Nestor Paz Zamora Commission -- Splinter Group (Suspected)

Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional - Bolivia (ELN-B)

The National Liberation Army was founded by Ernesto "Che" Guevara.  Following his participation in Cuba's 1959 communist revolution, Guevara chose to export Communist insurgency internationally.  In 1965, Guevara arrived in the Congo with the intent to spark a Communist revolution.  Following his time in the Congo, Guevara left for Bolivia in late 1966, where he spearheaded the National Liberation Army.  Within a year, the National Liberation Army's leader was captured by U.S.-trained Bolivian security forces.  On October 9, 1967, a day after his capture; Che Guevara was executed.  <P> The National Liberation Army (ELN) continued its insurgency into the early 1970s.  Following the ideological lead of its founder, the National Liberation Army engaged in terrorism with the eventual aim of a overthrowing the Bolivian government.  Theoretically, the ELN would then establish a Communist state in Bolivia.  The insurgency was not successful and the ELN was eliminated by Bolivian security forces in the early 1970s.

Between 1990 and 1993, a new terrorist organization emerged in Bolivia.  The group claimed to be a re-constituted National Liberation Army.  However, given that the ELN had been dormant for more than a decade, this new organization was most likely not connected to the original ELN.

April 19 Movement -- Rival and Ally
Group of Popular Combatants (GPC) -- Ally (Suspected)
Jaime Bateman Cayon Group (JBC) -- Ally
People's Liberation Forces (Colombia) -- Ally
People's Revolutionary Army (Colombia) -- Splinter Group
Popular Liberation Army -- Rival and Ally
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) -- Rival and Ally
Simon Bolivar Guerilla Coordinating Board (CGSB) -- Umbrella Organization

Cuba (as of 2004); Kidnapping and Extortion

The ELN is a Cuban Revolution-inspired group, heavily influenced by the early actions and theories of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.  The ELN emerged following the overthrow of the Cuban government by Guevara and Castro in 1959.  The National Liberation Army was founded by two distinct groups.  The first group comprised of urban, left-wing intellectuals with strong ties to rural farmers.  They co-founded the group with a radicalized group of oil sector unionists from Barrancabermeja's oil industry.  Radical members of the Catholic clergy joined the group in late 1965.  This was the first time that Christians and Marxists had joined together in a Colombian revolutionary movement.  <P> The ELN's unique founding philosophy strongly emphasized socialism, mixing Castro-ism with the liberation theology of the Catholic Church.  More concretely, the ELN's self-appointed role was to represent the rural poor and decrease the foreign presence in Colombia.  The ELN's goal was to take power from the Colombian government and replace it with a more egalitarian "popular democracy" that would represent all Colombians equally under the law.  The ELN strongly opposed foreign investment, in part due to its location in an oil-rich area and its connections to trade unionists in the energy sector.  <P> The Colombian Department of Administrative Security estimates that in 1998 alone, the ELN obtained U.S. $84 million from ransoms and U.S. $255 million from extortion. Employees of oil companies constitute a large percentage of the ELN's targets. <br /><br />The kidnapping and extortion of oil company employees is ELN's primary source of income.  This is a natural legacy of ELN's formation in an area rich with oil wells and oil companies.  A third, more recent source of income is the collection of a "property" tax from coca and poppy cultivators.  It is not known whether the collection of property taxes is a centralized or decentralized activity.<br />