I’d come to Paris last April to photograph a community peace march during a hiatus in a war that had begun in February. The battle for control of Paris is being waged by the paramilitary United Self-Defenders of Colombia (AUC), and has thus far claimed more than 80 lives.

One theory is that the paramilitaries are being paid by the bus companies who want to be rid of the "vacuna," but don't want to pay the Paris cooperative for its services. Another is that Paris is strategic territory in Colombia's war. Beyond Paris lie mountainous corridors into and out of the city that are used for transporting troops, drugs, and arms. The guerrillas also want control of this geography.

According to another theory, the police abet the paramilitaries in revenge for the days nearly a decade ago when Escobar paid contract killers in Paris $1000 a head for every policeman they killed.

What is certain is that the war for control of Paris is all too real. Just after I left Paris last April, armed masked men burned out a community of refugees in a land invasion known as El Esfuerzo. Some have suggested that this group of displaced individuals, which arrived two years ago, well organized and with its own internal structures of control, might have had sympathies with guerrilla militias. If so, the AUC would certainly have been hostile.

During my 10-day visit to Paris, the murder rate was nearly one a day. The AUC issued a communiqué saying they'd kill anyone who charged or paid protection money on the buses. But the people they killed? A fifteen year old bus washer. Bus drivers who were not members of the Los Muchachos and had nothing to do with vacunas. During one massacre the paramilitaries entered a café where bus drivers and local residents gather for lunch. According to eyewitnesses, nine armed men opened fire with automatic weapons, killing indiscriminately. So much for military/criminal targets.

The local media have portrayed the conflict as a war between criminal bands over extortion--nothing new in Medellín--ignoring facts that might raise other troubling questions. Instead, they cite the AUC's declared war with "Frank's band" over extortion. But "Frank's band' is not a gang from Paris. The papers don't mention that the AUC war is designed to pressure Los Muchachos to revert to violence in self-defense. Lacking police protection, or even police presence, Los Muchachos, and the whole civilian population, are totally vulnerable in a position of non-violence. If Los Muchachos go back to war, then it will be just as the cynics predicted--they weren't serious about peace in the first place.

Why haven’t the authorities at least attempted to prevent this bloodbath?
Again there are theories.

To me it is clear that Medellín is a microcosm of Colombia. As one observer, a former M-19 guerrilla who now runs a community TV project told me--"Medellín--it's the epicenter of the conflict, the place to watch if you want to understand the forces moving this country as opposed to policies hatched in Washington."