Alfonso Cano - from ideologue to Farc rebel leader

Bogota: Alfonso Cano was a bespectacled middle-class intellectual who rose from chief ideologist to maximum leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) after the death of its legendary co-founder.

A student for years of original Farc ideologue Jacobo Arenas, the bearded and bespectacled Cano became the group's political strategist when his mentor died in 1990.

"While other Farc commanders were talking about blowing up bridges, Cano would be sitting around reading a book," said Carlos Lozano, editor of the Communist Party newspaper Voz and a longtime mediator.

Former president Alvaro Uribe took a more cynical view of Cano, describing the bearded guerrilla who was partial to Marlboro cigarettes as a ‘terrorist who poses as a philosopher.'

Colombia's government said Cano was killed in a military attack on Friday. He was 63. Cano, whose real name was Guillermo Saenz Vargas, studied anthropology at Bogota's prestigious National University before joining the Communist Youth and is believed to have joined the Farc in the late 1970s.

Once underground, Cano rose rapidly through the ranks.

Political arm

He led peace talks with the Colombian government held in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1991 and in Tlaxcala, Mexico, in 1992. Both parleys ended in failure.

Cano was put in charge of the Farc's clandestine political arm when it was created in 2000 during another set of peace talks that failed.

Cano was discrete during the protracted negotiations held in 1998-2002 in a Switzerland-sized swathe of Colombia's jungle south, He seldom appeared in public, apparently believing the talks would fail.