Along for the ride: how Colombia's paramilitaries retain power: the U.S.-backed government appears to be doing all it can to help paramilitary commanders evade hard time.
~snip~
The paramilitary movement took shape more than three decades ago when drug traffickers, ranchers, military officers, and businessmen began forming regional private armies. The most notorious, Death to Kidnappers, was formed in 1981 by drug-trafficking brothers Fabio, Jorge Luis, and Juan David Ochoa, whose sister was being held by one of the country's leftist guerrilla groups.
But the paramilitaries have rarely engaged in combat against the guerrillas. Instead, often working closely with government forces, they've focused on unarmed social movements, assassinating thousands of trade unionists, peasant leaders, human rights advocates, and politicians. "They've destroyed the legal left," says Hector Mondragon, economic adviser to a coalition of rural, black, and indigenous groups.
Paramilitaries have also carried out most of the war's civilian massacres, a major factor convincing three million Colombians to flee their homes since 1985. Now 61 percent of the nation's arable acreage is in the hands of 0.4 percent of landholders, according to a study by the Agustin Codazzi Geographic Institute and the Colombian Agriculture Research Corporation. Paramilitary chiefs themselves acquired more than twelve million acres abandoned by peasants between 1997 and 2003, according to a December report by the Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement. Bolstering the land grabs, Uribe and his allies have removed teeth from agrarian reform laws, including a 1936 measure allowing public reallocation.
Paramilitaries have played a key role in turning the narcotics trade into Colombia's largest export sector. The United States has requested extradition of at least seven paramilitary chiefs on drug-trafficking charges. They include Mancuso and AUC founder Carlos Castano, now missing. Both were indicted INDICTED, practice. When a man is accused by a bill of indictment preferred by a grand jury, he is said to be indicted. in 2002 for allegedly exporting more than seventeen tons of cocaine over the previous five years.
Across the country, the paramilitary movement has infiltrated city halls, provincial governments, and federal agencies, most notably the health care program and the attorney general's office. The infiltration helps them control a range of illegal activity. "Here in Cucuta, not a single kilo of coca is sold without their authorization," says Wilfredo Canizares, executive director of the Progress Foundation, a human rights group in that city. "They'll kill you."
Many legislators adore the paramilitaries. Senator Miguel Alfonso de la Espriella fondly recalls attending high school with Mancuso and reuniting with him in 1999 to help negotiate the release of a senator the AUC had kidnapped: "Mancuso told me he would have greeted me with a hug if we weren't in public."
President Uribe has similar ties. "Uribe's family was very close to the Ochoa and Castano families," notes National University political scientist Mauricio Romero, who studies the paramilitaries. "Saying so publicly here in Colombia is very risky, very dangerous, but I believe there's some continuity over the last twenty years TWENTY YEARS. The lapse of twenty years raises a presumption of certain facts, and after such a time, the party against whom the presumption has been raised, will be required to prove a negative to establish his rights.
More:
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Along+for+the+ride:+how+Colombia's+paramilitaries+retain+power:+the+...-a0132674579
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
