hundred Cascavels and two hundred Urutus. Following the Libyan sale, Engesa unveiled a new production model carrying a Belgian designed, Cockerill main gun manufactured under licence as the EC-90 in Brazil; the Armed Forces of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya deployed a number of EE-9 Cascavels against Egyptian tanks T-54/55s or T-62s, during the Libyan–Egyptian War in 1977. Libyan Cascavels saw action in Chad, where they engaged AML-90s of the French Foreign Legion and French Marines. An unknown number of these armoured cars were donated to the Polisario Front and Togo, while others remained in service as late as the 2011 Libyan Civil War. Cascavels were still in use during the 2016 battle of Sirte against the Islamic State. Chad's Transitional Government of National Unity received five EE-9 Cascavels from Libya in 1986.
Over the course of the Chadian–Libyan conflict, seventy-nine ex-Libyan Cascavels were captured or recovered from the Aouzou Strip by the Chadian military, which continues to hold them in storage. During the Iran–Iraq War, EE-9 Cascavels were operated by Iraqi garrisons near the Persian Gulf; the armoured cars were able to outmanoeuvre the heavier Iranian tanks and tracked combat vehicles on the flat, sandy terrain near the coastal region. Coalition air strikes destroyed several north of Kuwait City in Operation Desert Storm. Following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the surviving fleet was condemned for scrap. Locally modified EE-9 were refurbished by Iraqi militias of the Popular Mobilization Forces, with some having their 90mm replaced or supplemented by DShk or ZPU machine guns, 107mm Type 63 rockets or a 2A28 Grom gun, they were used against Islamic State forces. Zimbabwe procured ninety EE-9 Cascavels in 1984 as a suitable replacement for the Eland Mk7. At least one Zimbabwean Cascavel squadron deployed into Mozambique during the Mozambican Civil War to protect Harare's primary commercial links in Tete Province.
The armoured cars provided armed escort for local convoys and patrolled the roads to preempt attacks by South African-backed Mozambican National Resistance insurgents. During Zimbabwe's intervention in the Second Congo War, Ilyushin Il-76s commandeered from local charter firms were used to airlift twelve Cascavels to N'djili Airport. From there they subsequently engaged Rwandan troops advancing on Kinshasha; some were abandoned by Zimbabwean troops in the Congo after being sabotaged beyond repair, while four others were captured by rebel factions. Few remain in present service due to lack of funds to source new parts from Brazil; the EE-9 Cascavel has found favour with many armies due to its simplified design and use of components ubiquitous to civilian industry. Its low cost next to comparable Western armoured cars makes it an attractive purchase to developing nations in particular. At the height of the Cold War, the commercial nature of Engesa sales—devoid of any political supplier restrain
Julio César Turbay Ayala
Julio César Turbay Ayala was a Colombian lawyer who served as the 25th President of Colombia from 1978 to 1982. He held the positions of Foreign Minister and Ambassador to the United States. Turbay was born in a rich neighborhood of “Voto Nacional”, Bogotá, on June 18, 1916, his father, Antonio Amín Turbay, was a businessman who emigrated from Lebanon. His mother, Rosaura Ayala, was a peasant from the province of Cundinamarca. Turbay’s father, a hard working merchant, had built a fortune, which he lost during the civil war of the Thousand Days War. Turbay Ayala completed his secondary studies in Bogotá, but never attended college, instead became an autodidact, a fact that his political adversaries always poked fun at, he received a number of honorary degrees in life. Turbay started his political career in the Liberal Party as a councilman in the town of Usme in 1936, he would be appointed as major of the city of Girardot, councilman in the town of Engativá in 1938 along with fellow politicians Alfonso López Michelsen and Álvaro Gómez Hurtado.
