Right-wing paramilitarism in Colombia

Plan Lazo was the head of a counterinsurgency team sent to Colombia in 1962 by the US Special Warfare Center. Yarborough was one of the earliest proponents of "paramilitary ... and/or terrorist activities against known communist proponents".'''' In October 1959, the United States sent a "Special Survey Team", composed of counterinsurgency experts, to investigate Colombia's internal security situation. This was due to the increased prevalence of armed communist groups in rural Colombia which formed during and after La Violencia. In February 1962, a Fort Bragg top-level U.S. Special Warfare team, headed by Special Warfare Center commander General William P. Yarborough, visited Colombia for a second survey. In a secret supplement to his report to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Yarborough encouraged the creation and deployment of a paramilitary force to commit sabotage and terrorist acts against communists: The new counter-insurgency policy was instituted as Plan Lazo in 1962 and called for both military operations and civic action programs in violent areas. Following Yarborough's recommendations, the Colombian military recruited civilians into paramilitary "civil defense" groups which worked alongside the military in its counter-insurgency campaign, as well as in civilian intelligence networks to gather information on guerrilla activity. Among other policy recommendations, the US team advised that "in order to shield the interests of both Colombian and US authorities against 'interventionist' charges any special aid given for internal security was to be sterile and covert in nature." It was not until the early part of the 1980s that the Colombian government attempted to move away from the counterinsurgency strategy represented by Plan Lazo and Yarborough's 1962 recommendations. Law 48 of 1968 The first legal framework for the training of civilians by military or police forces for security purposes was formally established by the Colombian presidential decree 3398 of 1965, issued during a state of siege, which defined the defense of the nation as requiring "the organization and tasking of all of the residents of the country and its natural resources...to guarantee National Independence and institutional stability." Decree 3398 was later succeeded by Law 48 of 1968, a piece of permanent legislation that gave the Colombian executive the power to establish civil patrols by decree and allowed the Defense Ministry to supply their members with military-grade weaponry. These committees were to maintain contact with local military officers, keeping a high level awareness about any suspicious communist action in their communities, in particular those of suspected "guerrilla supporters". The manual also allowed military personnel to dress in civilian clothes when necessary to infiltrate areas of suspected guerrilla influence and for civilian helpers to travel alongside military units. Separately, in order to help gain the trust of local citizens, the military was advised to participate in the daily activities of the community where and when applicable. Rise of paramilitaries In the late 1970s, the illegal cocaine trade took off and became a major source of profit. By 1982, cocaine surpassed coffee as a national export, making up 30% of all Colombian exports. Many members of the new class of wealthy drug barons began purchasing enormous quantities of land for a number of reasons: in order to launder their drug money and to gain social status among the traditional Colombian elite. By the late 1980s, drug traffickers were the largest landholders in Colombia and wielded immense political power. They raised private armies to fight off guerrillas who were trying to either redistribute their lands to local peasants, kidnap members of their family, or extract the gramaje tax that was commonly levied on landed elites. Muerte a Secuestradores (MAS) Between the end of 1981 and the beginning of 1982, members of the Medellín Cartel, the Colombian military, the U.S.-based corporation Texas Petroleum, the Colombian legislature, small industrialists, and wealthy cattle ranchers came together in a series of meetings in Puerto Boyacá, and formed a paramilitary organization known as Muerte a Secuestradores ("Death to Kidnappers", MAS). They formed this organization to defend their economic interests, to fight against the guerrillas, and to provide protection for local elites from kidnappings and extortion. By 1983, Colombian internal affairs had registered 240 political killings by MAS death squads—mostly community leaders, elected officials, and farmers. Asociación Campesina de Ganaderos y Agricultores del Magdalena Medio (ACDEGAM) The following year, the Asociación Campesina de Ganaderos y Agricultores del Magdalena Medio ("Association of Middle Magdalena Ranchers