JAMES J. BRITTAIN is a Ph.D. candidate and instructor in the Departments of Sociology and Political Science at the University of New Brunswick, Canada. His research interests include revolutionary class-conflict within Latin America, the relevance of classical Marxism within contemporary geopolitics, and alternative forms of international development and social change.
The Colombian civil war, similar to other Latin American conflicts over the past 50 years, has had a large portion of non-combatants mortally affected by the horrors of conflict. However, those killed or injured in Colombia are not indirect results of the discord but are in-themselves strategic military targets (Stokes, 2005; Lernoux, 1982). The reasoning behind invoking this aggression against the unarmed Colombian populace is due in part to the ever-increasing strength of the primary insurgent movement within the country.