Control and exploitation of natural resources - Principal objectives of paramilitary expansion

Transcription

1 Control and exploitation of natural resources - Principal objectives of paramilitary expansion. Alfredo Molano Bravo Paper presented at the seminar, Paramilitarism in Colombia - Are demobilisation and peace compatible with justice and human rights? April 18, 2005, arranged by Colombia Forum, Collegium for Development Studies, Uppsala University Sociologist, El Espectador columnist.

2 Contents 1. Tradition: arm civilians for war and the defence of land, a historical tradition. Civil wars. 2. Violence in the 50s: chulavitas, pájaros, collarejos and guerrillas 3. The cold war and the civil population. Gringo military manuals 4. The law of Puerto Boyacá, the model 6. Land accumulation 7. Activities in the oil and mining sectors 8. Control of local resources 9. The negotiation -The scheme of the government -Critics and opposition 10. The role of the European international development cooperation 2

3 1. The tradition During the XIX century there were 14 civil wars and 56 local uprisings in Colombia. The politicians and landlords used to launch a Proclamation declaring themselves as armed rebels and organized their electoral clientele and employees. The defeat of liberalism in the latest great civil war, the creation of a professional Colombian army and political repression imposed civil protest, a resource that had hardly been used in the XIX century. In the first half of the XX century there was a big wave of nonconformity and social protest: tailors strike, armed uprising in the Arauca region, resistance and struggle for the land of Quintín Lame, the pioneering indigenous leader and his followers in Cauca and Tolima, day-workers (braceros) strike in Magdalena, oil workers strikes; banana workers strike, land invasions in Tequendama and Sumapaz, the massacre of Gachetá. Maybe the violence and the armed resistance was only repressed or dammed up. In any case, when the conflict is viewed from a historical perspective, the armed uprising appears as a typical political solution in situations where the possibilities for civil political opposition were restricted or eliminated. 2. Violence during the 1950 s The liberal reforms of the 1930s inspired by the New Deal and the social conflicts accumulated during the Conservative Hegemony ( ), brought changes in the agrarian legislation (Law 200 of 1936: Social function of the property) in the Church - State relationship, in the taxation system and in the wageworker - patron relationship. The reforms generated great resistance from the conservative party, the landlords and the church, which lead to the organization of civil groups against the changes at the local level and against the land invasions. The assassination of liberals in Santander, Boyacá and Cundinamarca were evidence of the existence of organized efforts to push back the reforms. Since the electoral victory of the Conservative party (1946) armed civil organization had been supported by the government. The confrontation between conservatives and reformist liberals resulted in an irregular civil armed struggle that caused deaths, the forced displacement of thousands of peasants and the subsequent expropriation of their properties. The conflict between the most radical forces on both sides has not ceased yet. Manuel Marulanda, the leader of FARC, Fuerzas 3

4 Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, represents the persistence of the peasant demands for reform, and the defence of the existing order was incorporated into the Cold War doctrine. 3. The doctrine of paramilitarism is associated with the Cold War since the 1950s The Colombian participation in the Korean War played a decisive role for the redefinition of the social order and the internal enemy. The Soviet expansion and the triumph of the Chinese revolution were parallel to the U.S. investments in Latin America and the aggravation of the social conflicts on the continent. The links between the U.S. army and the Colombian army, supported by mutual security treaties, lead to restructuring of the military strategies defined by the U.S.A. and the recently formulated National Security Doctrine. The first version is known as the Yarborough Mission, which worked in Colombia in The essence of the recommendations was that: a) The civil population is the strategic key of counterinsurgency war and should be linked to the war as a force parallel to the National Army, b) The origin of the armed conflict is double: the internal social situation and the expansion of the Socialist Bloc, c) The social control over the civil population must be total in the war zones (identification, mobility, tastes, and black lists). The psychological war or Military Civic Action is crucial in order to cut off the relation between armed groups and the civil population. d) The civil population should be organized militarily in order to enable them to protect themselves and to give support to combat actions (1969 Manual). There is a thesis of Clausewitz that states and is mentioned in the manual of 1969: The one who fears the bloodshed is at disadvantage 4. The Law of 1968 The results of the Mission and the military manuals (Manual FM-3115; EJC j-10; EJC-3-101) 1 that came out of it, lead to the Declaration of State of Siege no of 1965, that subsequently was transformed into Law 48 of 1968, which authorized the army to supply the civil population with arms of military use and the government to summon the population to 1 Biblioteca del Ejército, Escuela Militar José Maria Córdoba, Bogotá. 4