The next few years he spent as a member of the Assembly of Cundinamarca. In 1943 he was chosen for congress as a Chamber Representative, he was a leader of the opposition to conservative governments, in 1953 became a member of the national directive of the liberal party. With the rise to power of the military Junta that ousted dictator Gustavo Rojas PInilla, Turbay was appointed Minister of Mines and Petroleum, he was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs by president Alberto Lleras Camargo until 1961. He was known as a strong defender of the National Front, was chosen as senator for four consecutive periods between 1962 and 1974, he served as interim president in 1967. He was appointed as ambassador the UN, United Kingdom, the United States, he first attempted to become a presidential candidate in 1974, but ended up supporting López Michelsen, who won the elections that year. The sector supporting López Michelsen was instrumental in Turbay's presidential campaign of 1978, after a narrow election he became president of Colombia in 1978.
In response to an increase in guerrilla activity from the 19th of April Movement and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, as well as to the Colombian Communist Party's attempts to extend its political influence and a 1977 national strike, a 1978 decree, known as the Security Statute, was implemented by Turbay's administration. The Security Statute gave the military an increased degree of freedom of action in urban areas, to detain and judge suspected guerrillas or their collaborators before military tribunals. Human rights organizations, newspaper columnists, political personalities and opposition groups complained about an increase in the number of arbitrary detentions and acts of torture as a result. Although the Security Statute benefited some of the counterinsurgency operations of the security forces, such as the capture of most of the M-19's command structure and many of the guerrilla group's urban cells, the measure became unpopular inside and outside Colombia, promoting some measure of public sympathy for the victims of the real or perceived military abuses whether they were guerrillas or not, was phased out towards the end of the Turbay administration.
The M-19's late 1980 takeover of the Dominican Republic's embassy, during which sixteen ambassadors were held hostage for 61 days, presented a complicated challenge to the Turbay administration. The incident soon spread throughout worldwide headlines, as ambassadors from the United States of America, Costa Rica, Peru and Venezuela had been taken hostage, as well as Colombia's top representative to the Holy See. Turbay, despite pressure from military and political sectors, avoided deciding to solve the crisis through the use of direct military force, instead agreed to let the M-19 rebels travel to Cuba; the rebels received USD 1 million as payment, instead of the initial $50 million that they had demanded from the government. That a peaceful resolution to the crisis was found has been considered as a positive aspect of Turbay's administration, as seen by and contemporary commentators and historians. In particular, former M-19 members, including Rosemberg Pabón, the commander of the guerrilla group's operative unit at the time recognized and respected Turbay's handling of the situation.
Turbay was a supporter of president Álvaro Uribe. He opposed the possibility of presidential reelection in Colombia, but changed his views, contributing to founding a movement known as Patria Nueva, in order to help promote Uribe's 2006 reelection aspirations. Turbay was seen as being at odds with some of Uribe's policies, however, in particular due to Turbay's activism in favor of the implementation and negotiation of a prisoner exchange with the FARC guerrilla group; as part of this effort, Turbay participated in several meetings with the relatives of FARC hostages and signed several declarations of support, together with other former presidents such as Alfonso López Michelsen and Ernesto Samper Pizano. On August 31, 2005, Turbay proposed that the government could exchange each jailed guerrilla for 10 "economic" hostages and one "political" hostage. Turbay married his niece, Nydia Quintero Turbay, on July 1, 1948, they had four children together: Julio César, Diana and María Victoria. However, their marriage was annulled by the Roman Catholic Church, in 1986 h
Right-wing paramilitarism in Colombia
Right-wing paramilitary groups in Colombia are paramilitary groups acting in opposition to revolutionary Marxist-Leninist guerrilla forces and their allies among the civilian population. These paramilitary groups control the large majority of the illegal drug trade of cocaine and other substances and are the parties responsible for most of the human rights violations in the latter half of the ongoing Colombian Armed Conflict. According to several international human rights and governmental organizations, right-wing paramilitary groups have been responsible for at least 70 to 80% of political murders in Colombia per year; the remaining political murders are committed by leftist guerrillas and government forces. The first paramilitary groups were organized by the Colombian military following recommendations made by U. S. military counterinsurgency advisers who were sent to Colombia during the Cold War to combat leftist political activists and armed guerrilla groups. The development of more modern paramilitary groups has involved elite landowners, drug traffickers, members of the security forces and multinational corporations.
