HOUSTON CHRONICLE

Sunday, 17 October 1999
 

'Political cleansing' in Colombia rising Number of civilians displaced by 35-year war nears crisis levels 

By John Otis

TULUA, Colombia-As coroners wearing rubber gloves examined four bodies in a nearby hospital morgue, Sonia Salazar burst into tears. The dead included her husband and brother.

"The paramilitaries killed them," she wailed. "They said they were guerrillas. They tortured them like animals."

Salazar lost more than loved ones in the recent paramilitary rampage. She also lost her home.

The attack by right-wing death squads convinced Salazar and most of her neighbors that they should abandon their farms in the mountains of southwestern Colombia and flee to the nearby town of Tulua.

Their exodus was one of the latest chapters in a growing humanitarian crisis.

Marxist insurgents and paramilitary groups fighting for control of the Colombian countryside both target the civilian population in order to deny their enemy a social base.

Since 1985, the campaign of "political cleansing" has uprooted more than 1.5 million Colombians. Last year, a record 308,000 people were forced from their homes. Aid workers predict that a similar number will be displaced in 1999.

"Each year gets worse," said Jorge Rojas, director of Codhes, a Bogota research center that compiles data on the displaced. "If we look at the total numbers, it's more than Kosovo or East Timor by far."

The tragedy is now affecting Colombia's neighbors. In the past four years, an estimated 37,000 Colombians have fled to Venezuela, Panama and Ecuador, according to Codhes.

Many experts believe that the growing numbers of displaced people are closely linked to the nation's peace process. President Andres Pastrana, who took office last year, has vowed to negotiate with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the nation's largest rebel group, which is known as the FARC.

But the paramilitaries and smaller rebel groups also want a seat at the table and may be stepping up their military actions to appear stronger and to capture more public attention, according to Patricia Cabezas, an official at the government Office of the People's Defender in Bogota.

As the 35-year-old civil war has intensified, the resulting upheaval has spread to nearly all corners of Colombia.

Here in the fertile Cauca Valley, for example, paramilitary attacks were unheard of until recently.

But in the past three months, paramilitaries have executed at least 40 farmers suspected of aiding the guerrillas. Some victims have been decapitated. Others appear to have been tortured with chain saws.

"It's like saying, 'Welcome to the war,' " said Hernando Toro Parra, the human rights ombudsman in Cali, the capital of Valle del Cauca state.

Organized in northern Colombia in the 1980s to protect large landowners and drug traffickers, the paramilitaries have evolved into a powerful anti-guerrilla force. Over the past three years, they have migrated south to take on the rebels in their traditional strongholds.

The Cauca Valley is home to fronts from both the FARC and the smaller National Liberation Army, known as the ELN, as well as dozens of agro-industrial concerns that have been forced to pay "war taxes" to the rebels.

Alarm about guerrilla activities in the region increased in May after the ELN snatched 150 worshippers during Mass at a Roman Catholic Church on the outskirts of Cali. The rebel organization still holds some of those hostages.

Speaking to reporters at a mountain hideout last month, "Commander Roman," the paramilitary leader in the Cauca Valley, said that local business people became fed up with rebel kidnappings and extortion and agreed to sponsor his unit, so it could take on the guerrillas.

"They decided that they were going to liberate themselves, and they made an agreement" with the paramilitaries, said Jairo Lopez, who works at a Jesuit-run agricutural institution in the town of Buga.

A communique from Commander Roman's death squad in July warned civilians living in guerrilla strongholds that they had three options: join the paramilitaries, flee the area or die.

The result has been devastating. Towns such as Tulua and Buga have been inundated with terrorized peasants who have crowded into gymnasiums, schools and other makeshift shelters.

"The paramilitaries are going around with a hit list," said Guillemo Lozano, a human rights official for Tulua's city government. "The refugees often come to my office with a body, asking for help in getting a coffin."

After paramilitaries left pamphlets in the village of La Florida warning of an imminent attack, Marlene Ramirez, 42, packed her meager belongings and escaped to Buga along with members of 38 other families.

She now lives with about 200 refugees in the town's sports complex. A sign on the door says that anyone leaving the gym does so at his or her own risk. Few people venture outside, because they are afraid of being gunned down.

Many displaced families acknowledge that they had regular contact with the guerrillas, who have been in the area since 1969. But they deny supporting the rebel cause and claim that farmers have simply been caught in the middle.

"They come by and ask you for some panela, and you give it to them," said Ramirez, referring to a type of Colombian brown sugar. "We peasants have no other option."

In January, the Colombian government finally allowed the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to open an office in the capital of Bogota. A new federal law requires the government to provide medical treatment, food and shelter to displaced people for a 90-day period.

But Rojas, of Codhes, claims that the Pastrana administration has paid inadequate attention to the crisis.

"There is still no plan of action or a strategy," he said. Part of the problem, he added, is that most of the displaced are poor and powerless.

As refugees crowd into Bogota and other cities, the crisis is changing Colombia's demographics. The population of Soacha, a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Bogota, for example, has jumped from 300,000 to 1 million in the past six years, according to one U.N. official.

City officials already grappling with high unemployment and stretched budgets often view the migrants as economic burdens.

"Everyone says that they cause more problems for the cities," said Juan Villa Gomez, a psychologist who works with displaced people.

In the countryside, the displaced are pushing into the jungle frontiers of Putumayo, Vaupes and Amazonas states. To make ends meet, many are chopping down the rain forest to plant coca, the raw material for cocaine.

"They are going to increase the drug problem, because they don't have any other options," Rojas said.

Another concern is what some experts call "counter land reform." As farmers flee, large landowners move in and buy up their property at cut-rate prices.

Once peasants leave their homes, it often is extremely difficult for them to go back. Some have settled in so-called "peace communities" near their original farms and villages. They farm their own plots of land during the day and return to the communities at night.

The arrangement, however, does not guarantee safety. At least a dozen farmers have been executed by paramilitaries this year, and seven others have disappeared.

Some experts maintain that programs encouraging peasants to go home are irresponsible and can amount to a death sentence.

During a recent interview in a shelter in Tulua, displaced farmer Bernardo Velasquez said that he had considering returning to his land that very afternoon.

But then came word of yet another paramilitary massacre, and he quickly changed his mind. 
 

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