5 take armed action. The Manual of 1969 suggests not recognizing the bandits any kind of political affiliation, thereby suppressing from the law any such form of linkage (conexidad). Since then, the generals consider that the subversion has an armed and a civil wing and that both must be eliminated. In the same year, 1969, the word paramilitary was used for the first time to indicate a type of civil self-defence, and the public armed forces were authorized to train and supply the peasants with weapons to fight against the guerrilla. In the battalions, the navy, the army and the police, organized groups of civilians and in some regions (e.g. Tolima, Huila, Meta, Santander) self-defence schools, of which many are still operating (e.g. in Colombia, Huila). Carlos Castaño would admit at the end of the 90s (in his autobiography Mi confesión ) that he had been trained by and received weapons from the Colombian armed forces. As from the end of the 1970s the forced displacements, the tortures and mutilations and the bombings against left wing and human rights organizations increased. New judicial processes were opened against 5 high-ranking officers of the army accused of being members of an organization known as Triple A, which took its name from the sinister organization and formula used by the dictatorships of Argentina and Uruguay. During the 1970s, the agrarian reform, promoted by the government of Lleras Restrepo ( ) at the request of the Alliance for Progress, was eliminated through the so-called Chicoral Pact. The wave of land occupations (2000 cases only on the Atlantic coast) that ensued was violently repressed by the government, thus pushing thousands of peasants away to colonise new land in the eastern parts of the country and in the middle Magdalena river valley. This repression strengthened the guerrillas that controlled these regions in the 1950s and 1960s. It was just in these areas where the large marihuana and coca plantations were developing. Drug trafficking became transformed into a widely extended economical activity, and the accumulation and concentration of narco-capital changed the social and economic structure of the country. The clandestine character of this activity and the threat of a generalization of the insurgency lead to a pact between sectors of the military forces and the drug trafficking cartels. 5. Puerto Boyacá, the model. The first case of this kind of alliance is the MAS (Muerte a Secuestradores), Death to kidnappers formed in The guerrillas soon realized that kidnapping mafia bosses was much more profitable than kidnapping the traditional rich people. The Ochoa family, well 5

6 known for its double interest in land and drug trafficking, reacted violently when Nieves one of the family members, was kidnapped and declared war against guerrillas, especially the M- 19 (responsible for the kidnapping). The MAS was a secret military association supported by the most important members of the Medellín and Valle cartels. 233 capos recruited and organized an army of men to assassinate kidnappers. According to the Colombian Procurator s Office out of the 163 people that were prosecuted, 60 were members in active service of the military forces. Pablo Escobar, head of the Medellín cartel, and many military officers were amongst the founders. When defining the MAS, the procurator stated that: it is simply an armed wing that does what is forbidden to the public force. MAS were responsible for the assassination of a commission of judges that was investigating an earlier massacre that had occurred in the Middle Magdalena river valley. The MAS expanded rapidly to the provinces of Arauca, Casanare and northeast Antioquia with the help of various army brigades. The most well known case, however, is the case of Puerto Boyacá, a region that was controlled until this period by the guerrillas that had committed various arbitrarinesses and crimes against the civilian population. The reaction against guerrilla abuses helped MAS to organize a model of self-defence in the area, with the aim of applying it to the entire country. It had the financial support of big drug trafficking capos such as Rodríguez Gacha, El Mexicano, Víctor Carranza, Pablo Escobar, and Fidel Castaño, the technical assistance of a group of Israeli and English mercenaries and the active participation of the Bárbula and Charry Solano intelligence battalions, as well as the Palanquero air base. It has been argued that the strategy was conceived as a reaction against the peace policy of President Belisario Betancur and the extraditions that the President was forced to decree as a response to the assassination of his minister of government, Lara Bonilla. The accusations of a famous witness by the name of Viáfara demonstrated that the experiment was an official policy of the Armed Forces. However, these organizers were not alone; they had the support of the Asociación de Ganaderos del Magdalena Medio (Magdalena Medio Ranchers Association), the political movement MORENA (Movimiento de Renovación Nacional) and Uniban (the Banana Growers Union). Moreover, well-known politicians such as Tiberio Villareal and Norberto Morales, ex-president of the Senate, also supported it. 6

