As a young man, he served in the Colombian Communist Youth (JUCO, in Spanish), studied at Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, and did further studies in intelligence and counterintelligence in Tito’s former Yugoslavia, where he also received military training. He joined the FARC in 1976 when the organization had less than 500 combatants. In 1993, he was named commander of the Magdalena Medio Bloc and, in 2011, assumed command of the FARC after Alfonso Cano’s death.
