Who was 'Mono Jojoy'?

Mono jojoy, aka Jorge Briceño, whose real name was Victor Julio Suarez, the FARC's military chief pulled down by the Colombia Armed Forces, was the second top leader of the left-winged guerrilla but the one who led its military operations. He was nicknamed Mono Jojoy after a species of worm from the Amazon, called mojojoy, which is very skilled at scaping. In Spanish mono means 'monkey', in Spain 'pretty' and in Colombia 'blond'.

Mono Jojoy joined FARC in 1975 and soon he beceme a cuadrilla (a sort of brigade) leader because of his ideals, radical stances and methods which got him several arrest warrants for rebellion, kidnapping, narcotraffick, extortion, terrorism and murder among others. He was implicated in the bombing of Club El Nogal in Bogota in 2003 that killed 36 people and injures more than 100, he was accused for participating in the kidnapping of Ingrid Betancour and the assessination of the journalist Diana Turbay, he was charged for recruting children for FARC and he was inducted by the US for kidnapping and assessinating some American citizens and for drug-trafficking.

These and other deeds got him the reputación of cold, calculating an cruel guerrilla leader. He appeared in some videos recorded along his insurgent life. In one of them he tells the American contractor kidnapped by FARC and rescued by Colombia Army through th Check Operatin that they are war prisiones and were forgotten by American and Colombian governments. In another he, supposedly, says that FARC sponsored Ecuador president Rafael Correa's presidential campain. In a video broadcasted after his death he appears thin and older due to a alleged diabetes.

Mono Jojoy's annihilation is, consider by many, the hardest hit given to FARC in its whole history, and one of the consecuence of the Colombia's former presidente Alvaro Uribe policy of Democratic Security, in which current Colombia's president Juan Manuel Santos was part of as Uribe's minister of defense, and which he promised and is continuing.

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The John F. Kennedy's district in Bogota, Colombia.

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