By Roger Urieles, EL TIEMPO, February 21, 2026
(Translated by Eunice Gibson, CSN Volunteer Translator)
In Santa Marta the small business owner doesn’t just calculate rent, services, and payroll. He also calculates the amount he has to pay so that they will let him work. It’s an “additional payment” that is collected with calls, visits, and threats, and has turned extortion into one of the most stable and most feared sources of financing for the armed organizations that are disputing control of the city.
Merchants, tour operators, and odd job workers describe the scenario in clear terms: “pay up or close down”. In tourist sectors like El Rodadero, extortion has stopped being a possibility and has become the rule. In return, the groups offer something like a “security package”: accompaniment, supposed protection against robberies, control of conflicts and, in some cases, immediate “responses” to problems with customers or neighbors.
The paradox is that this “benefit” is in itself the portrait of illegal power: whoever pays gets armed support, but whoever doesn’t collaborate is exposed to pressures that can end up with threats, attacks, or the forced closing of the business.
A researcher sums it up in no uncertain terms. “There’s no specific area. Even though they are doing it in the main part of the capital with its tourist sites, it’s normal now in the entire city.”
Génesis: a territory that’s “flexible” for illegality
Ombudsman Lerber Dimas suggests that Santa Marta didn’t reach this point overnight. He talks about decades of armed presence and a city where the criminal government has been gaining territory, and on occasion, that’s mixed with the political government.
“Santa Marta has been ‘no man’s land’ . . . the armed government has overcome the political government.”
The way he reads it is that ever since the ‘80’s, a paramilitary dynamic has been established, and after the paramilitaries’ demobilization, a “criminal disorder” arrived, with multiple structures disputing each other. That carousel of armed actors has left deep footprints: territorial control and a culture of resolution of conflicts by force.
Dimas describes a logic that has turned into everyday goings on: if the legal route is slow, costly, or ineffective, the shortcut by the armed actor appears. “If you file suit, that could last for months, but if you go with the armed actor, they’ll pay up tomorrow,” he explains, portraying it as an “efficiency” that has built social dependence and the legitimizing of fear.
Extortion and “bit by bit” are never absent in the disputes over routes used in the drug business
Right now, control by armed groups in Santa Marta can be attributed mainly to two organizations: Conquerors’ Self-Defense Forces of the Sierra Nevada (ACSN in Spanish), and the Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AGC in Spanish). Until recently, they were fighting over drug routes and other illegal businesses. Now, according to researchers, the most profitable dispute has turned to a “safe and sound” source of revenue: extortion.
The equation is simple: tourism and commerce move money all the time, and the periodic charge ensures a consistent inflow.
The bigger businesses pay to avoid “inconvenience”; the smaller ones, on the other hand, have their backs to the wall; their revenue isn’t sufficient to sustain a monthly quota and the imposed “tuition”, but their margin to resist them is minimal.
“In Taganga, the man who rents tents on the beach, the woman with the braids, the man who sells juice drinks, the man with the launch, the owner of the restaurant. All of them. They visit them every day and they have to show them the money they have. Depending on what we sold, they charge us a percentage,” explained a merchant who, for his own safety, didn’t reveal his name.
Added to that is another charge that, according to the researchers, is silently increasing: the “bit by bit”, quick high interest loans, daily quotas and violent punishments when they don’t pay. It’s not just money; it’s control over their survival.
A case that shows the whole picture: and the message to El Rodadero
The capture this week of Moisés David Puertas Fonseca, alias “Rambo”, accused by the Police of being a member of the ACSN, exposes the background of this system. The authorities connect him with the murder of Aquilino José Salazar, the operator of a tourist business known as El Rodadero.
Salazar, described by those who know him as a working man with no known enemies, has turned out to be a symbol of a hypothesis being repeated in the sector: his killing was intended to exert pressure and settle an extortion quota account. That’s not a version yet decided legally; it’s still under investigation, but it fits a pattern that business owners have been complaining about: the charge that’s imposed and nonpayment being punished.