and Farmers", ACDEGAM) was created to handle both the logistics and the public relations of the organization and to provide a legal front for various paramilitary groups. ACDEGAM worked to promote anti-labor policies and threatened anyone involved with organizing for labor or peasants' rights. The threats were backed by the MAS, which would come in and attack or assassinate anyone who was suspected of being a "subversive". ACDEGAM also built schools whose stated purpose was the creation of a "patriotic and anti-Communist" educational environment, built roads, bridges, and health clinics. Paramilitary recruiting, weapons storage, communications, propaganda, and medical services were all run out of ACDEGAM headquarters. By the mid-1980s, ACDEGAM and MAS had experienced significant growth. In 1985, the powerful drug traffickers Pablo Escobar, Jorge Luis Ochoa, and Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha began funneling large amounts of cash into the organization to pay for weaponry, equipment and training. Funding for social projects was cut and put towards strengthening the MAS. Modern battle rifles such as the IMI Galil, HK G3, FN FAL, and AKM were purchased from the military and INDUMIL through drug-funded private sales. The organization had computers and ran a communications center that worked in coordination with the state telecommunications office. They had thirty pilots and an assortment of helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. U.S., Israeli, British and Australian military instructors were hired to teach at paramilitary training centers. According to the report by the Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad ("DAS", Colombia's Administrative Security Department), between December 1987 and May 1988, Rodríguez Gacha hired Israeli and British mercenaries to train teams of assassins at remote training camps in Colombia. Yair Klein, a retired Israeli lieutenant colonel, acknowledged having led a team of instructors in Puerto Boyacá in early 1988. Movimiento de Restauración Nacional (MORENA) By the end of the 1980s, the MAS had a significant presence in 8 of Colombia's 32 departments—Antioquia, Boyacá, Caquetá, Córdoba, Cundinamarca, Meta, Putumayo, and Santander. During this period, a stated goal of the groups was to kill members of the Patriotic Union or any political groups that opposed drug trafficking. Critics of the MORENA experiment either saw it as an attempt at legitimizing paramilitarism and its abuses, as an extension of ACDEGAM, or as a copycat of El Salvador's ARENA. Castaño family and ACCU In the late 1970s, the FARC-EP began gathering intelligence on Don Jesús Castaño. A wealthy rancher in Segovia, Antioquia, far-right conservative, and influential local politician, Don Jesús was considered an ideal target for kidnapping. The Don was kidnapped in 1981, and ultimately died while in captivity. Don Jesús had several sons. The oldest of these, Fidel, had accumulated a fortune illegally smuggling emeralds, robbing, and trafficking cocaine and marijuana. By the 1980s, Fidel had become one of the most powerful mafia capos in the world, and had purchased large tracts of lands in northern Colombia. By 1988, he and his younger brother Carlos purchased over 1.2 million hectares of land in Antioquia, Córdoba, and Chocó. As a teenager, Carlos Castaño had worked as an informant for the Colombian army's Bomboná battalion, which had strong links to MAS death squads. He later worked as an assassin for the MAS, and was supplied with weapons by army officers. In 1983, Carlos went to Tel Aviv, Israel where he spent a year taking courses in paramilitary and counterinsurgency tactics. Los Tangueros While Carlos was in Israel, Fidel hired a group of over 100 armed men, which began to terrorize the local populace. The thugs became known as Los Tangueros by the villagers after the name of the Castaño ranch, Las Tangas, where they were based. In 1983, under orders from Fidel, a group of men went through the villages near Segovia, where his father had been held, and killed every man, woman, and child living on the river nearby. They pulled babies out of their mothers arms and shot them, nailing one baby to a plank. They impaled a man on a bamboo pole, and hacked a woman to pieces with a machete. By the time they were done, 22 people were dead. By the late 1980s, numerous cattle ranchers in Córdoba were now supporting Fidel Castaño. Many of them had been forced to pay increasing amounts of extortion money to the EPL and other Communist guerrillas under the threat of kidnapping or having their ranches burned and their animals killed. Widespread local mobilizations against the central government's peace initiatives, the guerrillas, and political movements thought to have their consent or approval, were organized under the leadership of the Colombian