Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN)
November 2024
Dear comrades,
We greatly appreciate the invitation to participate in this event, for the National Liberation Army -ELN- it is of invaluable recognition the effort to bring together the different rebel voices, which throughout the world raise the flags of dignity and the struggle of the peoples. To all the organizations present, sisters and brothers, and especially to the comrades of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, we extend our most sincere revolutionary greetings. In 1962, on the initiative of 11 comrades who formed the Pro-National Liberation Brigade José Antonio Galán, they travel to revolutionary Cuba for training, which fulfilled an internationalist mission in the heart of the first socialist revolution of Our America. On July 4, 1964 the first march of the 17 combatants took place, led by Commander Fabio Vásquez Castaño in the communal area, where our political, military and revolutionary project was born. Then on January 7, 1965, with the capture of the municipality of Simacota, located in the northeast of Colombia, the ELN made itself known to the people of Colombia and the world with the reading of the first manifesto. Those first combatants were the ones who tattooed our hearts and souls with the first slogans of: Not one step back…Liberation or death! -NUPALOM. On July 4, 2024, the ELN celebrated 60 years of public existence.
The ELN of today is not the same ELN that Colombian history gave birth to 60 years ago. No revolutionary organization is static or monolithic. As a result of successes and mistakes, of deep crises and their overcoming, of a constant practice of self-criticism, the ELN has evolved. We have gone from the simple to the complex; from the unique to the diverse; from immediacy to integral and strategic reflection; and from pure theory to our own thinking built from reasoned practice. The ELN in its political practice has maintained a balance so as not to allow itself to be trapped neither by dogmatism nor voluntarism, always keeping a firm vigilance for its maximum objectives, which make the ELN a loving, equanimous, responsible, reasonable
and dialoguing Organization; what has been constant is the utopian horizon of socialism and popular power, as a project that overcomes both the capitalist system and bourgeois democracy.
The great dispute between world geopolitical orders that we are currently experiencing is taking place within the confines of the capitalist world-system. From the transition from a unipolar to a multipolar world, an anti-systemic alternative is in sight. The new multipolar order will not serve us on a silver platter a revolutionary or socialist alternative.
It is the duty of the rebellious and revolutionary forces of the Global South, of the oppressed and the “damned of the earth” to build this alternative, and to strategically position it in the emerging geopolitical world order. No world order, old or new, will do it for us; capitalism, wherever it comes from, will have the same voracity for the earth and the commons. By its own expansionist and profit-driven conception, it will keep alive the logic of exploitation of humanity and nature.
No struggle will triumph alone. The unity of our revolutionary struggles becomes an indispensable strategic element for this historic moment. Let us take as an example the principles of the Axis of Resistance, which invokes the Islamic concept of “asabiyya” – “social solidarity”, or “the force that binds us to one another”.
In the framework of our 60 years of revolutionary life, we held the VI Congress and assumed the slogan “Commitment and Certainty in the Popular Victory”, as a declaration of firmness in these times where being revolutionary is more necessary than ever. It is not an easy time, the elites have tried to make the people believe that the struggle for national liberation is over, that we have failed in the effort to achieve liberation and socialism, we insist on continuing on the path of liberation and class struggle.
We insist on following the path of liberation and class struggle. A path that we share with all the rebels and revolutionaries of the world, because brotherhood among peoples is above distances, geographical limits or state repression. As hard as it may be for many to recognize, rebellion continues to be an option of dignity for millions of dispossessed people.
This principle guides our internationalist vision and action, which has been rooted in our organization since its origins. Internationalists have been all the elenos and elenas who have contributed to the revolutionary struggle in different countries, and internationalist was the example of Commander in Chief Manuel Perez Martinez, who together with his companions in cassock, Domingo Laín and Antonio Jimenez, embraced the struggle of a distant people as their own, being an example of the maximum symbol of surrender: to give one’s life for another people without asking anything in return, as did our unforgettable comrade Cte. Ernesto Che Guevara.
In the name of this example and returning to our internationalist roots, we, the militant elenos, are making our modest but heartfelt contribution by attending this event. Being aware that in today’s world effective love and solidarity with the peoples are necessary elements to be internationalist; while the reactionary forces of the planet unite more and more, our duty is to
go out to the step from that internationalism inaugurated in the years of the First International, which has been nourished by thousands of revolutionary processes in long decades of struggle. The present demands of us the duty to build unity with other peoples and organizations, to overcome the profound crisis of civilization facing humanity, taking steps towards the construction of anti-imperialist unity.
In the midst of this complex panorama, windows open through which we see the unwavering struggle of the peoples flourish, even in spite of the pain. No one would dare to say that National Liberation is not the noblest goal to fight for after the titanic example that the Palestinian resistance has given us during the last year, to give just one example. It is a duty of the ELN to support our brothers in struggle. To defend the liberation of any oppressed people is to defend our own right to rise up. To be with others is also to be with other peoples.
The political moment the world is living is one of decadence of the capitalist imperialist model or crisis, who have escalated the social, political, armed and environmental conflict to try to get out of their crisis; therefore, our political action must be permanent to make possible the peaceful coexistence and multilateralism of a new world order.
We seek to contribute and learn from this event, and in the future to correspond with humility and modesty to this internationalist endeavor, we hope that this conference will help to build deep bonds of unity and comradeship among the rebels of the world. We also hope that it will be a training opportunity for the Elena militancy inside and outside Colombia. If we work hard and situate ourselves in the historical moment that we are living in, we will be able to build a new internationalist movement.
As the ELN of Colombia, we stand with all the oppressed of the earth, with those humiliated by imperialist and Zionist tyrannies. The ELN stands with the rebel and revolutionary forces of the world, motivated by the perennial truth that either we resist together, or we will be defeated alone.
To our friends, peoples and sister organizations we extend this call to build once again from Rebellion and Internationalism, that horizon of Freedom that our convictions demand of us.
Colombia for the workers.
Not One Step Back, Liberation or Death.