7 As a result of this model, that started operations in association with the Magdalena Medio army brigades, the self-defence groups of Cordoba, Urabá, Meta and Vichada emerged and were subsequently associated into AUC, Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia. The massacres of Puerto López, La Mejor Esquina, Honduras, La Negra, Segovia and Zaragoza are the tangible and horrendous results of this policy. The financers of the project, its implementers and the dominant regional interest groups reveal the responsibility of big ranchers, banana and mining companies. As an example, the course given by the Israelis was costing 400 million pesos at that time, and was financed, according to confessions of Viáfara, by companies linked to the abovementioned agro-industrial sectors. Moreover, another witness, Baquero Agudelo, denounced the role of the military, both in active service and retired; in smuggling of weapons, giving access to intelligence files and giving protection to the helicopters that transported the paramilitary. The Bárbula, Calibío and Rafael Reyes battalions where involved in those crimes. This affair was so serious that the Supreme Court of Justice declared the famous law 48 of 1968 unconstitutional and forced the government to an endeavour that was already impossible at that very moment, to dismantle the paramilitary organization or the Herman Monster, as the paramilitary commander Carlos Castaño called it in his book Mi confesión. The genocide of the Unión Patriotica, a legal political movement facilitated by the agreement of La Uribe, signed by the government of Belisario Betancur and the FARC, is the origin of this model of alliance. The narcos were paid in terms of impunity for their drug trafficking enterprises the reward for the assassination of the leftist politicians. 6. The Convivir 2 As a way of amending the abolition of the law and to continue to protect the military - paramilitary linkage, the ranchers federation 3 (a trade organization that has always had close relations with the military forces) developed an initiative in its 1994 congress in Cartagena that subsequently was transformed by the government into the Decree 356 that authorized the creation of the so called Convivir cooperatives 4, which would provide private security to their members as well as weapons for these purposes from the Armed Forces. The decree caused 2 Convivir, live together. 3 Federación Nacional de Ganaderos, FEDEGAN. 4 Servicios Cooperativos de Vigilancia y Seguridad, or Surveillance and Security Cooperative Services. 7

8 major controversy and scandal. Álvaro Uribe Velez, who was then governor of Antioquia, Visbal Martelo, the president of FEDEGAN and general Bedoya, defended the decree by all means. The current representative (personero) of the local government of Bogotá, Herman Arias, was nominated by the government as head of the Superintendence of Private Security. Arias is the son of a high ranking employee of the banana producing companies and in 1998, as a minister, he defended the law of National Guards. In fact, the Convivir groups, trained, armed and lead by the Military Forces, became what they really were - a shelter for paramilitarism. In 1996, 60 such organizations were created by the Army, almost all of them in the province of Antioquia. This region also showed the highest homicide figures while the decree was in force. According to the U.S. embassy in Bogotá, the organizer of the Convivir groups in the department of Santander and the Middle Magdalena region was general Millán. He was obliged to retire from active a few years later due to his collaboration with paramilitary groups. The general had to respond for 15 extrajudicial executions. The Convivir cooperatives were also condemned by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights 5 in its third report: the Convivir groups, in a number of around 450, are not easily distinguished from illegal groups. In 1997, the Colombian Constitutional Court called a public meeting 6 with legislators and illegalized those groups. Until that date there were more than 35 judicial processes in course against Convivir crimes. There is no region in the country that has been able to escape from paramilitary action. The victims registered (date, place, modality) by CINEP 7 between 1988 and 2003 are as many as people. However, those regions where the paramilitary have focused their actions are the Middle Magdalena, Córdoba and Urabá, Llanos Orientales 8 (Meta, Arauca) and Putumayo. The Middle Magdalena has been defined as the heart of the country. This is a region dominated by extensive cattle breeding, African palm cultivation, gold mining and oil extraction. It is the most important intersection of the national road and transportation system. This region has been plagued by conflicts due to the concentration of land in the hands of landlords and the decomposition of the peasant economy. It has been the scenario of great strikes by the oil workers and is also the birthplace of the ELN, Ejército de Liberación 5 This commission is part of the Organization of American States, OAS. 6 Audiencia pública. 7 Centro de Investigación y Educación Popular, a leading and authoritative Colombian human rights NGO. 8 Eastern Plaines. 8

