Álvaro García was born in
Ovejas,
Sucre, and grew up on his family's cattle and agriculture farms. His family is originally from
Carmen de Bolívar.
Macayepo massacre On May 18, 2002, in a debate in Congress on paramilitary politics, Senator
Gustavo Petro showed documentary and audio evidence that indicated García Romero had ties to
paramilitary groups in Sucre and was involved in the Macayepo massacre, a mass murder carried out on October 16, 2000 by the illegal far-right armed organization known as the
United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) in the Macayepo district, in the jurisdiction of Carmen de Bolívar in the department of Bolívar in northern Colombia, where 15 peasants were murdered with machetes, sticks and rocks and nearly 246 families were displaced from their territory. Senator García went to the lectern and loudly called Petro a “clown,” denying the accusations. His case was now being investigated by the Supreme Court of Justice. In February 2010, García Romero was found responsible for being the intellectual author of the massacre and other events related to paramilitarism, such as the murder of San Onofre teacher Georgina Narváez, who had denounced electoral fraud in the department of Sucre. García was sentenced to 40 years in prison. On February 25, 2021, the
Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) accepted García into its jurisdiction but expelled him in 2022 due to his refusal to acknowledge his participation in the events for which he was convicted. == Political career ==