Here's how two of the major players in the Colombian conflict have differed historically in their views on the proper role of government in society:

• The FARC, Colombia's largest leftist guerrilla group, claims to be fighting in an effort to represent the rural poor against the country's wealthy classes. The FARC would like to see large private estates broken up and Colombia's tax laws made more progressive. In other words, they would like the rich to be taxed at higher rates than the poor in order to make services such as health care more affordable to the lower classes.
  
  
• The AUC, Colombia's right-wing paramilitary umbrella organization, was created to protect the interests of the land-owning wealthy class. The AUC and its supporters want private property to be respected and oppose reform to Colombia's tax system that would redistribute wealth to the lower classes.

A FARC GUERRILLA TAKES AIM—near Bogota
© 2002 Getty Images, Inc.



AUC PARAMILITARIES TRAIN—Southwestern Colombia
© 2003 Getty Images, Inc.

This ideological divide dates back to the 1930s, when the country's two main parties—the Liberals and Conservatives—became associated with competing philosophies. The Liberals supported more government intervention in Colombia's economy, and the Conservatives wanted less.

In the statements below, notice how FARC founder Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda draws on concrete images of wealth and poverty in reference to the Colombian conflict while AUC leader Carlos Castano appeals instead to the more abstract concept of patriotism.

"We cannot allow our people to continue dying of hunger, without a home, without a car, without a roof over their heads, without education, without health, while others have huge buildings filled with dollars. No. That must be changed. It will not be easy because the confrontation will be with a state that has given nothing and wants to give nothing." (FARC founder Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda, 1999)

"We are doing a patriotic duty that the military did not want to do or were not able to do . . . [T]he AUC has prevented this country from falling into guerrilla hands." (AUC leader Carlos Castano, 2001)

Marulanda also implies that in a country characterized by massive disparities in wealth, the government's role is to provide essential goods and services to all of its constituents. Castano, by contrast, suggests that the government's primary role is to ensure order and stability.

Activity

Would statements like Marulanda's and Castano's be more or less effective if these leaders had used each other's rhetorical strategies? (In other words, could Marulanda just as effectively make his argument using appeals to abstract concepts and could Castano do the same by employing concrete imagery?) Why or why not?

Find a statement from either a proponent or opponent of U.S. healthcare reform. Are there any rhetorical similarities between it and either the Marulanda or Castano quote? Record your analysis and conclusions in a 250-word essay.