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Not
all Colombian institutions have been passive, however. The Prosecutor
General's office has sustained a lonely crusade against Castaño,
and recently formed a coalition for combined offensives with like-minded
members of the army and police. On May 24th, at the conclusion of
a two-year investigation, Prosecutor General Alfonso Gómez
Méndez dispatched a joint task force of judicial investigators,
police agents, and army Special Forces to the Córdoba provincial
capital, Montería, headquarters of Castaño's primary
financiers -- the cattlemen of Antioquia, Córdoba and Santander.
Police made 36 pre-dawn arrests in three cities. In Montería,
investigators raided the offices of the powerful Cattlemen's Federation
of Córdoba (Ganacor) and removed documents and computers.
They searched residences and businesses belonging to leading regional
figures, including a senator, the former President of Ganacor,
and the residence of Castaño's right-hand collaborator and
longtime military strategist, Salvatore Mancuso. The son of Italian
immigrants, Mancuso is a wealthy, cattle rancher and paramilitary
commander. He is also the subject of 10 arrest warrants for massacres
and assassinations.
This raid is the most significant victory scored by the Prosecutor
General and his staff in the last four years, but the price for
their relentless, lonely struggle has been exorbitant. Between January
and September 2000, eleven investigators were killed, three others
narrowly survived attempts on their lives, 11 were 'disappeared,'
and 21 others received death threats. It is also known that in the
last two years, intelligence agents for Castaño have infiltrated
the prosecutor's offices.
Castaño as Media Star
Since he first appeared in a ground breaking 90-minute television
interview in March 2000, Castaño has become a media star
(www.caracoltv.com.)
With his hair cropped very short, wearing casual yet impeccably
pressed cotton slacks, shirt, and tie, he sat on a fake antique
chair, insisting, "My ethic does not permit me to assassinate
an innocent person." Talking very fast, his restless, dark
eyes burning with nervous intensity, he justified all the killings--
all "guerrillas dressed as civilians,"-- and portrayed
himself as the tormented savior of his "beloved Patria;"
the sole defender of "la gente de bien," abandoned
to their fate by the establishment. He said he read the Bible nightly
and talking with God "calms me, nourishes me." He named
Oriana Fallaci and García Márquez as his favorite
authors, and ended the interview by reciting an entire poem by Mario
Benedetti. The next day, 38% of those polled said their opinion
of him had changed, said he was intelligent, made sense and, unlike
those lying guerrillas, "he spoke the truth."
That night, Castaño's transformation from gangster to media
star was off to a flying start. Nine months later he was back on
the competing channel, RCN, wearing a white fisherman’s sweater
and "talking with great charm and simple logic," according
to Time Magazine (November 28, 2000). In a recent interview
with Le Monde, Castaño explained, "[the AUC]
are not paramilitaries, but a patriotic, anti-civilian-subversion
movement, [that is] unique, world-wide. Our only enemy is the guerrillas,
who have turned the middleclass into their military objective."
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