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.
|
|
