Is Telesur dabbling in guerrilla docs?

People have been suggesting there's something fishy about the FARC-video announcing the death of their leader Manuel Marulanda and released on Sunday. (You can either see it in the post below or surf here.)

First of all there's the time when it was filmed. BBCmundo correspondent Hernando Salazar reckons the whole thing was taped much earlier. We know Marulanda died on March 26 (which the FARC confirmed) and Salazar suggests they were waiting to air the news on May 27, the FARC anniversary. However, the fact that Defence ministers Santos spilled the beans to Semana newsmagazine on May 25 forced them to come out with the news earlier.

Salazar also wondered about the 'sophisticated' production and post-production work on the video. Filmed with three cameras and later edited, it gives new meaning to words "guerrilla documentary".

Finally the backdrop is slightly odd. The waving palms make it the set look more like a beach location than some far-flung jungle hideout. Former guerrilla fighter Antonio Sanguino agreed, when shown the video. "This is not the jungle, it's not Yari or the Guaviare, it looks nothing like the last proof of life we saw of Ingrid Betancourt," he told the BBC. The place the Colombian French politician is being held looks a lot more inhospitable. See the video below.

This place however, looks more managed, almost urban. So where was the footage - featuring the relatively unkown commander Timochenco - shot?

Venezuela. Or more precisely a farm in Barinas, the native province of president Hugo Chávez. According to Nelson Bocarranda, a columnist for Universal, the whole thing was produced in Barinas, and what's more, with equipment belonging to Telesur, Venezuela's state-owned news channel that also aired the footage. The Bolivarian TV-channel has denied any involvement.

However, Bocarranda claims that Information Minister Andres Izarra, who resigned earlier this week, knew what was going and quit because he didn't agree. Teodoro Petkoff, editor of TalCual, also suggested the video was shot in Barinas, but that Izarra "was fired" for precisely the opposite reason. Namely Chávez is trying to play down his ties to the FARC and was opposed to Telesur airing the video.

I've been to Barinas a few times and the palms certainly fit the description. See photo.

It's not the first time either that a FARC presence in Barinas has been rumoured. The province borders on Colombia to the south and is run by the Chávez family. Some have even suggested that Chávez and Marulanda met in Barinas in February of this year. If it's true, it's further proof that Chávez and his cronies are supporting the FARC and undermining Colombia's elected government with violence against the Colombian people.

There's something else that's interesting about this whole affair. The Cuban silence. Fidel Castro has always made a point of keeping the FARC at arms length, but even so it was surprising to see how little attention the Cuban press gave to Marulanda's death. There was a short news item in Granma, the party paper, nothing in Juventud Rebelde and Prensa Latina just ran the text version of Timochenco's speech. I guess links to South America's last embarrassingly archaic guerrilla group is hardly what the newly appointed Raúl Castro wants as he reforms Cuba one DVD-player at time.