Via CNN: Suspected rebels kill Colombian coca pickers

Mejia said the field hands were probably targeted because they had been selling their coca to the rebels’ right-wing paramilitary foes. “It’s a coca-growing area, an area permanently being fought over by the guerrillas and the paramilitaries,” he said.

The FARC — together with a smaller rebel army known as the ELN, and a handful of right-wing paramilitary groups — make huge profits by controlling the production and sale of cocaine in Colombia, the world’s biggest producer of the drug.

Both sides have massacred coca growers who refuse to cooperate or work with rivals. Last year, FARC fighters tied up 34 peasants with their hammocks before gunning them down.

Just more evidence (on an already large pile of such) that the guerrilla fight in Colombia ceased to be over ideology in any meaningful sense a log time ago.