During all that time, the Army and the Police maintained a permanent alliance with two powerful drug traffickers who settled in the region and acquired huge properties. This alliance allowed the financing of a paramilitary structure, constituted by armed civilians, who had license to kill and commit all sorts of crimes with guaranteed impunity. All other State authorities including inspectors, mayors, ombudsmen, councilmen, attorneys general, governors, ministers, and presidents, provided that criminal structure with the most valuable support for their crimes by avoiding action against them, declining to apply justice, and ignoring their acts.
This criminal structure persecuted peasants whose lands were transited by guerrillas, those who were members of peasant or union organizations, those who protested, those who created community production cooperatives, those who saw a need to fight injustice, those who were community leaders beyond the control of the criminals, and those who criticized the criminal powers that had taken over the region. Also persecuted were those who were addicted to drugs, the young "thieves" who were so poor that had to steal food, those who witnessed crimes, those who "saw things and did not keep quiet," those who moved around looking for work and looked "suspicious," drivers who were accused of "transporting guerrillas" or supplying them with food, and those who were thought to possess information that would endanger the safety of the criminals.
The methods used by the criminals created a reign of terror in the region:
* They delivered death threats through general messages warning those who thought of getting involved in the foregoing practices. Everyone knew that these threats were carried out ruthlessly.
* They detained anyone they wanted to. These people were taken to police or military installations ignoring legal requirements.. Sometimes they were taken to private places where they no law had any effect.
* They tortured and punished with cruelty and extreme fierceness, subjecting their victims to unimaginable pain.
* They disappeared people in secret places to then murder them and throw the bodies to the river.
Many families and people fled the region leaving behind their means of subsistence. Others stayed but at the expense of destroying their social life. Their preservation instinct yielded to their compulsive assimilation of their silent and forced coexistence with morally repulsive feelings.
The massacre yielded nearly 300 people killed. Their images and memories rise today to question State-sponsored terrorism, and they clamor for their right to justice ... they only right left to them.
BIOGRAPHICAL DATA FOR SOME OF THE VICTIMS
Orlando Orozco Londoño
Orlando was a 33-year-old school teacher and also a union activist. On
April 30, 1994, he was murdered by two paramilitaries in the house of
his sister, located in Trujillo. The motive was that he had witnessed
another murder that took place a week earlier and was able to recognize
the killers and pass the information to friends of the victim's.
Many of the people in Trujillo were assassinated merely for having witnessed other crimes.
Orlando Cabrera Rodriguez
He made a living doing deliveries in his jeep and traveling to various
communities near Trujillo and other municipalities nearby.
In general, the Army, the Police, and the paramilitary groups accused the great majority of the drivers in the area of transporting and supplying guerrillas.
On November 17, 1990, Orlando was intercepted by a Police jeep. They forced him to take an unknown passenger who, upon climbing on the vehicle, fired a weapon and killed him.
Francy Adela Mejia Chilito
She lived with her family in the city of Trujillo. Her cousin Pedro
Antonio Mejia was severely wounded on July 26, 1991, when a group of
paramilitaries fired on people eating at a cafeteria in Trujillo's main
square. Pedro Antonio was taken to a hospital in Cali. The next day,
Francy went to Cali to visit him with his father and another cousin.
After the hospital visit, they all disappeared, including Pedro Antonio.
Even his clinical history "disappeared." Members of the Armed Forces
were in the Board of Directors of the hospital. A day later, the four
bodies were found at the gates of the Puerto Tejada cemetery, a nearby
town in the department of Cauca.
Adolfo Gusarabe Niaza
He was a young Indian man who did odd jobs in the community of Naranjal
to support his family and help them out of extreme poverty.
On August 17, 1991, he was forced into a vehicle whose owner was a close friend of the local Police. Adolfo was never seen after this day.
It is believed that he was eliminated because he had witnessed other crimes perpetrated in the community by the Police.
Esther Cayapu Trochez
She was a 59-year-old Indian woman, mother of eight, who was a nurse in
the village of La Sonora, a short distance from the urban area of
Trujillo.
A few months earlier, when she was taking part in a peasant protest, a soldier wanted to brutalize one of her sons and she defended him confronting the soldier with a wooden club. The soldier labeled her "guerrilla" and threatened her with retaliation.