9 Nacional. Barrancabermeja, the major city of the region has been known as the Red City of Colombia. The confrontations here between the public armed forces associated with the paramilitary on the one hand, and the guerrilla groups on the other hand, has been one of the bloodiest and most protracted confrontations. The Intelligence Network 07 of the National Navy has played a significant role in the actions of the AUC. It is evident that the objective of this strategy is to protect the infrastructure of the oil industry and to weaken the power of the workers unions that more than once has pushed the big oil companies against the wall. There are well-founded suspicions about economic support going from those companies to the armed forces that in their turn support the paramilitary. At the beginning of this decade, the urban militias of both FARC and ELN were eliminated; one massacres followed upon another, simultaneously with selective assassinations of union leaders, human rights activists and members of the left. The outcome has been a significant reduction of trade union activities and diminishing protests and accusations referring to human rights violations. 7. Activities in the mining and oil sectors A pathetic case that public opinion still cannot forget is the seizure of Río Viejo in southern Bolivar in 1997, the main gold producer in the country, in one of the most terrible paramilitary operations that Colombia has ever known: A numerous paramilitary commando, tells the Jesuit priest father Javier Giraldo, attacked the town at 19.30, violently throwing young inhabitants out of their houses and obliged them to lay down on the ground of main street without shirts, to flog them. When they identified Juan Camacho Herrera, a member of the Agro-mining Association of Southern Bolívar a grassroots organization of poor miners, they killed him with 7 gunshots. Subsequently, they beheaded him with a machete, paraded with his head through the town and played football with it. Then they put his head on a stake with the forehead pointed towards Serranía de San Lucas 9, warning the inhabitants that their project was to take control over the whole mining area. 10 This action was a message to the whole community of the mining area of southern Bolivar, which produces 50 percent of the total gold production in Colombia and is, undoubtedly, the richest gold mining area (40 grams of gold for each ton of mineral removed) of the country. 9 A mountain chain, which includes the most important mining areas and where the presence of Ejército de Liberación Nacional, ELN, is also strong. 10 Javier Giraldo, S.J.Prologue to La Gran Minería en Colombia: las ganancias del exterminio, SINTRAMINERCOL, Bogotá, February,

10 The interests of the big international mining companies were opposed to those of the smallscale miners associations and of the trade union of Mineralco, the state-owned mining company. The Colombian mining policy was written under the pressure of the lawyers of those international companies and, doubtless, the objective of the paramilitary seizure of the mining towns of the region (Santa Rosa, Tiquisio, Coca, San Pedro Frío and San Pablo) was to take control of the mines and to suppress all kinds of resistance against the interests of the big gold mining companies. The Colombian armed forces were aware, of course, of the fact that the guerrillas exacted taxes from small and middle size miners, and the presence of the insurgency constituted an unsurpassable limitation on foreign investments in the area. The same could be said about the paramilitary strategy in the provinces of Arauca and Putumayo. In Arauca the Occidental Petroleum Company is exploiting the largest oil field of the country and Arauca is also the starting point of the Puerto Limón - Coveñas pipeline. The extortion by the guerrillas against the companies that were producing and transporting crude oil made one of them, the Oxy, threatened to leave the country with the ensuing very negative consequences for the economy, in particular for the public finances. To resolve the problem of the insurgency, the company became one of the most important promoters of the Plan Colombia. Its contribution to the state s war taxation, the purpose of which was to strengthen of the army, was one of the largest. The failed Reconstruction Zones, which were part of a military strategy to control the civil population, were established along the pipeline. The protests of both international NGO s and local communities contributed to the decision of the Constitutional Court to declare the Reconstruction Zones as unconstitutional. One of the most well known cases is the Santo Domingo massacre in Arauca that revealed the role of private military contractors in the context of Plan Colombia. In fact, on December an aircraft of the Colombian air force guided by another aircraft, a Sky Master, piloted by Dan MacClintock, (with passport no ), Charles Denny (without any immigration record) y José Orta (passport no ) at the service of Oxy, bombarded a group of civilians with a cluster bomb. The Ministry of Defence presented the incident as a massacre carried out by the FARC, but the truth was soon discovered and the very U.S. State Department accused the Colombian Air 10