In several neighborhoods, while some people are rejoicing that robberies have gone down, or that certain alterations in the public order no longer exist, there’s room for a different reading of the situation. It’s not exclusively the official operations, but rather the result of fear and illegal “justice”.
The so-called “social cleansing” functions as a demonstration of power: consumers, recyclers, common thieves, turn up dead and the cartels explain the “why” and announce who did it. It’s not just a crime, it’s a message, says Norma Vera, also a human rights defender.
In the networks, that control is sometimes applauded, a supposedly messed-up burglar, publicly “begging pardon” or giving thanks for a “second opportunity”. There is more celebrating than recoiling.
The social reaction, as described by the human rights defenders, is part of the problem: it turns the violence into an acceptable tool of public order.
In fact, the Office in Colombia of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has denounced practices like physical violence, forced labor, and public exhibitions with messages of repentance in Santa Marta, warning that they could constitute cruel treatment and even serious crimes under international standards.
Urban muscle and its expansion: recruiting, collecting, and punishing
According to estimates cited by the researchers, the ACSN is probably the dominant power in Santa Marta, with an organization that’s not limited to the Sierra Nevada. It also operates an urban component with leaders in the area, financers, collectors, and hit men, everyone with a role in the criminal apparatus.
The recruitment of children in outlying areas like November 11. Timayui and sectors of the northeast have increased, attracted by payments and a “logistic” that is consolidating the operation.
The control base, insists Lerber Dimas, is territorial: local networks, de facto community diligence, and regulation dynamics like those for the mototaxis, which ends up functioning as a system of information.
“They even work together with the mototaxi owners, to keep track of who is entering and leaving the neighborhood.”
In recent years in the outlying areas, the victims are the same: mototaxi owners, daily collectors, the majority being young men and with some direct or indirect relationship with some Self-Defense group.
“When that happens, it’s because somebody did something wrong or, in the normal case, was part of an opposing gang,” maintains human rights defender Norma Vera.
The government, arrests, and an agreement that’s under a microscope
The Police maintain that by means of an anti-kidnapping and anti-extortion unit, the Unified Action Group for Personal Liberty (GAULA in Spanish), and with the support of complainants, they have strengthened operations and results:223 arrests for extortion between 2025 and 2026 that were associated with members of the ACSN and AGC, according to the authorities.
They also insist that, thanks to all the actions by the Armed Forces, they were able to reduce the number of homicides by 16.2%, registering 166 events compared with 198 in 2024 and 195 in 2023. Of that number, 138 were by paid killers, 8 killings of women, and also other deaths by violent traffic crashes, fights, domestic violence, and suicide.
In a parallel manner, the government recently filed a “Special Agreement in Bogotá (II) For Cooling Down the Violence” with the ACSN in which the group commits not to interfere in the elections, not to attack the Armed Forces, not to recruit children, and to abstain from extortion in prioritized municipalities like Santa Marta, Ciénega, and Dibulla. The Agreement will have the accompaniment of the Mission to Support the Peace Process in Colombia – Organization of American States (MAPP-OEA), as observer. In the city, the prospects are divided: some merchants admit that they feel “relaxed” by paying, because the group “solves” what the government won’t “solve”. And there’s another side, you pay because you have no choice.
Mayor Carlos Pineda Cuello toughened his speech and has promised “house to house” pursuit of extortionists, with bimonthly security councils and permanent special operations in El Rodadero.
“The extortionists have two paths, the jail or the cemetery,” he declared in a security council meeting recently, because of the threats of extortion.
The Mayor has asked the Police and the Army to increase their activities in tourist areas and to do neighborhood to neighborhood searches to divide the groups that have the city’s businesses against the wall.
The official message is the effort to recover institutional control. But the real pulse is beating on the street: who will make the rules and who do you have to pay in order to be allowed to work.
On the way, there is uneasiness because of the dialogs going on between the national government and these criminal organizations who, in spite of looking for agreements, continue to generate fear and pressure against the civilian population. Organizations, trade associations, and communities are asking President Petro to take clear and urgent actions against these gangs.