Paramilitarism and popular resistance in Colombia
By Peter Sullivan
On November 21, a paramilitary group assassinated 15 campesinos in the municipality of Viota in the province of Cundinamarca in Colombia. The people of Viota were considered by the army to be supportive of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) guerrillas who have recently scored important military victories over the army in the region.
The phenomenon of paramilitary violence is by no means new in Colombia, but in recent years it has been increased dramatically.
On July 19 and 20, 30 campesinos were assassinated in the municipality of Mapiripan by another paramilitary group from the region of Uraba. Many of these campesinos had taken part in national peasant marches to demand land.
In another incident last year, a group of 200 assassins calling themselves "The Commando for the Self Defence of Uraba and Cordoba" held the people of El Arco hostage for five days. Five campesinos were murdered and 48 houses of suspected civic activists and guerrilla sympathisers were burned down. On their way from Puerto Valdivia to El Arco, the assassins murdered eight campesinos and terrorised the local population. As a result of these two attacks, thousands of campesinos fled their home towns.
By November, some 26 indigenous activists from the Zenu community in the north of the country had also been murdered.
The terror campaign against any form of popular opposition in Colombia has reached its highest levels in 30 years. The paramilitary is backed by the army, landlords, the drug mafia and the government which, last year, legalised paramilitarism under legislation dealing with Associations for Cooperative Vigilance and Rural Security, or Convivir.
The role of the Convivir is to assist the army in regions where there is a guerrilla presence — now more than 80% of the country — and to protect the installations of petroleum multinationals. The Colombian state and the US government through its supply of arms for the war against the "narco-guerrillas" (the term used for leftist guerillas) are providing the Convivir with automatic and long-range weapons.
The strategy of the oligarchy is to destroy and terrorise the social base of the guerrillas. This is what is taught in the US-based military academy School of the Americas, where many Colombian military officers receive their training.
Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the official media keeps portraying paramilitarism as an "independent right-wing political phenomenon" which is a response against guerrilla violence. The government and the army are portrayed as the neutral arbiters between leftist guerrillas and the paramilitary.
Paramilitarism
Paramilitarism first appeared in Colombia in the 1930s when local landlords and cattle-ranchers rejected the timid land reform program and organised armed vigilantes against campesinos and politicians who pushed for a more equitable land distribution.
In the 1940s these gangs of hired assassins became stronger as the oligarchy increasingly relied on them to destroy militant worker and peasant unions. During the civil war period known as "La Violencia", the conservative government and later the right wing of the Liberal Party backed by the oligarchy relied on paramilitarism to assist the army in smashing the left wing of the Liberal party, the Communist Party and popular organisations.
As a result of the terror unleashed — more than 300,000 people died during La Violencia — legal opposition activities became impossible to carry out and the first guerrilla groups started to appear.
With the rise of a militant peasant and workers' movement and the formation of the Union Patriotica (UP) during the 1980s, paramilitarism was called in again. One of the most notorious paramilitary groups, "Death to Kidnappers" or (MAS), appeared in 1981 after M-19 guerrillas kidnapped Marta Nieves, the daughter of Fabio Ochoa, a leading cocaine mafia boss.
MAS was responsible for the murders of hundreds of social activists and operated in areas where the popular movements were strongest. When the attorney general investigated MAS in 1983, 59 active military personnel were accused of belonging to it.
MAS operated mainly in the rural areas of Magdalena Medio. In 1982, the regional mayor, representatives of Texas Petroleum, local ranchers' committees, political bosses, shopkeepers and traders agreed to finance MAS to assist the army in its fight against subversion.
In 1984, another organisation called AEDEGAM was created in the region. Training camps for paramilitaries were set up and trainers came from Israel, Germany, Britain and Australia. In 1985, when more funds were needed, drug barons Pablo Escobar, Jorge Luis Ochoa and Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha (all local landowners) made generous contributions.
The left and popular movements were annihilated in Puerto Boyaca and the paramilitary groups then moved on to other regions. According to the testimony of human rights activist Josue Giraldo who was assassinated by paramilitaries in 1996, Haroldo Bedoya Pizarro, the current chief of the Colombian armed forces, collaborated with drug baron Gacha to organise paramilitary groups in the province of Meta.
The army's collaboration with the paramilitary is further revealed by the fact that they only operate where the military has a strong presence. Some paramilitary groups' headquarters are located next to army barracks.
Resistance
Only people with strong radical traditions, a high political consciousness and high levels of unionisation have been able to resist the paramilitary.
In Uraba, the banana workers have waged a heroic struggle. During the 1980s, when the plantation owners knew they were losing the battle against the rapid growth of the Communist Party-influenced SINTRABANO union and the Maoist-influenced SINTAGRO union, MAS was flown in and local paramilitary groups such as "Death to Revolutionaries of the North-East" appeared.
There were 200 political assassinations in Uraba in 1987. By the end of that year most of the founding members of the unions had either been assassinated or threatened.
The unions, which covered 96% of the work force, called general strikes after each murder and organised marches of tens of thousands of workers. By 1986, the left-wing UP had won a majority in the municipal councils of Apartado and Mutata, and by 1988 it had won five mayoral positions and broken the political monopoly of Conservatives and Liberals in the region.
The military campaign against the left increased. UP's elected representatives received death threats and many were murdered. The army accused local civilian populations of being "guerrilla bases" and attacked and kidnapped many workers.
Despite the efforts to destroy the unions, however, at the end of 1987 the first ever industry-wide negotiations between AUGURA, the bosses' organisation, and SINTAGRO and SINTRABANO took place. In 1989, the two unions merged.
In Barrancabermeja, the oil workers forced American Tropical Oil to hand over control of the local oil industry to the state after occupying the company's facilities and the entire town for days during various general strikes.
When the army and paramilitary tried to retake control the workers set up barricades, formed militias and received military support from the National Liberation Army, the most popular guerrilla force, forcing the military authority to negotiate with the workers' representatives.
During the strike waves of the 1980s, the Coordinadora Popular was formed to lead the movement. According to the workers: "The Coordinadora controls events. It has even run the town for short periods. It is with the Coordinadora that the state has to negotiate."
In November 1994, the first national paramilitary congress was held. The final resolution stated, "We will continue considering as military targets the political and union cadres of the far left". It also stated that: "Due to the extension of the guerrillas ... the armed forces with all its structures and political power has not got the capacity to completely annihilate subversion by itself, but it can progressively erode its strength until it forces it to submit."
Today, around 8000 assassins belong to paramilitary groups in Colombia. Their escalating violence against any form of opposition to the government, however, is also fuelling the growth of the guerrilla movement.<>><>41559MS>n<>255D>