Paramilitary violence today is principally targeted towards left-wing insurgents and their supporters. In October 1959, the United States sent a "Special Survey Team", composed of counterinsurgency experts, to investigate Colombia's internal security situation; this was due to the increased prevalence of armed communist groups in rural Colombia which formed during and after La Violencia. In February 1962, a Fort Bragg top-level U. S. Special Warfare team, headed by Special Warfare Center commander General William P. Yarborough, visited Colombia for a second survey. In a secret supplement to his report to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Yarborough encouraged the creation and deployment of a paramilitary force to commit sabotage and terrorist acts against communists: A concerted country team effort should be made now to select civilian and military personnel for clandestine training in resistance operations in case they are needed later; this should be done with a view toward development of a civil and military structure for exploitation in the event the Colombian internal security system deteriorates further.
This structure should be used to pressure toward reforms known to be needed, perform counter-agent and counter-propaganda functions and as necessary execute paramilitary, sabotage and/or terrorist activities against known communist proponents. It should be backed by the United States." The new counter-insurgency policy was instituted as Plan Lazo in 1962 and called for both military operations and civic action programs in violent areas. Following Yarborough's recommendations, the Colombian military recruited civilians into paramilitary "civil defense" groups which worked alongside the military in its counter-insurgency campaign, as well as in civilian intelligence networks to gather information on guerrilla activity. Among other policy recommendations, the US team advised that "in order to shield the interests of both Colombian and US authorities against'interventionist' charges any special aid given for internal security was to be sterile and covert in nature." It was not until the early part of the 1980s that the Colombian government attempted to move away from the counterinsurgency strategy represented by Plan Lazo and Yarborough's 1962 recommendations.
The first legal framework for the training of civilians by military or police forces for security purposes was formally established by the Colombian presidential decree 3398 of 1965, issued during a state of siege, which defined the defense of the nation as requiring "the organization and tasking of all of the residents of the country and its natural resources...to guarantee National Independence and institutional stability." This decree temporarily allowed the formation of private security forces used to protect large landowners, cattle ranchers, government officials. Decree 3398 was succeeded by Law 48 of 1968, a piece of permanent legislation that gave the Colombian executive the power to establish civil patrols by decree and allowed the Defense Ministry to supply their members with military-grade weaponry. Human Rights Watch has pointed out that "although few civil patrols were formally created by the president, the military cited Law 48 as the legal foundation for their support for all paramilitaries."A series of Colombian military manuals from the 1960s encouraged the creation of paramilitary organizations to help fight guerrillas.
In 1969, the Reglamento de EJC 3-10, Reservado, de 1969 stated that the armed forces should organize "self-defense committees" which were defined as "military-type organizations made up of civilian personnel in the combat zone, which are trained and equipped to undertake operations against guerrilla groups that threaten an area or to operate in coordination with combat troops". These committees were to maintain contact with local military officers, keeping a high level awareness about any suspicious communist action in their communities, in particular those of suspected "guerrilla supporters"; the manual allowed military personnel to dress in civilian clothes when necessary to infiltrate areas of suspected guerrilla influence and for civilian helpers to travel alongside military units. Separately, in order to help gain the trust of local citizens, the military was advised to participate in the daily activities of the community where and when applicable. Between 1978 and 1979, an alleged far-right paramilitary organization known as the American Anti-Communist Alliance started a terror campaign against Colombian communists, which included bombings and assassinations.
It was revealed that the organization had direct links to the Colombian National Army. Contem
Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic is a country located in the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean region. It occupies the eastern five-eighths of the island, which it shares with the nation of Haiti, making Hispaniola one of two Caribbean islands, along with Saint Martin, that are shared by two sovereign states; the Dominican Republic is the second-largest Caribbean nation by area at 48,671 square kilometers, third by population with 10 million people, of which three million live in the metropolitan area of Santo Domingo, the capital city. Christopher Columbus landed on the island on December 5, 1492, which the native Taíno people had inhabited since the 7th century; the colony of Santo Domingo became the site of the first permanent European settlement in the Americas, the oldest continuously inhabited city, the first seat of the Spanish colonial rule in the New World. After more than three hundred years of Spanish rule the Dominican people declared independence in November 1821.
