OBITUARY: Mono Jojoy: Peasant turned hardline rebel commander

By Sandra Parra Sep 24, 2010, 15:05 GMT

   Bogota - A reputation for creativity and brutality helped peasant Luis Suarez rise through the ranks of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), becoming the rebels' highest military commander until his death this week.

Best known by the aliases 'Mono Jojoy' or 'Jorge Briceno,' the 57- year-old was killed in a combined military raid on a FARC camp.

From the fields of his native Cabrera, a village in central Colombia, he joined the Marxist insurgency in 1975 as a rank-and-file soldier.

His methods - particularly attacks using unconventional weapons that he advocated - forged Suarez's reputation as one of FARC's most brutal leaders. Biographers have credited those traits for his fast rise through the ranks of the leftist rebel group.

Mono Jojoy was one of the closest and most trusted aides of FARC founder Manuel Marulanda, for whom he worked as a cook in his first few years as a rebel.

Comrades-in-arms gave him the alias Mono Jojoy (Monkey Jojoy) for the ease with which he managed to escape the authorities, like a jungle animal called 'mojojoy.'

Mono Jojoy first rose to prominence in the 1980s, when he participated in failed peace negotiations with the central government.

Later, he was named commander of FARC's Eastern Block, where he consolidated his position as one of the most radical military leaders in the organization. Colombian authorities allege that Mono Jojoy reinforced his status through drug trafficking.

Colombian authorities accused him of masterminding the bloodiest attacks in the history of FARC, as well as so-called 'miracle fishing,' the FARC strategy of kidnapping large numbers of people in hopes of snagging prominent people who would make valuable bargaining chips.

Mono Jojoy was considered the brains behind kidnappings of personalities, politicians and military officers, whom he hoped to exchange with the government for imprisoned rebels. FARC's most celebrated prisoner was Ingrid Betancourt, abducted in 2002 during her presidential campaign and held in jungle camps until her 2008 rescue in a daring military operation.

In Washington on Thursday, Betancourt in a radio interview described Mono Jojoy as a cruel, 'bloodthirsty' hardliner in FARC's leadership, 'the one who wanted the war no matter what.'

'I always thought that as long as Mono Jojoy would be alive, there would be no chance for Colombia to initiate a serious peace process,' she said.

Betancourt described meeting him while a FARC prisoner, at a time when her hopes had been raised for being released - until Mono Jojoy appeared.

'As soon as I saw him and the way that he looked at me,' she remembered, '... I thought, this is a bad omen. I'm not going to get out of here, ever.'

More than 20 arrest warrants were issued for Mono Jojoy's arrest on charges including terrorism, homicide, rebellion, sedition and kidnapping for ransom.

Colombian authorities called him 'the symbol of terror' and pursued him relentlessly in recent years, even as the aging guerilla suffered from diabetes.

The jungle where he hid for so many years was also the place where Mono Jojoy was killed Wednesday in central Colombia in a government airstrike against rebel camps in a mountainous area known as La Macarena.