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Carlos Castaño
© 2001, The Washington Post. Photo by Scott Wilson. Reprinted with
permission

August 2001

The lights are going out in Colombia. In the last two years, the growth in the military and political power of the paramilitaries (known as the "United Self-Defense Groups of Colombia," "Auto-Defensas Unidos de Colombia" the AUC), has brought a brutal, illegal army within reach of gaining political control over Colombia's future.

Colombian officials admit that the AUC are responsible for 80% of all political murders and massacres in the past year. The AUC's founder and longtime commander-in-chief, Carlos Castaño, is the subject of 22 arrest warrants for massacres, kidnapping, assassinations, and drug trafficking. The American Ambassador in Bogotá, Anne Patterson, and the U.S. Commander in Chief of Southern Command, General Peter Pace, have both warned that the AUC now represent the most serious threat to Colombia’s democracy.

Meanwhile, the peace process between President Andrés Pastrana and the major guerrilla group, the FARC, founders. To support their insurgency, the guerrillas continue to terrorize the urban middleclass through kidnapping and extortion. And growing numbers of Colombians, believing the AUC is the only force capable of ridding Colombia of the guerrillas, are listening to Castaño, who skillfully portrays himself as the "defender of the middleclass." As Colombia prepares for presidential elections in June 2002, many believe that the AUC's military offensive is close to achieving its long-term objective: to insinuate the political agenda of the AUC's far right sponsors into Colombia's political mainstream.

Traditionally Colombians have voted for the center. Now the center is overwhelmed by chaos and polarization and Castaño's backers, an ideologically extremist coalition of cattle ranchers and businessmen, narco-traffickers, regional politicians, and retired, cashiered, and active service army officers, have been positioning themselves to fill the vacuum. Hardliner Alvaro Uribe Velez, the Oxford and Harvard educated independent presidential candidate whom political analysts -- among them former president Alfonso López Michelsen and the country’s most influential columnist, Roberto Espinoso ( El Tiempo's "Dartagnan") -- have publicly stated fronts for Castaño, is on a roll. In the latest Gallup poll, in April, 25% of those surveyed supported him, compared to 17% in December 2000 and 3% in August 2000.

Uribe, whose father was killed by the FARC, is ideally qualified to exploit rising popular rage and despair. As governor of Antioquia, he promoted citizens' self-defense groups, which on his watch evolved into murderous paramilitaries. He has said that, if elected, he would create a national civilian militia and arm a million rural Colombians to patrol the countryside and provide the army and police with intelligence. Uribe was present when this idea was first proposed by the cattle ranchers at their National Conference in Cartagena, last November, where, amid scenes of a crowded convention hall filled with cattlemen giving the falangiste salute, it was received by a standing ovation. Critics say Uribe's plan sounds like the legalization of the paramilitaries.

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Sidebars:
The Sudden Disappearance of Carlos Castaño
By Ana Carrigan

The Career of Carlos Castaño: A Marriage of Drugs and Politics
By Ana Carrigan