On April 1, 1990, at dawn, she was forcibly taken out of her house by a mixed group of soldiers and paramilitaries, along with other peasants from the same community. She was led to the estate of a drug trafficker which at the time housed the Army's center of operations. She was dismembered with a chainsaw by Army Major Alirio Antonio Urueña, a graduate of the School of the Americas. According to a witness, the corpses of all of the victims were thrown to the Cauca river but the Police repeatedly prevented the rescue.
Luis Fernando Fernandez Toro
He was the Inspector, the principal civil authority, of the village of
Tabor, located a short distance from the urban area of Trujillo.
Together with two other Inspectors from neighboring communities, he had
publicly protested the Army's conduct when, on March 30, 1990, soldiers
fired on road workers who were taken for guerrillas. Several of the
workers had been seriously wounded.
On April 1, 1990, at dawn, he was forcibly taken out of his house by a mixed group of soldiers and paramilitaries, along with peasants from the village of La Sonora. He was led to the estate of a drug trafficker which at the time housed the Army's center of operations. He was dismembered with a chainsaw by Army Major Alirio Antonio Urueña, a graduate of the School of the Americas.
Two days before, seven soldiers had been killed in combat with guerrillas nearby. The Army took revenge by disappearing a group of peasants from communities in the vicinity of the combat area.
Father Tiberio Fernandez Mafla
He had been the priest of Trujillo since 1985. He had great social
consciousness and was concerned with developing community participation
and organization. He created 20 community businesses that benefited the
poorest strata.
After supporting a peasant protest in April, 1989, he was targeted by soldiers, policemen, and paramilitaries for being a "guerrilla collaborator."
In 1990, from the pulpit, he denounced the violence that the people of Trujillo was suffering and pointed to some of the culprits. In order to capture him and disappear him, the criminal apparatus in Trujillo (soldiers, policemen, drug traffickers, and paramilitaries) killed a friend of his who was also a parish supporter and who had moved recently to the neighboring city of Tulua. The criminals planned to abduct him on the way from the funeral. In effect, he disappeared on April 17, as he returned from delivering the funeral mass for his friend Abundio Espinoza. A niece of the deceased and two other parishioners were also detained. They were all subjected to cruel torture and then murdered. On April 24, 1990, Father Tiberio's was found in the waters of the Cauca river, horribly mutilated.
Gilberto Berrio Osorio
He was a 71-year-old man with no family, who lived in the nursing home
of Trujillo. He walked the streets begging for money and often slept on
the sidewalk. He was a popular local character, who was affectionately
known in town with the nickname of "Maracucho."
On July 21, 1992, while he slept on the sidewalk, he was murdered by one of the town's paramilitary leaders, who wanted to "cleanse" the town from this "garbage."
The paramilitaries of Trujillo, together with the Armed Forces, did not target guerrillas or their sympathizers only but acted as "cleaning squads" to eliminate "undesirable" social elements.
Jose Alvem Cano Valencia
He belonged to a family of farmers and worked with his father and
bothers in his family's land, located in the village of La Sonora, on
the municipality of Riofrio which borders Trujillo.
Like most of the neighboring farms, on several occasions the family's property was raided by the Army which had labeled the area as "guerrilla sympathizer." During the last raid, three days prior to the massacre, the soldiers repeatedly inquired who slept in each of the rooms of the house.
On the evening of March 23, 1990, the Army came to the house and, in the presence of their mother and of a farm worker, killed the three brothers Jose Dorniel, Rubielider, and Jose Alvem.
The rest of the family had to leave the farm immediately. Jose's 79-year-old father fell in deep depression and died on June 1, 1990.
Fernando Arias Prado
He and his family were peasants living for many years in the village of
La Sonora, a short distance from Trujillo.
On April 1, 1990, at dawn, he was forcibly taken out of his house by a mixed group of soldiers and paramilitaries, along with three of this brothers and other peasants from the village. They were led to the estate of a drug trafficker which at the time housed the Army's center of operations. They were all dismembered with a chainsaw by Army Major Alirio Antonio Urueña, a graduate of the School of the Americas.
Two days before, seven soldiers had been killed in combat with guerrillas nearby. The Army took revenge by disappearing more than 12 people from the community closest to the combat area.