military and Fidel's group. Between 1988 and 1990, Colombian press sources reported almost 200 political murders and 400 suspected political assassinations in the region and official government figures suggested that a total of 1,200 of them took place in Córdoba during the period. Left-wing politicians received anonymous death threats and were frequently interrogated in army bases by the 11th Brigade. After the demobilization, the Communist FARC-EP expanded its activities in Córdoba and clashes between them, a dissident EPL faction, and the demobilized guerrillas—some of which formed armed "popular commands"—led to almost 200 murders of former fighters and continued violence. Carlos Castaño claimed that this was the reason he decided to reactivate his family's private army. Anti-Paramilitary Decrees of 1989 In 1987, government statistics revealed that paramilitaries had been responsible for more civilian deaths than guerrillas deaths. Two years later, in 1989, the Colombian government under the administration of Virgilio Barco (1986–1990), passed a series of decrees that promised to reduce paramilitary violence. The first of the decrees, Decree 813, called for the creation of a commission to oversee the government's anti-paramilitary efforts. The commission was to include the Ministers of Government, Justice, and National Defense, along with the chiefs of the Army, National Police, and DAS. The commission was supposed to plan ways to cut down on paramilitary violence and oversee the execution of these plans. The second decree, Decree 814, established a 1,000 member anti-paramilitary police force that was made up of active-duty officers from the National Police. In 1989, the administration issued Decree 1194 which outlawed "the armed groups, misnamed paramilitary groups, that have been formed into death squads, bands of hired assassins, self-defense groups, or groups that carry out their own justice" after the murder of two judges and ten government investigators at La Rochela, Santander. The decree established criminal penalties for both civilians and members of the armed forces involved in the promotion, financing, training and membership of said groups. Controversy surrounding directive Human Rights Watch (HRW) concluded that these intelligence networks subsequently laid the groundwork for continuing an illegal, covert partnership between the military and paramilitaries. HRW argued that the restructuring process solidified linkages between members of the Colombian military and civilian members of paramilitary groups, by incorporating them into several of the local intelligence networks and by cooperating with their activities. In effect, HRW believed that this further consolidated a "secret network that relied on paramilitaries not only for intelligence, but to carry out murder". HRW stated that while "not all paramilitaries are intimate partners with the military", the existing partnership between paramilitaries and the Colombian military was "a sophisticated mechanism--in part supported by years of advice, training, weaponry, and official silence by the United States--that allows the Colombian military to fight a dirty war and Colombian officialdom to deny it." As an example of increased violence and "dirty war" tactics, HRW cited a partnership between the Colombian Navy and the MAS, in Barrancabermeja where: "In partnership with MAS, the navy intelligence network set up in Barrancabermeja adopted as its goal not only the elimination of anyone perceived as supporting the guerrillas, but also members of the political opposition, journalists, trade unionists, and human rights workers, particularly if they investigated or criticized their terror tactics." The Calí Cartel provided $50 million to pay for weapons, informants, and assassins, with the hopes that they could wipe out their primary rival in the cocaine business. Members of both Colombian and U.S. government agencies (including the DEA, CIA and State Department) provided intelligence to Los Pepes. In 1994, Decree 356 of Colombia's Ministry of Defense authorized the creation of legal paramilitary groups known as Servicios Especiales De Vigilancia y Seguridad Privada ("Special vigilance and private security services"), also known as CONVIVIR groups. The CONVIVIR groups were intended to maintain control over high risk areas where guerrillas did not have a strong presence after having been expelled and where there was no need for a large military force or illegal paramilitary presence anymore. Many illegal paramilitary groups transitioned into legal CONVIVIR groups after this. These CONVIVIR groups worked alongside both the Colombian military and illegal paramilitary groups in counterinsurgency operations. The governor of Antioquia, Álvaro Uribe Vélez—who would later become President of Colombia—was one of the primary proponents of the