The leader of the independence movement José Núñez de Cáceres, intended the Dominican nation to unite with the country of Gran Colombia, but no longer under Spain's custody the newly independent Dominicans were forcefully annexed by Haiti in February 1822. Independence came 22 years after victory in the Dominican War of Independence in 1844. Over the next 72 years the Dominican Republic experienced internal conflicts and a brief return to colonial status before permanently ousting Spanish rule during the Dominican War of Restoration of 1863–1865. A United States occupation lasted eight years between 1916 and 1924, a subsequent calm and prosperous six-year period under Horacio Vásquez was followed by the dictatorship of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo until 1961. A civil war in 1965, the country's last, was ended by U. S. military occupation and was followed by the authoritarian rule of Joaquín Balaguer, the rules of Antonio Guzmán & Salvador Jorge Blanco. Since 1996, the Dominican Republic has moved toward representative democracy and has been led by Leonel Fernández for most of the time since 1996.
Danilo Medina, the Dominican Republic's current president, succeeded Fernandez in 2012, winning 51% of the electoral vote over his opponent ex-president Hipólito Mejía. The Dominican Republic has the ninth-largest economy in Latin America and is the largest economy in the Caribbean and Central American region. Over the last two decades, the Dominican Republic has had one of the fastest-growing economies in the Americas – with an average real GDP growth rate of 5.4% between 1992 and 2014. GDP growth in 2014 and 2015 reached 7.3 and 7.0% the highest in the Western Hemisphere. In the first half of 2016 the Dominican economy grew 7.4% continuing its trend of rapid economic growth. Recent growth has been driven by construction, manufacturing and mining; the country is the site of the second largest gold mine in the Pueblo Viejo mine. Private consumption has been strong, as a result of low inflation, job creation, as well as a high level of remittances; the Dominican Republic is the most visited destination in the Caribbean.
The year-round golf courses are major attractions. A geographically diverse nation, the Dominican Republic is home to both the Caribbean's tallest mountain peak, Pico Duarte, the Caribbean's largest lake and point of lowest elevation, Lake Enriquillo; the island has an average temperature of biological diversity. The country is the site of the first cathedral, castle and fortress built in the Americas, located in Santo Domingo's Colonial Zone, a World Heritage Site. Music and sport are of great importance in the Dominican culture, with Merengue and Bachata as the national dance and music, baseball as the favorite sport; the "Dominican" word comes from the Latin Dominicus. However, the island has this name by Santo Domingo de Guzmán, founder of the Order of the Dominicans; the Dominicans established a house of high studies in the island of Santo Domingo that today is known as the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo and dedicated themselves to the protection of the native taínos of the island, who were subjected to slavery, to the education of the inhabitants of the island.
For most of its history, up until independence, the country was known as Santo Domingo—the name of its present capital and patron saint, Saint Dominic—and continued to be known as such in English until the early 20th century. The residents were called "Dominicans", the adjective form of "Domingo", the revolutionaries named their newly independent country "Dominican Republic". In the national anthem of the Dominican Republic, the term "Dominicans" does not appear; the author of its lyrics, Emilio Prud'Homme uses the poetic term "Quisqueyans". The word "Quisqueya" derives from a native tongue of the Taino Indians and means "Mother of the lands", it is used in songs as another name for the country. The name of the country is shortened to "the D. R." The Arawakan-speaking Taíno moved into Hispaniola from the north east region of what is now known as South America, displacing earlier inhabitants, c. AD 650, they engaged in hunting and gathering. The fierce Caribs drove the Taíno to the northeastern Caribbean during much of the 15th century.