11 Force of being the perpetrator. Accusations of assassinations outside the combat field, of tortures and massacres, lead to the links between the armed forces and the paramilitaries. Several journalists have been murdered and thousands of people have been accused, arrested and retained by the armed forces. The military action of the AUC has been particularly intense in the Catatumbo region, at Venezuelan border where guerrilla attacks on the pipeline have been usual. A paramilitary training school in Putumayo operates there since the 1980s, in the region of El Dorado at the Ecuadorian border. It was established by Yair Klein, the Israeli instructor of the paramilitaries in Puerto Boyacá in order to prepare an attack on the FARC general staff and since then it has been a nursery for the paramilitary. One should keep in mind that Putumayo is not only on the border with Ecuador, where coca plantations support the drug dealing in great quantity, but also an oil fields area (Orito and La Hormiga) where one of the largest gas fields of the country is located. The Trasandino pipeline, that takes the oil to the Pacific Ocean, is property of Repsol-YPF, a transnational corporation involved in production of petroleum, gas and chemicals, with main office in Madrid. Coca growing has been the excuse for the poison spraying and militarization of the region, including air bases such as Tres Esquinas and Larandia where the private contractors that provide logistic support to the army, the Narcotics Task Force and the Air Force play a central role. In 1998 a Sky master jet, piloted by three employees of the Air Scan International Company was shoot down by the guerrilla. The great frustration of the Plan Patriota, successor of the Plan Colombia, has been the fact that the extension of the coca fields in the area has not diminished and that the price of cocaine has not risen according to a recent CIA report. On the contrary, the quality of cocaine is improving and the price is decreasing. A few days ago, various U.S. soldiers involved in the Plan Patriota were arrested with a load of cocaine that came from Apiay in the Llanos Orientales with destination to the USA. The U.S. State Department denied the extradition to Colombia of the soldiers implicated in the affair even though the crime was committed in Colombia. The proven extrajudicial executions between 1988 and 2003 arrive at 209, and the forced disappearances according to the CINEP reach a number of

12 8. Land appropriations. The paramilitary projects in Urabá, Córdoba and Valle del Cauca have one thing in common, the displacement of the peasant population and the accumulation of land in the hands of the drug traffickers. The history of the paramilitarism en Urabá has already been described, but it is necessary to highlight three important facts: firstly, Urabá and Chocó are regions of a high geopolitical value for national security forces, and particularly for the U.S. forces, more so than ever after the return of the Panama Canal area to the Panamanian government, secondly, the banana economy is in the hands of international companies with American origin, thirdly, great transoceanic communication, electricity generation and pipeline projects have been designed. Together, these facts imply, in the eyes of the U.S. and the Colombian governments, that guerrilla activity must be suppressed by force and that the civil population should be strictly controlled. The links between the army with headquarters in the Eje Bananero (banana axis) and paramilitary organizations have been pointed out by labour unions, NGOs, the Procurator s office and even by army officers. The colonel Carlos Alfonso Velásquez, who contended in the courts that the commander of the brigade was protecting the paramilitary organizations, formulated the most serious accusation. The major of the city of Apartadó made a similar accusation. General Del Río, commander of the brigade, was called into retirement due to the pressure from the U.S. State Department. A group of friends and supporters of the severely questioned general, amongst them Alvaro Uribe Vélez, then organized a public vindication under the motto, Those who never surrender (Los que no se rinden). Later on, the officer was absolved of the charges. Atrocities were recurrent and forced the guerrilla to go take refuge in southern Urabá where it entrenched itself. The blows against the army, the police forces and the paramilitary groups (Bloque Bananero and Élmer Cárdenas) have been very hard. The northern part of the region, however, is now controlled by the armed forces of the government. The Bloque Bananero has joined the Ralito negotiations of demobilization of the paramilitary groups, but not the Bloque Élmer Cárdenas, which is still operating and has rejected any kind of agreement with the government. 12

