Palmera was born into a wealthy family in Bogot on 30 July 1950. Son of Juvenal Palmera a political leader of the Colombian Liberal Party and Alice Palmera Pineda. He was called Juvenal Ovidio Ricardo Palmera Pineda, in an unusual third name. She had two sisters, Eleanor and Elsa and a brother, Jaime. Cesarences staunch friend of many. He spent most of his childhood in Valledupar, where he attended the National College Loperena one of the best schools in the city at that time. He also frequented the Valledupar Social Club. Part of his secondary education at Colegio Helvetia was in Bogota. His last two years in high school courses at the Naval School of Cartagena in Cartagena de Indias. Later he joined the Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano in Bogota, where he studied economics. IDT Energy Store After graduating, he returned to Valledupar and started working as a government employee in the bank Caja Agraria del Cesar as financial advisor.At that time he married Margaret Russo, who was also a bank employee in Barranquilla, of this marriage had two children. He started for the administrative staff of the Popular University of Cesar doing as part of academic painting history teacher Colombia's Economic Faculty of Administrative Sciences. At the same time, it was the branch manager of Bank of Commerce Valledupar. When I taught at the Popular University of Cesar, Palmera, and some of the teachers who were his companions were greatly influenced by the rhetoric of the ideologies of left of the time. They perceived that bipartisanship Colombian ignored the needs of the rural poor with regard to fair cr and land reform. By September 1981, Palmera, Jaime Sierra, Tom s Palacios Federico Agudelo and Romans created a group called "The Independent" Marxist-Leninist orientation. Also supported the Patriotic Union created in 1985.The party dissolved necessarily because of the political violence practiced by drug lords, paramilitaries and members of the Colombian armed forces, thousands of its members were subjected to forced disappearances, kidnappings and assassinations, while some who survived the genocide later became active members of the guerrillas or refugees abroad. In 1987, after a peasant strike in the Plaza Alfonso Lopez de Valledupar, Palmera stole 30 million pesos from the bank where he worked manager and escaped to the mountains of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, it is presumed that it was at this time when he joined the FARC. With him was a list of transactions conducted by millionaires in the region then used for kidnapping and extortion of merchants and farmers on behalf of the FARC.