CONVIVIR program. Statistics regarding the exact number of CONVIVIR groups differ and have been considered hard to obtain. Estimates indicate that, by the late 1990s, from 414 to over 500 of these groups had been created, with their membership ranging from 10,000 to 120,000. Uribe's department of Antioquia had some 65 CONVIVIR groups, one of the highest figures in the country. Amnesty International claims that the CONVIVIR groups committed numerous human rights abuses against civilians, working in coordination with the Colombian government and paramilitaries. In November 1997, due to mounting concerns over human rights violations committed by CONVIVIR groups and the relations between illegal paramilitaries and CONVIVIR, the Constitutional Court of Colombia stated that the issue of military weaponry to civilians and specifically to CONVIVIR groups was unconstitutional, By the end of the decade, there had been a tenfold increase in the number of Colombian paramilitaries. == Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) ==

In April 1997, the creation of the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia) or AUC was announced, formally inaugurating what has been termed by analysts as the "second generation" of paramilitarism. It is considered to be the result of Carlos Castaño's efforts to achieve a measure of unity between most of the other paramilitary forces in the country. Several paramilitary groups did not join, but the AUC itself claimed to represent about 90% of existing forces at the time. Castaño's ACCU formally became the core of the new umbrella organization, while the other heads of paramilitary groups kept their own leadership positions, becoming part of a federated High Command of the AUC. It has been considered by observers that the FARC's advances as part of a 1996 to 1998 offensive eased the process of this formal paramilitary unification. As a response, the AUC engaged in a renewed series of massacres and assassinations, often with the passive or active aid of elements of the Colombian government's security forces, according to human rights organizations. 2003–2006 demobilization process In July 2003, the Uribe administration began formal negotiations with the AUC with the stated aim of seeking its demobilization. Law 975 of 2005, also known as the "Justice and Peace" law, was approved by the Colombian Congress and constituted the main legal framework applicable to those paramilitaries who had committed serious crimes. The legislation gave AUC combatants broad concessions, such as allowing paramilitaries to keep profits made from criminal activities during their time in the AUC, limiting sentences to a maximum of 8 years which could be served on private farms instead of in prisons, and not obliging them to dismantle their power structures. Under the Colombian government's interpretation of Law 782 of 2002 and Decree 128 of 2003, the majority of the paramilitaries who submitted to the process were pardoned through the cessation of judicial procedures for charges related to their membership in the group. Only 3,700 of the paramilitaries applied for "Justice and Peace" benefits. such as the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the OAS, citing its non-compliance with international standards on the rights of victims to seek justice and reparation and granting impunity to human rights violators. ==Post-AUC successor criminal groups==

New paramilitary groups and related drug trafficking gangs that have continued operating after the AUC demobilization process are referred to as bandas criminales (BACRIM) or criminal gangs by the Colombian government. According to the Colombian National Police, these groups had 3,749 members by July 2010, while the NGO Instituto de Estudios para el Desarrollo y la Paz estimated 6,000 active combatants.. Others estimate their ranks may include up to 10,000 people. Until 2011 Colombia remained the world's largest cocaine producer, and since 2003, Human Rights Watch stated that according to their Colombian intelligence sources, "40 percent of the country's total cocaine exports" were controlled by these paramilitaries. In 2011 an independent investigation, made by the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo, estimated that 50% of all Colombian cocaine was controlled by the same BACRIM groups. In the early 2010s, the Black Eagles, Los Rastrojos, Los Urabeños, Los Paisas, Los Machos, Renacer, Los Gaitanistas, Nueva Generación, Bloque Meta, Libertadores del Vichada, the ERPAC, and The Office of Envigado comprised the dominant criminal and paramilitary organizations. These successor groups are often made up of mid-level paramilitary commanders and criminal structures that either did not demobilize in the first place or were re-activated after the demobilizations had concluded. Their targets have included human rights defenders, labor unionists and victims of the former AUC. Members of government security forces have also been accused of tolerating their growth. ==Human rights violations==