13 Perhaps the Colombian region with the highest number of displaced people is the so-called bio-geographic Chocó, which includes the department of Chocó and the Urabá region. The displacement has its origins in the internal war, but it also depends on o policy of occupation and control on the part of the paramilitary, the armed forces and the guerrilla. The project of reintegration of paramilitary combatants, as a possible consequence of the evasive agreements of Ralito, has been planned on the basis of African palm cultivation, a project that merits a particular analysis. The problem has its origin in the creation, by the government, of a Forest Reserve Zone (Zona de Reserva Forestal) in the middle Río Atrato region in the 1980s. This policy gave the native communities of the region the guarantee of participation in the processes of approvement of environmental authorizations for the management and eventual exploitation of the native forests. This right leads to a conflict between the big timber companies (Maderas del Darién, Chapas de Colombia) and the local peasant associations. Progressively paramilitary units started to arrive from Urabá, which was already under their control, and settled down in some villages. Massacres, forced displacements and assassinations intensified in the course of the 1990s. The Catholic Church and especially the Diocese of Quibdó, has systematically defended the rights of these communities, particularly the Afrocolombian ones that are legally protected by the Law 70 of Some of those communities (San José de Apartadó, Cacarica, Jiguamiandó, and Curbaradó) have declared themselves as neutral in relation to the armed conflict, in order to avoid becoming shields for the different belligerent forces. This condition has permitted them to survive and censure the abuses against their organizations, their culture and economic projects. In this way they have entered into conflict with the interests of the big drug traffickers, timber entrepreneurs, and particularly with the companies behind the plans of expansion of African palm fields in the region. About this matter the diocese says that: In Chocó, as well as in the other palm growing areas such as Magdalena Medio, paramilitaries control the movements in the area to avoid labourers conflictive labour unionism and restricting freedom and the rights of the communities, avoiding the demands from leaders and peasant associations, and charging a tribute for the for the security of the crops. 11 The spokesman of the Bloque Elmer 11 El Cultivo de la Palma Africana en el Chocó, Fidel Mingorance, Flaminia Minelli and Helena Le Du, Human Rights Everywhere, Diocese of Quibdó, October 2004, Bogotá, p

14 Cárdenas said: We need a great agrarian revolution that involves all of us. Our work is oriented toward the transformation of the current conditions of the region and a state that can be considered as a state of peace, safety, and democracy for all, not only security, but, and maybe above all, the food security brought by cultivating the land, the fruit of the work of the peasants work, the social security through medical sanitary support, and especially the security of a future that guarantees an education with quality available to everybody. We also want regional development based on big infrastructure projects that permit the establishment of chains of production, distribution and marketing that exploit the geostrategic advantages of our country thus generating a really constructive and democratic revolution of the agrarian sector integrating the industry and the big capital with the cooperative work and the small land owner. In contrast, the Emberá Waunaan Indigenous Regional Organization, OREWA 12, declared in a communiqué of November 15, 2005 the oil palm plantations in the municipalities of Carmen del Darién, Bajirá and Ríosucio represent a strategy to expropriate the collective lands. If it is not stopped and if it is not clearly defined what is going to happen ( ) with those fields where plantations are being prepared, who is the owner of these lands and how the (collective) ownership of the indigenous people and the black communities are going to be guaranteed in the future, these lands might be usurped and expropriated by the six enterprises, among them URUPALMA, which have invested in and exercise control over these lands. To close this chapter, the oil palm entrepreneurs calculate that in the next five years no less than hectares of palm will be planted, arguing that this is an environmentally friendly crop, which can create around 200 direct jobs. In the whole country Plan Colombia has financed hectares of African Palm. In anticipation of an increase in the vegetable oil production the Fagrave processing plant of in Barranquilla was inaugurated recently. It represents a 15 million US$ investment and belongs to the Alianza Team 13 According to the daily Bogotá newspaper El Tiempo, the plant will be the biggest factory for vegetable oil and fat processing in the whole Andean Community of Nations, and will have a processing capacity of 500 tons per day, as compared to the earlier 100 tons processing capacity Organización Regional Indígena Emberá Waunaan 13 Integrating Acegrasas, Grasas S.A., Fravetal, Grasyplast and Grandinos. 14 El Tiempo, October 7, 2004, Bogotá. 14

15 The Llanos Orientales is another area of intensive paramilitary activity. There are three factors that contribute to this situation. On is the oil exploitation of the British Petroleum Company in Casanare. Another is the African palm cultivation in piedmont areas, as well as the large areas of extensive cattle breeding, typical of the Orinoco region. British Petroleum pays a contribution to the National Army which, it is maintained by many observers, works as a financial intermediary of the paramilitaries. In the piedmont area there are two big centres of the AUC, namely Villanueva in Casanare, and San Martín in Meta. The cattle ranchers, headed by the notorious Víctor Carranza, a multimillionaire emerald trader, have accumulated most of the land in the region. Carranza was charged for the massacre of Caño Sibao in 1988 as well as 18 other charges and was arrested by the prosecutor s office. Carranza had to face the judgement, but was absolved in the end. The argument being, according to the Fourth Judge in Villavicencio, that such crimes would have been impossible to commit for any human being. Carranza was also accused of being the head behind the genocide of the Unión Patriótica members, in close collaboration with high-ranking military officers, such as general Gil Colorado who was himself assassinated months later by the FARC. Everything points to the association of Carranza with the Cali cartel, although after being arrested he opened the door to Meta to Carlos Castaño, who inaugurated his presence in the region with the Mapiripan massacre, where 25 peasants were assassinated. General Uscátegui, the military commander of the area is presently imprisoned and being put on trial in Villavicencio. He has threatened to reveal the whole plot behind the operation, but he has not done so yet. Anyway, the paramilitaries who committed the massacre left Necocli in Urabá by air and landed in San José de Guaviare where the police escorted them. The commander of the antinarcotics unit in charge of the airport security has been called to declare with regard to the incident. Mapiripan is not only a coca plantation area with active presence of the FARC, but a region where plans are being developed for the planting of gigantic African palm fields. In the Vichada region, presently under control of the AUC of Meta, the government has announced the so-called Upper Orinoco mega-project where the planting of 6.3 millions of 15

