Paramilitaries' influence in Colombia welcomed by some but feared by others

National Public Radio: Morning Edition
By John Burnett
7 October 1999
This Month's News | CSN Home

ALEX CHADWICK, host:

This is NPR's MORNING EDITION. I'm Alex Chadwick. Colombia suffers some of the worst political violence in the world.

The main perpetrators of that violence are not the country's leftist guerrillas. They're the 5,000 members of right-wing paramilitary groups. The Colombian government says these militias committed 80 percent of all political murders last year. The victims include farmers, students, labor leaders, just about anyone suspected of supporting the rebels. NPR's John Burnett has the fourth in our weeklong series on the crisis in Colombia.

(Soundbite of a city street)

JOHN BURNETT reporting:

The paramilitaries are the law here in the rowdy banana and cattle towns of Uraba, a region in northwest Colombia not far from the swampy border with Panama. This street market is full of scouts and informants who report all unusual activity. If the guerrillas try to return to this area, a call goes out to the paramilitaries.

Unidentified Man: (Spanish spoken)

Mr. ALBERTO OSARIO: (Spanish spoken)

BURNETT: Driving down a rural highway, Alberto Osario(ph) radios in the all-clear sign to the dispatcher. He's head of the local vigilante group whose job it is to watch for suspicious people. The vigilantes report; the paramilitaries enforce. Osario says he's pleased with the speed and effectiveness of the paramilitary's work.

Mr. OSARIO: (Spanish spoken)

BURNETT: 'The difference between the guerrillas and the paramilitaries,' he points out, 'is that guerrillas killed a thousand people in five years; the paramilitaries killed a thousand in one year. This made a more terrifying impact.'

(Soundbite of cow mooing; people talking)

BURNETT: Cattle ranchers were a favorite kidnapping target of the leftist guerrillas who swarmed over Uraba during the 1980s and early '90s. Fabio Orango(ph) was abducted four times by four different rebel groups. He owns a 4,000-acre ranch filled with plump Brahma cattle. After his last kidnapping in 1995, he and a number of other prominent land owners had had enough. Each of them contributed about $ 1,500 and provided food, fuel, boats and vehicles for the paramilitaries who came from neighboring Cordoba province with lengthy death lists.

Mr. FABIO ORANGO: (Spanish spoken)

BURNETT: 'Over the next three years,' he says, 'the self-defense militias'--as they're known here--'cleansed Uraba of guerrillas and their collaborators.' And the rebels responded in kind. Between 1995 and '98, the paramilitaries killed 750 people and the guerrillas 550, according to a human rights group in Bogota. Some 200,000 were displaced by the violence. Eventually, the paramilitaries drove the guerrillas into the surrounding mountains.

Speaking as casually as if the death squads were a neighborhood watch committee, the dignified old cattleman says if it weren't for 'los amigos,' we wouldn't be sitting on his patio drinking coffee.

Mr. ORANGO: (Through Translator) The security situation in Uraba is very good. We had a situation we never imagined. Now the cattlemen are peaceful again and our families can return. We don't have to hide anymore. Because of the help of these friends, we can live in our homes again. That's the truth.

BURNETT: Orango says he turned to the paramilitaries because the local army garrison failed to control the guerrillas, something he says happens throughout Colombia. The rancher says he hears from people around the country who are anxious to copy Uraba's success.

Mr. ORANGO: (Through Translator) As long as we don't have a strong army, I think this is the solution. What we did here, you can do anywhere in the country.

BURNETT: The paramilitaries were formed in the early 1980s as private security forces, originally for drug traffickers, cattlemen and emerald moguls to defend their economic interests from marauding guerrillas. Today, some paramilitaries have grown independent. They've turned to drug trafficking to fund their operations, which enables them to pay their fighters better than government soldiers. The most notorious paramilitary chieftain is Carlos Castano, head of the United Self-Defense Groups of Colombia, the militia's main umbrella organization. The attorney general has issued 13 arrest warrants for Castano for his alleged involvement in dozens of murders. Lately, he's expressed interest in the peace process. In August, he gave this rare interview to a national radio station in Bogota.