The estimates of Hispaniola's population in 1492 vary including one hundred thousand, three hundred thousand, an
Left-wing nationalism
Left-wing nationalism or leftist nationalism known as socialist nationalism, describes a form of nationalism based upon social equality, popular sovereignty and national self-determination. Left-wing nationalism can include anti-imperialism and national liberation movements, it stands in contrast to right-wing nationalism and rejects ethno-nationalism to this same end, although some forms of left-wing nationalism have included a platform of racialism, favoring a homogeneous society, a rejection of minorities and opposition to immigration. Notable left-wing nationalist movements in history have included Subhas Chandra Bose's Indian National Army, which promoted independence of India from Britain. Marxism identifies the nation as a socioeconomic construction created after the collapse of the feudal system, utilized to create the capitalist economic system. Classical Marxists have unanimously claimed that nationalism is a "bourgeois phenomenon", not associated with Marxism. In certain instances, Marxism has supported nationalist movements if they were in the interest of class struggle, but rejects other nationalist movements deemed to distract workers from their necessary goal of defeating the bourgeoisie.
Marxists have evaluated certain nations to be "progressive" and other nations to be "reactionary". Joseph Stalin, for instance, supported interpretations of Marx tolerating the use of proletarian nationalism that promoted class struggle within an internationalist framework. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels interpreted issues concerning nationality on a social evolutionary basis. Marx and Engels claim that the creation of the modern nation state is the result of the replacement of feudalism with the capitalist mode of production. With the replacement of feudalism with capitalism, capitalists sought to unify and centralize populations' culture and language within states in order to create conditions conducive to a market economy in terms of having a common language to coordinate the economy, to contain a large enough population in the state to insure an internal division of labour and to contain a large enough territory for a state to maintain a viable economy. Though Marx and Engels saw the origins of the nation state and national identity as bourgeois in nature, both believed that the creation of the centralized state as a result of the collapse of feudalism and creation of capitalism had created positive social conditions to stimulate class struggle.
Marx followed Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's view that the creation of individual-centred civil society by states as a positive development in that it dismantled previous religious-based society and freed individual conscience. In The German Ideology, Marx claims that although civil society is a capitalist creation and represents bourgeois class rule, it is beneficial to the proletariat because it is unstable in that neither states nor the bourgeoisie can control a civil society. Marx described this in detail in The German Ideology, saying: Civil society embraces the whole material intercourse of individuals within a definite stage of development of productive forces, it embraces the whole commercial and industrial life of a given stage, insofar, transcends the state and the nation, though on the other hand, it must assert itself in its foreign relations as nationality and inwardly must organize itself as a state. Marx and Engels evaluated progressive nationalism as involving the destruction of feudalism and believed that it was a beneficial step, but evaluated nationalism detrimental to the evolution of international class struggle as reactionary and necessary to be destroyed.
Marx and Engels believed that certain nations that could not consolidate viable nation-states should be assimilated into other nations that were more viable and further in Marxian evolutionary economic progress. On the issue of nations and the proletariat, The Communist Manifesto says: The working men have no country. We can not take from them. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word. National differences and antagonism between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto; the supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. United action, of the leading civilised countries at least, is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.
In general, Marx preferred internationalism and interaction between nations in class struggle, saying in Preface to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy that "ne nation can and should learn from others". Though Marx and Engels criticized Irish unrest for delaying a worker's revolution in England, both Marx and Engels believed that Ireland was oppressed by Great Britain, but that the Irish people would better serve their own interests by joining proponents of class struggle in Europe as Marx and Engels claimed that the socialist workers of Europe were the natural allies of Ireland. Marx and Engels believed that it was in Britain's best interest to let Ireland go as the Ireland issue
Gustavo Petro
Gustavo Francisco Petro Urrego is a Colombian politician and presidential candidate who served as mayor of Bogotá. As a left-wing politician, Petro was a member of the guerrilla group M-19 in the 1980s, which evolved into the Alianza Democrática M-19, a political party in which Petro participated as a member of the national congress in the 1990s. Petro served as a senator as a member of the Alternative Democratic Pole party following the 2006 legislative elections with the second largest vote in the country. In 2009, he resigned his position to aspire to the presidency of Colombia in the 2010 Colombian presidential election, finishing fourth in the race. After problems and ideological differences with the leaders of the Alternative Democratic Pole, he founded the left-wing Progresistas movement to compete for the mayoralty of Bogotá. On October 30, 2011, he was elected Mayor of Bogotá in the local elections of the city, position that he assumed on January 1, 2012. On May 27, 2018 he came second in the first round of the presidential election with over 25% of the vote and lost to Iván Duque Márquez in the run-off election on June 17.