16 hectares of oil palm, Caribbean pine, and rubber threes is projected. The plan would have two poles, Cumaribo, the headquarters of an army and a police battalion, as well as Marandua, a base of the Colombian air force. The local people say that this vast area was controlled by the FARC until two years ago and is now under control of the paramilitary force of Martín Llanos who has been involved in a mortal battle against the Bloque Centauros acquired by Miguel Arroyave who was assassinated a few months ago. The topic of land accumulation in all parts of the country worries many sectors of the public opinion. In its latest report the World Bank affirms that 0.4 percent of the landowners in fact possess 62 percent of the land. 15 Reliable studies of the Universidad de Los Andes 16 show that approximately 4 million hectares of the best lands are in the hands of drug-traffickers and that 60 percent of the internally displaced persons were forced to leave their lands to the paramilitary groups. Once these people have been displaced, and their land expropriated, the paramilitary acquire a huge amount of local power, they become warlords. Their expropriated properties work as laundries for dollars and become a base for their illegal businesses. Out of the 4 million hectares that are presently in the hands of the paramilitary only hectares, in 2003 and hectares in 2004, have been confiscated and given back to the peasants. 9. Control of local resources and intervention in regional politics. Now, the territorial domination has various consequences: the paramilitary and the drug traffickers gain legal political power both locally and regionally. In the Colombian Congress, Salvatore Mancuso boasted about the fact that the AUC were controlling 30 members of congress. However, the process does not stop here. Lately, a series of scandals has revealed the range and magnitude of the links between the armed mafias and the corruption, through the power acquired by the paramilitary; the almost total control of the subsidized health enterprises of the departments of Guajira and Magdalena, the deviation of payments for oil or mining exploitation rights (regalías) to their paramilitary funds in Casanare; the payment of war contributions from big companies through deviation of legal tax payment operations, the control of most of the regional parastatal corporations that are in charge of the 15 IGAC, CORPOICA, Zonificación de los conflictos de uso de las tierras en Colombia, Bogotá, 2002, Vol.4, p El Tiempo, February18,

17 management of environmental policies. The list is very long and could be illustrated with the case of Miguel Angel Perez, the governor of the department of Casanare. Last week, the main Colombian newspaper, El Tiempo, 17 informed that the members of the Bloque Centauros of the AUC decide which firms should be contracted for the realization of public works in Casanare according to a declaration of the Prosecutor s office. The legal situation of the one who, until the end of the year 2004, was in charge of the destiny of the departmental government of Casanare may become complicated; he is now a fugitive from justice. A witness assured to the prosecutor s office that millionaire contracts were signed during Perez s administration, which ended in the coffers of the paramilitary groups headed by Miguel Arroyave, who at that time was chief of the Bloque Centauros of the AUC. The amount received by the Bloque Centauros was equivalent to 30 percent of the value of each contract. For example, the Yopal hospital was assigned to one company only, as were many contracts for aqueducts and sewerage systems. The head offices of those companies are located in Bogotá, he explained. The prosecutor s witness declared that since the contractors were selected by the leadership of the illegal organization, once the favoured contractors received the first payment of 50 percent of the total amount of the contract, he had to pay 30 percent of the total value of the contract as a kickback to the paramilitary organization. Another confession showed that the same group is responsible for the assassinations of ex-governors, ex-candidates and active members of the parliament. 10. The negotiation Finally, I want to briefly refer to three additional aspects. Firstly, the fact that the extension of the coca plantations in the northern parts of the country, in hands of the AUC, and in the southern ones, controlled by the guerrilla, have not been but temporarily reduced. There is an imaginary borderline running from the city of Cúcuta to the city of Cali, which divides the country in two main scenarios. A phenomenon observed by the researchers is that the coca cultivation moves from one region to the other, without any noticeable reduction in supply and sustaining a low cocaine price level in Colombia and New York. In Colombia one kilogram of cocaine is sold at 2 million pesos and in New York the retail price is 250 million pesos. 17 El Tiempo April12,