(Soundbite of interview)

Mr. CARLOS CASTANO: (Spanish spoken)

BURNETT: 'I'd like to talk with the leaders of the rebels,' he says, 'against whom I hold no grudge. Afterwards, we'll respect each other. We can all live in this country together. One day, I'd like to go to their camp and drink a soda pop and have a bowl of stew and talk with their commander.' This outburst of goodwill did not prevent Castano from releasing a death list the following week, accusing 40 students and union leaders of being, quote, "subversives, anarchists and chaotic Christians."

Some Colombians worry that the paramilitaries are becoming more dangerous than those they've sworn to defeat. Carlos Valasquez(ph) is a former army colonel and now a security consultant in Bogota.

Colonel CARLOS VALASQUEZ: I think it's a worse threat because they have polarized the society, they have put in--gasoline into the fire and the fracture in our society has grown since paramilitary have been enacted.

BURNETT: Valasquez was cashiered from the army two years ago for criticizing a general who worked closely with the paramilitaries. In fact, ample evidence collected by human rights investigators, journalists and the US State Department reveals extensive ties between the Colombian military and the right-wing militias. With hundreds of millions of dollars in US aid at stake, the army is under pressure to scrub its image and distance itself from the death squads. Defense Minister Luis Fernando Ramirez says the government is determined to move against any officer, regardless of rank.

Mr. LUIS FERNANDO RAMIREZ (Defense Minister): (Spanish spoken)

BURNETT: 'We've made a big effort,' he says. 'The message is very clear that in the armed forces, we will not tolerate coordination between the military and paramilitaries.'

In the past year, President Andres Pastrana has fired three army generals for failing to prevent paramilitary massacres. The most recent sacking came last month, when General Alberto Bravo Silva(ph) was dismissed. He was accused of ignoring months of warnings and permitting Carlos Castano's gunmen to fly into a local airport in August and kill 50 peasants in northeast Colombia.

Currently, the Colombian attorney general is investigating at least 68 cases of military-paramilitary collusion. But convictions of high-ranking officers are rare. Those accused of human rights crimes usually have their cases transferred from civil to military courts, where they're dismissed.

(Soundbite of refugee camp)

BURNETT: Back in Uraba, while the paramilitary sweeps made life easier for some, they shattered the lives of others. Some 2,500 people live in this and two other squalid refugee camps in the Pacific coastal town of Tudabul. A dark-skinned man name Julio says one morning in 1997, uniformed gunmen arrived in their villages in the heavily forested Choco region, about 60 miles from here.

JULIO: (Spanish spoken)

BURNETT: 'The day the paramilitaries came into our community, they gave us two hours to leave,' he says. 'They said those who didn't leave, they would take to the muan(ph).' That's a legendary beast in the Choco that kills people and drinks their blood. 'The people were terrorized,' Julio continues. 'We decided we'd better leave, but many did not want to go because we knew we were not the guerrillas they said we were.'

(Soundbite of music; people talking; a baby cooing)

BURNETT: Of those who refused to leave, at least 50 were killed, according to a human rights worker here Tudabul. More than two and a half years later, the refugees cannot go home because the paramilitary still control their villages. And they're afraid to walk around town because of the vigilantes who patrol Tudabul.

(Soundbite of music)

BURNETT: So they wait in the steamy camps under the shade of almond trees, fearful, dispirited but grateful for small pleasures.

(Soundbite of music)

BURNETT: Three men play a regional folk music known as vallenato to pass a Sunday afternoon. They're doing what people all over Colombia are doing these days, trying to make the best of a terrible situation. John Burnett, NPR News, Tudabul, Colombia.

(Soundbite of music and people singing)

CHADWICK: Tomorrow, the debate about Colombia in Washington.

(Soundbite of music)