One of the characteristics of the armed Colombian conflict is the murder of civilians by the members of organisms of national security, who accuse those they kill of participating in a subversive strategy led by the Colombian Communist Party, which in turn supposedly originates in the revolutionary war, antithesis of the classic war. In Colombia, the phenomenon of revolutionary war has been approached in depth by the officer Fernando Landazabal Reyes. This article tries to show the principal features of the revolutionary war, from the perspective of the mentioned military man and the way since it could have reverberated in the armed colombian conflict.