The Group of Popular Combatants (Spanish: Grupos de Combatientes Populares, GCP) is a far-left insurgent movement active in the Republic of Ecuador. It is the armed wing of the Marxist–Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador (Spanish: Partido Comunista Marxista-Leninista del Ecuador, PCMLE), a party formed in 1964 as a split from the Communist Party of Ecuador and internationally affiliated with the International Conference of Marxist–Leninist Parties and Organizations (Unity & Struggle). The party belongs to an anti-revisionist tradition of Marxism–Leninism, one originally aligned with Albania during the Cold War and frequently referred to as Hoxhaism.
Militia
The armed wing was originally formed in 1994, during the presidency of Sixto Durán Ballén. It became far more active in 2000, and has since engaged in a number of attacks on foreign diplomats, as well as several bombings. These bombings have utilized so-called airborne leaflet propaganda, a tactic relatively popular among Latin American revolutionaries. For example, in 2001 the GCP was blamed by authorities for a pamphlet bomb and later the same year the group claimed responsibility for detonating a pamphlet bomb in downtown Quito that let out hundreds of pamphlets protesting against Plan Colombia.
In 2002 it was reported that the Group of Popular Combatants was attempting to establish a rural base in a remote jungle region bordering Colombia, and that they maybe had been receiving training from some of the guerrilla groups involved in the ongoing Colombian conflict.