Petro was born in rural Ciénaga de Oro, in the department of Córdoba, in 1960. His parents were farmers. Seeking a better future, Petro's family decided to migrate to the more prosperous Colombian inland town of Zipaquirá – just north of Bogotá during the 1970s. Petro studied at the Colegio de Hermanos de La Salle, where he founded the student newspaper Carta al Pueblo. At the age of 18 he became a member of the 19th of April Movement, was involved in activities. During his time in 19 April Petro became a leader, was elected ombudsman of Zipaquirá in 1981 and councilman from 1984 to 1986. At a young age Petro became a member of the 19th of April Movement, a guerrilla group that emerged in 1974 in opposition to the National Front coalition after allegations of fraud in the 1970 presidential elections. In 1985, Petro was arrested by the army for the crime of illegal possession of arms, he was sentenced to 18 months in prison. Following the M-19's infamous Palace of Justice Siege Petro used his influence within M-19 to promote peace talks with the government, helping to bring about the eventual dismantling of M-19 in 1990, the subsequent amnesty for its members.
After M-19 disbanded, Petro graduated with a degree in economics from the Universidad Externado de Colombia and began graduate studies at the Escuela Superior de Administración Pública. He earned a master's degree in economics from the Universidad Javeriana, he traveled to Belgium, enrolling in graduate studies in Economy and Human Rights in Université catholique de Louvain. He has unfinished studies towards a doctoral degree in public administration from the University of Salamanca, in Spain. After the demobilization of the M-19 guerrilla movement, former members of the group formed a political party called the M-19 Democratic Alliance which won a significant number of seats in the Chamber of Representatives of Colombia in 1991, representing the Cundinamarca Department. In 2002, Petro was elected to the Chamber of Representatives of Colombia representing Bogotá, this time as a member of the Vía Alterna political movement he founded with former guerrilla colleague Antonio Navarro Wolff and other former M-19 guerrilla members.
During this period he was named "Best Congressman", both by his own Congress colleagues and the press. As a member of Vía Alterna, Petro created an electoral coalition with the Frente Social y Político to form the Independent Democratic Pole, which in 2005 fused with the Alternativa Democrática to form the Alternative Democratic Pole, joining a large number of leftist political figures. In 2006, Petro was reelected Senator of Colombia, mobilizing the second highest voter turnout in the country. During this year he exposed the Parapolitics scandal, accusing members and followers of the government of mingling with paramilitary groups in order to "reclaim" Colombia. Senator Petro has vehemently opposed the government of Álvaro Uribe. In 2005, while a member of the Chamber of Representatives of Colombia, Petro denounced the lottery businesswoman Enilse López; as of May 2009, she is imprisoned and under investigation for ties to the paramilitary group United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia. Senator Petro alleged that the AUC financially contributed to the presidential campaign of Álvaro Uribe in 2002.
Uribe refuted these statements by Petro but, during his presidential reelection campaign in 2006, admitted to having received financial support from Enilse López. During Álvaro Uribe's second term as president, Petro encouraged debate on the Parapolitics scandal. In February 2007 Petro began a public verbal dispute with President Uribe when Petro suggested that the president should have recused himself from negotiating the demobilization process of paramilitaries in Colombia. President Uribe responded by accusing Petro of being a "terrorist in civilian clothing" and by summoning the opposition to an open debate. On April 17, 2007, Senator Petro began a debate in Congress about CONVIVIR and the development of paramilitarism in Antioquia Department. During a two-hour speech he revealed a variety of documents demonstrating the relationship between members of the Colombian military, the current political leadership and paramilitary groups. Petro criticized the actions of Álvaro Uribe a
