SAN VICENTE DEL CAGUAN, Colombia (AP) --Deep inside a rebel safe have,
Ali Medina has been creating a giant homage to the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia, or FARC. It may have a very short shelf life.

The work stands 25 feet (7.5 meters) high and 125 feet (37.5 meters) long -- the
statues of five FARC rebels carrying guns, a machete and sickle, and hoisting a
banner chiseled from a sandstone alongside a road that cuts through virgin
rainforest.

A native of Medellin, Medina was commissioned by the FARC to create
bigger-than-life images of the rebel group, which has fought a succession of elected
governments for 38 years. Nine months ago, he and a dozen workers began
chiseling the images. To preserve the frieze, the figures -- whose boots alone are
three-feet (90 centimeters) long -- have been coated with cement and painted
bronze.

Among his work are huge paintings of founders of the rebel group that adorn the site
of peace talks, where President Andres Pastrana has met with FARC leader Manuel
Marulanda. But the peace talks are on the verge of collapse, and Pastrana may soon
cancel the three-year-old safe haven.

Medina plans to put the finishing touches on this latest project -- a 21st-century
display of Stalinist-style art -- in the next few days. But with the continued existence
of the rebel zone haven in doubt, so is the huge sculpture.

The soaring Buddha figures of Afghanistan lasted 1,500 years until the Taliban
blasted them into rubble last year. Medina's stone rebels may not last that many
days.

Government troops and a brutal right-wing paramilitary group are fighting a nasty
war with the FARC, and have no love for rebel leader Manuel Marulanda -- who's
depicted in the frieze -- and his guerrillas.

It's not be hard to imagine soldier coming to the sculpture when the safe haven
eventually ends, and firing his rifle on full automatic at the transformed cliffside or
lobbing a grenade or two.

"It would be a crime if they destroyed this," Medina muttered. "It should be part of
the national patrimony."

Wearing his long black hair in a ponytail, his jeans and T-shirt smudged with dirt,
Medina on Friday evening perched on a scaffold and brushed paint onto one of the
figures.

A pistol was stuck into one of his pockets. After all, there are enemies of art, and of
the revolution, he said darkly, referring to the time when someone shot at him a few
months ago.

As night fell, he retired to a tent in the jungle that he and his girlfriend share near the
work site. As birds and insects began filling the jungle with sound, he shared coffee
with visiting journalists -- and mused that while his work was so close to
completion, it faced grave risks.

"I'd hate it if the statues are destroyed," he murmured. Then he looked at a
photographer and sighed: "At least they will last in your negatives."

 Copyright 2002 The Associated Press.