Manuel “Sureshot” Marulanda, a peasant’s son who built Latin America’s mightiest guerrilla army but failed in a half century of struggle to trigger a communist revolution in Colombia, is dead. He was believed to be 78.But the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) vowed to continue the battle.The “comandante maximo” died on March 26 of a heart attack, senior rebel leader Timoleon Jimenez said in a video broadcast on Sunday.He did not specify where Marulanda died, though military officials say his death coincided with bombings in southern jungles where he was believed to be holed up.A leathery-faced man with piercing eyes and a sixth-grade education, Marulanda was the world’s longest-fighting rebel leader, the archetypal product of Colombia’s bloody modern times.He took up arms in his late teens and spent his entire adult life organizing resistance to governments he considered corrupt.Famously reclusive and paranoid, Marulanda was never known to have gone abroad or even visited Bogota, Colombia’s capital.Jimenez said Marulanda’s death followed a short illness whose nature he did not describe. The guerrilla leader spent his last moments “in the arms of his companion, surrounded by bodyguards,” Jimenez said. Marulanda fathered seven children but is not known to have married.