The right-wing paramilitaries have been blamed for many of the human rights violations during the Colombian conflict, particularly killings of civilians. In 2022, the Truth Commission for Colombia concluded that paramilitaries were responsible for 45% of all killings and 52% of forced disappearances. During some years of the conflict, the paramilitaries and state agents were responsible for approximately 73 to 85% of all political murders in Colombia. Many of these killings occur in massacres in rural areas, with the paramilitaries claiming they are eliminating alleged supporters of the guerrilla movements. Paramilitaries also engage in the use of child soldiers and sexual violence against civilians, along with kidnappings for extortion purposes. Paramilitary violence is overwhelmingly targeted towards peasants, unionists, teachers, human rights workers, journalists and liberal or left-wing political activists. Paramilitary abuses in Colombia are often classified as atrocities due to the brutality of their methods, including the torture, rape, incineration, decapitation and mutilation with chainsaws or machetes of dozens of their victims at a time, affecting civilians, women and children. Many of these abuses have occurred with the knowledge and support of the Colombian security forces. A 1998 Human Rights Watch report stated: A 1999-human rights report from the U.S. State Department said: In 2006, Amnesty International reported that: Massacres Hundreds of massacres have been perpetrated by paramilitary groups in Colombia. Mapiripan Massacre In Mapiripán, Meta Department, an estimated 30 people were killed between July 14 to 20 1997. At least 100 heavily armed AUC members arrived in the town searching for people who were suspected leftist guerrilla supporters. They went from house to house referring to a list of names that had been prepared by informants earlier. Civilians were taken to the town center where they were tortured by paramilitaries before being killed. After torturing their victims, the paramilitaries decapitated people with chainsaws, hung people from meat hooks, hacked people with machetes, cut people's throats and carved their bodies, and then threw their corpses into the nearby Guaviare River. The local judge of Mapiripan, Leonardo Ivan Cortes, called the police and the army eight times during the 5-day massacre, but they did not arrive until the AUC paramilitaries had left. The evidence showed that the paramilitaries landed unhampered at the San Jose del Guaviare airport, which was heavily guarded by military personnel. The first victim was a 17-year-old girl named Gladys Ipia whose head and hands were cut off with a chain saw. Next, six people were shot while eating at a local restaurant. Another man was chopped into pieces and burned. A woman had her abdomen ripped open with a chainsaw. An indigenous leader named Cayetano Cruz, was cut in half with a chainsaw. The paramilitaries lined up the villagers in the middle of the town, and asked people if they knew any guerrillas. If they answered "no", they were hacked to death with machetes. Many of the bodies were dismembered, and strewn piecemeal around the area, making it difficult to gain an accurate body count and identify victims. Between 4,000 and 6,000 people were displaced as they fled the area during and following the violence. Forced displacement Indian girl in Cazuca near Bogotá, Colombia. Paramilitary violence is responsible for most of the displacement in the country's ongoing conflict. More than 5 million people out of Colombia's total population of approximately 40 million have been internally displaced since 1985, making it the country with the second highest internally displaced population in the world after Sudan. Over 3 million people have been displaced after President Álvaro Uribe took office in 2002, with over 300,000 displaced in 2005 alone. Paramilitary groups have been held responsible for the largest portion of displacement. In the years 2000 and 2001, paramilitaries were blamed for 48 percent and 53 percent of forced displacement, respectively. Social cleansing Paramilitary groups, often with the support of local merchants, the Colombian military, and local police, have engaged in extensive "social cleansing" operations against homeless people, drug addicts, orphaned children, and other people they deem socially "undesirable". In 1993 alone, at least 2,190 street children were murdered, many of whom were killed by agents of the state. An estimated 5 people per day fell victim to social cleansing operations in 1995. ==Financing==

