Alfonso Cano, who has died aged 63, had been the leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia since the death, in 2008, of Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda, who founded the Farc in 1964. Hunted down and shot by elite troops of the Colombian army last Friday evening, Cano had been on the run for much of the time since a military task force last year obliged him to abandon his mountain redoubt in Tolima. Thus ended the decades-long insurgency of a man whose origins could scarcely have been more different from those of his predecessor, the son of poor peasants, who left home aged 13.
In contrast, Cano, whose real name was Guillermo León Sáenz Vargas, might best be described as an urban intellectual. He was born in Bogotá, the fifth of seven children; his father was an agronomist and his mother was a teacher. An accomplished dancer and a football fanatic, he entered the National University of Colombia in the revolutionary year of 1968 to study anthropology. He soon felt the lure of radical leftism, despite his parents' conservative views. He became a prominent student leader and joined the youth wing of the Colombia Communist party (PCC).
Gradually, his political work took the place of formal studies, and instead of graduating, he spent several years in the Soviet Union. He returned as a fully fledged communist who would soon be in demand to teach Marxism to the guerrillas of the Farc, whose organisation was loosely affiliated to the PCC. In 1981 he was arrested after a raid on his house. He spent 18 months in Bogotá's La Modelo prison, but was released under an amnesty declared by the then president of Colombia, Belisario Betancur. This experience – though not his first time behind bars – seems to have triggered his decision to become a full-time member of the guerrilla organisation.
The chief ideologue of the Farc, more or less from its inception, was Luis Alberto Morantes, known as Jacobo Arenas. An enthusiast for the teaching of Marxist anthropology, Arenas took Cano under his wing, and when the older man died in 1990 he left a natural successor. In the early 1990s, the government of César Gaviria attempted to negotiate with the Farc. Meetings were held in Caracas and later in Tlaxcala, Mexico, at which Cano – now a member of the "secretariat", as the Farc's national command structure is called – represented the guerrillas.
The failure of these talks may have led Cano to conclude that dialogue was futile; in any event, when President Andrés Pastrana attempted a much more ambitious peace process at the turn of the century – involving the demilitarisation of an area the size of Switzerland – Cano was a sceptic and maintained a low profile. Despite his reputation as a thinker, he was by no means a stranger to military strategy or to combat. Since 1990 he had led the Farc's "Western Bloc", whose guerrilla fronts covered a significant part of five south-western "departments", as Colombia's states are known.
By the time of his death, well over 200 warrants had been issued for Cano's arrest, on charges including terrorism, murder and kidnapping. He was considered personally responsible, for example, for the 2002 kidnapping of a dozen members of the Valle del Cauca state parliament, which ended with 11 fatalities. In interviews, Cano regularly justified the taking of "prisoners of war" and the use of outlawed military tactics and weapons, arguing that in an "asymmetrical" struggle, the weaker, non-state party could not be held to the same rules.
He also denied the Farc's well- documented role in drug-trafficking, which led in his case to the offer of a $5m reward by the US government for information leading to his capture on charges related to the smuggling of cocaine. Cano insisted, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, that the Farc's guerrilla fronts were forbidden to participate in the cultivation, processing or trafficking of drugs.
After the death of Marulanda, Cano's appointment as only the second Farc commander in its entire history was interpreted by many as the prevalence of the political over the military wing of the movement – the latter represented by Jorge Briceño, known as "Mono Jojoy", who was killed by the army in 2010.
Cano was able to establish his authority over the guerrillas' widely scattered fronts. Despite a sharp reduction in numbers – from a reported 17,000 a decade ago to perhaps as little as 7,000 today, the Farc remains wealthy, well-armed and – as it has shown in recent months – still capable of inflicting serious blows. Under Cano's leadership, in 2009, it also managed to sign a strategic pact with its much smaller rival, the National Liberation Army (ELN), which helped reduce clashes between the two groups.
Cano left behind a wife and son when he chose to join the insurgency. He is not known to have had any other children. In recent years his name was linked with that of a rebel leader whose nom de guerre is Patricia.
