El Tiempo (Bogotá)
Tuesday, 28 February 2000
Last week, paramilitaries carried out the worst massacre in the country since the Honduras and La Negra, Uraba, massacres of over 10 years ago. Three hundred men arrived in the community of El Salado, 20 kilometres from Carmen de Bolivar, and killed over 40 people.
What were they seeking with this new onslaught of terror? Santander Lozada, second in command of the AUC [United Self-Defence Groups of Colombia] and the man directly responsible for this massacre, said they were seeking to attack the rearguard of the FARC [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia] "head on".
He argued that, from there, the guerrillas were planning to set up checkpoints in the area of the Maria Mountains. And that, in response to appeals from peasants and truckers who travelled from Medellin to Cartagena, they decided to raid the zone.
"We are going to cleanse the coast of guerrillas," said Lozada. And that is what they are doing, by means of orgies of blood and terror.
According to analysts, El Salado is a strategic area in military terms, because if paramilitaries can gain control of it, they will also control the bridge over the Magdalena River between Zambrano and El Plato and the highway between Zambrano (where drug traffickers exert a lot of influence) and Carmen de Bolivar. From there, they would control the stretch of the La Paz Trunk Highway which leads to Cartagena.
The zone of the Maria Mountains along with the Santa Marta Sierra Nevada - where the paramilitaries attacked last week - are the only two places on the coast that offer armed rebel groups both mobility and protection.
The area around the Maria Mountains has no roads and is composed of mountains, broken up like an accordion, which facilitates ambushes on the army, since they can be seen arriving from a distance.
By means of attacks on the civilian population (which the AUC accuses of being guerrillas), Castano moves forward in his strategy to break the "cordon" that the FARC have been consolidating for years, from Uraba, in Antioquia, to Arauca passing through Sucre, southern Bolivar, Monteria, and Norte de Santander. Thus, the country is divided in three: the coastal zone, the southern zone, and, in the middle of the sandwich, the country's centre.
Some analysts add that the AUC would also have an economic interest in consolidating its herds of livestock in Sucre.
Although Castano's logic - if killing can be called logical - would seem clear, it can be said that this massacre in El Salado has deeper origins.
Twenty years ago, this zone belonged to tobacco plantation owners. The attitude of some, which even included demands that peasants pay for their crops by "lending out their daughters", generated a lot of resentment among the peasants. It also motivated a strong movement for the land that led to an extensive agrarian reform led by the ANUC [National Association of Rural Land Users].
Around the mid-1980s until about six years ago, when the Socialist Renewal Current was legalized, the Maria Mountains were a sanctuary for the ELN [National Liberation Army]. During the peace process with this group, the government promised to formulate a Development Plan for Sucre and to award land from the zone to those who rejoined civil society. Those promises were never kept.
So, the void created by the state was filled by the FARC. And it has now been "recovered" by the paramilitaries.
Thus, while one group kills for the sake of social justice in the country and the other group, for a Colombia "cleansed" of guerrillas, a country is being built on a foundation of fear.
© 2000 El Tiempo
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