Drug trade The downfall of the Medellín and Cali Cartels in the 1990s created an opening for paramilitary groups, which controlled northern Colombia (the key transnational smuggling route), to take over the international cocaine trade. In 2001, Colombian government sources estimated that at least 40% of all cocaine exports from Colombia were controlled by far-right paramilitary groups, while only 2.5% were controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Financing by U.S. corporations Chiquita Brands International From 1997 to 2004, Chiquita Brands International gave over $1.7 million to the AUC, over $825,000 of which was given after the U.S. State Department had listed the AUC as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Families of some of the victims filed a class-action lawsuit, Doe v. Chiquita Brands International in 2007. The indictment alleges that the payments "were reviewed and approved by senior executives of the corporation" and that by no later than September 2000, they were aware "that the AUC was a violent, paramilitary organization". Separate charges were also filed alleging that in 2001, using a Colombian port owned and operated by Banadex (a subsidiary of Chiquita), the company transported 3,400 AK-47 rifles and 4 million rounds of ammunition, which were destined for the AUC. Mario Iguarán, Colombia's attorney general in 2007, said that he would seek extradition for several Chiquita executives as part of the weapons smuggling investigation. Lawyers from the U.S. Department of Justice learned of Chiquita's relationship with the AUC in 2003. They told Chiquita executives that the payments were illegal and ordered them to stop. After receiving the order, Chiquita made at least 19 more payments. Chiquita representatives said that they were only financing terrorist organizations "in good faith", for the protection of their employees. To date, none of the Chiquita executives have been indicted for terrorism, however the company did receive a fine of $25 million. The plea deal was negotiated by Eric Holder, who was then an attorney with the law firm Covington & Burling, which represented Chiquita Brands. Drummond Coal In the late 1980s, Alabama-based Drummond Coal began to expand into new markets, due to the deregulation of global capital. As part of this expansion, they purchased the Pribbenow coal mine in Colombia, as well as a Caribbean port to ship the coal. They increased production at the mine by 20 million tons annually, turning it into one of the largest coal-mining operations in the world. It made up the largest share of Drummond's $1.7 billion in annual revenues. Since it started operating in the early 1990s, Drummond's 215-mile railway has been repeatedly attacked by the FARC-EP. There is evidence that right-wing paramilitaries were hired by Drummond to guard the rail lines. The Coca-Cola Company In July 2001 four lawsuits were filed against The Coca-Cola Company by the International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF) and the United Steel Workers of America on behalf of Sinaltrainal (a union representing food and beverage workers in Colombia), five individuals who had been tortured or unlawfully detained for union activities, and the estate of murdered union activist Isidro Gil. The plaintiffs alleged that Coca-Cola bottlers "contracted with or otherwise directed paramilitary security forces that utilized extreme violence and murdered, tortured, unlawfully detained, or otherwise silenced trade union leaders." Coca-Cola does not deny that the murders and attacks on unionists took place at their bottling facilities, nor did they deny that the paramilitaries responsible for the killings were being paid by the bottlers, but they claimed that they could not be held liable because they are not in direct control of the bottling plants. In March 2001, district judge Jose E. Martinez decided in Miami that Coca-Cola could not be held liable, claiming they did not directly control the bottling plants, but allowed the case against the bottling companies to proceed forward. ==Political activities==

The Colombian parapolitics scandal or parapolítica in Spanish (a combination of the words paramilitar and política) refers to the 2006–present Colombian congressional scandal in which several congressmen and other politicians have been indicted for colluding with the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a paramilitary group which is responsible for killing thousands of Colombian civilians. In February 2007, Colombian Senator Jorge Enrique Robledo suggested another term, "parauribismo", indicating that the scandal was mainly affecting officials or political allies of President Álvaro Uribe's administration. By April 17, 2012, 139 members of Congress were under investigation. Five governors and 32 lawmakers, including Mario Uribe Escobar, President Uribe's cousin and former President of Congress, were convicted. ==See also==