18 Secondly, it is becoming clearer every day that the government directly or indirectly supports the cartels of Medellín and the Atlantic coast and attacks the Valle cartel. The bonanza in Antioquia is evident, and so is the depression in Valle del Cauca. The big capos of the Medellín and the Atlantic coast cartels are the negotiators in Ralito. The capos of Valle are being extradited. This correlation is very telling. Thirdly and lastly, the negotiation process of Ralito. In 1998 for a commemoration of the murder of Gaitán, Luis Carlos Restrepo, then an unknown psychoanalyst, wrote that it was necessary to bury the history so that it would not incite violence. This is roughly the same argument that the government has advanced in the Ralito negotiations with AUC. Although the government has changed its position many times and also created contradictions among its supporters, there are three at the core of this policy: Justice Very short imprisonment and very lax conditions for common crimes and crimes against humanity. A forty years sentence for kidnapping could, with the help of the alternatividad penal implicit in the law being prepared in congress these days, be reduced to four years, that could be paid abroad, and where the time spent on the Ralito negotiations could also be deducted. Truth It will never be possible to establish the truth since the involved may confess only what is necessary in order to get a reduction of the sentence, and the state accepts this testimony. There are no punishments for falseness or grave inaccuracies. Without doubt it is the confession not only of the crimes, but also of the links between paramilitaries and the military, between paramilitaries, big entrepreneurs and important politicians what will prevent the endorsement of this of the truth requirement. Reparation Reparation involves the restitution of assets accumulated during the life of the criminal and depends on the criminal s own will. In other words, the restitution will be very limited. The great wealth amassed by the drug traffickers under the shelter of the paramilitary, will in this way become legalized. 18

19 Until now, most of the demobilized paramilitary combatants have returned to civil life, although a few of them remain in Ralito. Many of the reintegrated arrive individually at agreements with the Ministry of Defence to keep fighting the guerrillas as part of the official troops, while the ministry as compensates these services by facilitating to the reintegrated their demobilisation certifications. In consequence, this is a particular kind of reinsertion, in the form of incorporation of paramilitary combatants in the army. Of the 4000 combatants certified as demobilized, about 500 have worked, in accordance with this formula, as mercenaries with the armed forces. The government has attempted by all means to classify the crimes of the paramilitary as sedition and thus as political crimes, in order to avoid that the paramilitaries charged for drug trafficking would be extradited to the U.S. and that those charged for crimes against humanity would be affected by the International Court of Justice. The classification of the crimes as crimes of sedition would thus armour the perpetrators against extradition and actions of the International Court. The U.S. State Department was opposed to this article (62) and it was not approved in the first instance because many of parliamentarians belonging to the Uribista bloc choose to safeguard heir U.S. visas rather than upholding the political solidarity with their boss, who is now between the sword of his compromises with the paramilitary and his loyalty to the U.S.A. The recognition of a linkage (conexidad) between drug trafficking and sedition would thus impede both extradition and actions of the International Courts. 11. The role of the European International Development Cooperation The real problem for the government at present is not the project of re-electing president Uribe for a new period, but rather the legislative process in congress of establishing a legal framework for the demobilization of the paramilitary. The government is attempting to develop a framework that could be satisfactory to the different interested parties, but this task seems impossible. The Uribismo is now divided, as well as big traditional parties (the Liberal and the Conservative) and, of course, the public opinion. I suspect that the international community has been taking sides in this conflict. The country, that has suffered a half-century of violence and death, expects that impunity will not be accepted as a legal formula and the European Union should be able to understand the drama that the country would suffer if perpetrators of crimes against humanity and drug-trafficking kingpins become legalized. The political forces in the country that are not involved with one or the other of these categories of 19

20 people are a minority and therefore it is likely that the law of impunity presented by the government may come be accepted by the congress. This puts the destiny of the country in the hands of the democratic sectors of Europe, United States and Latin America. 20