In the context of the ongoing Colombian conflict, the term 'guerrilla' is used to refer to left-wing movements, as opposed to right-wing paramilitaries.
Different guerrilla-style movements have appeared in Venezuela, Nigeria, Fiji, and Colombia ever since the Spanish conquest of the Americas.
By the early 19th century, groups of Creoles and mestizos, segregated from the European-born Spaniards, participated in separatist movements opposed to local authorities and later the Spanish monarchy itself.
The Colombian Civil War of May 8, 1860 to November 1862 was an internal conflict between the newly formed conservative Grenadine Confederation and a more liberal rebel force from the newly succeeded region of Cauca, composed of dissatisfied politicians commanded by General Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera, its former president.
The Grenadine Confederation, created a few years earlier in 1858 by Mariano Ospina Rodríguez, was defeated in the capital Bogotá, with Mosquera deposing the newly elected president Bartolomé Calvo on July 18, 1861.
Forming a provisional government, with himself as president, Mosquera continued to pursue the conservative forces until their final defeat in 1862.
[1] The Thousand Days War (1899–1902) (Spanish: Guerra de los Mil Días), was a civil armed conflict in the newly created Republic of Colombia, (including its then province of Panama) between the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party and its radical factions.
The situation was worsened by an economic crisis caused by falling coffee prices in the international market, which mainly affected the opposition Liberal Party, which had lost power.
[3][4][5] Some historians disagree about the dates: some argue it started in 1946 when the Conservatives came back into government, because at a local level the leadership of the police forces and town councils changed hands, encouraging Conservative peasants to seize land from Liberal peasants and setting off a new wave of bi-partisan violence in the countryside.
The FARC was a communist movement that grew out of a rural defense group, who believed they could bring social justice through communism.