August 2001

It is the most violent town in Colombia, or the world for that matter. Everything might look calm in the city center of Barrancabermeja, but on the outskirts of town, a dirty war is raging between paramilitaries and guerrillas of the leftist ELN, Ejército de la Liberación Nacional (National Liberation Army). The victims, as usual in the Colombian war, are mostly civilians. In 2000, 700 people died a violent death in this city with a population of 250,000. And, from the looks of it, 2001 will not be much different.

Another murder
On Friday evening, March 23, two cars stopped at the house of union organizer Rafael Attencia. Eight armed men forced their way into his house and took Attencia away at gunpoint. Attencia and his eight assailants vanished into the night. The next day, his bullet-ridden body was found in a ditch near a deserted railroad track. Attencia was the 176th victim this year. Most likely, by the end of 2001, there will be hundreds more.

Since 1998, a brutal war has been raging over the control of Barrancabermeja. Located along the important Magdalena River, which offers a water route to the Caribbean Sea, this industrial city refines 80 percent of the nation’s oil and stands at the heart of the fertile cattle ranching lands and rich coca producing areas of northern Colombia. Barrancabermeja was traditionally a stronghold of the ELN. Politics turn a different turn in the region in May 1998, when paramilitary troops began their offensive by killing 25 suspected guerrilla sympathizers in a village nearby and announcing their intention to "sweep the city of subversives."

Paramilitary forces have slowly taken control of one neighborhood after another. ELN members are laying low or have retreated to the countryside. Paramilitary violence has focused lately on human rights groups, popular organizations, and labor unions. Since the government revealed plans to grant the ELN a neutral and demilitarized zone west of Barrancabermeja, the violence has only increased. Big landowners and cattle ranchers—the staunchest supporters of the paramilitaries—have strongly opposed any plans for creating a neutral zone.

Saturday night, March 24
For the funeral parlor La Fondería, it was a typical busy Saturday night. Attencia’s body lay on the table in the white-tiled morgue. A police forensic autopsy established the cause of death as six bullets, fired at short range. Behind a rickety table, police investigator Oscar Díaz typed out his report, a small machine gun slung over his shoulder, ammunition clips in his vest.

"This is Colombia," announced Díaz. "Where else on earth must a district attorney never part from his UZI?"

The phone rang at La Fondería. Undertaker Rubén Darío picked it up. Two more dead bodies in the outskirts, he told his assistants. They left in the station car to pick up the victims. The funeral parlor has to retrieve the dead because the authorities do not dare to venture into the most dangerous neighborhoods.

Outside La Fondería, life went on as usual. As on every Saturday night, the main boulevard of the city center was closed for traffic. Salsa music boomed in barrooms, couples strolled hand-in-hand, and teenagers sped by on roller blades. Roller blading has gained tremendous popularity since Barrancabermeja hosted the 2000 World Championship in an effort to improve its image. A series of wagons hitched together and painted like a caterpillar rolled through the streets, filled with laughing children.

"This is a human slaughterhouse," undertaker Darío said, when his assistants returned with the bodies of two men in their late teens. Díaz lit another cigarette and rolled a new sheet of paper in his typewriter. Sobs reverberated against the tiles of the morgue as a young girl bent over one of the victims. Outside, a dark blue armored police vehicle rumbled through the street on its way to the outskirts, "to restore peace and tranquility."

"Seven deaths so far this weekend," said Díaz. "It is starting to become a massacre." For Colombians, the designation of massacre requires at least nine victims, he explained. "We don’t have the means and time to carry out a decent investigation," Díaz sighed. "The United States gives the Colombian army Black Hawk helicopters. But at the district attorney’s office, we have a shortage of paper clips. Nine investigators share one computer. We lack the technology to start a fingerprint database. Often we can’t visit the crime scene for danger of being shot. Witnesses are too scared to talk. All that remains is a superficial ballistic evaluation. Most of the time, all we can do is determine the type of weapon used."

Human Shields
"Ninety-nine percent impunity," commented activist Henry Lozano, behind the bulletproof windows in his office of the human rights organization Credhos. "It is a public secret that the army and paramilitary have close ties. The army disarms the guerrillas, turning them into cannon fodder. The paramilitaries step in and clear the neighborhoods of the guerrillas."


A local cameraman who didn’t wish to be named said that every now and then the police arrest a couple of paramilitaries. "Within a few days, they are released and roaming the streets again.," he added. "We all know they are good friends. Army, police, and paramilitaries can be seen in the same bars, sharing drinks and playing cards."

"Our region is so rich in natural resources, but 80 percent of the population is living below the poverty line," said Lozano. "With the current 40 percent unemployment rate, the paramilitaries have a never-ending source of recruits." Lozano explained that the paramilitaries offer a monthly salary of $250, nearly twice what the ELN can pay. Many former guerrilla fighters have switched sides and now inform on their former buddies. Locals say that paramilitaries receive substantial support from the region’s narco-traffickers.

Lozano, who travels by armored car and whose family has been living in another town for security reasons, said that the paramilitaries bluntly declared his human rights group a `military target.’ "So far this year, we have received twenty death threats by phone and mail," he said. "Six members of our staff have been killed over the years, scores of others quit working, or moved or safer towns."

He pointed at two foreign nationals sitting in the Credhos waiting room. They were volunteers, he said, from the London-based Peace Brigade. They serve as human shields by being constantly in the physical presence of people living under death threats. It is assumed that killing a foreigner would generate bad publicity for the paramilitaries. "Without the Peace Brigade, our work would have been impossible," Lozano stated. The volunteers refused to comment, saying they had strict orders from London to be extremely discreet since, a few months ago, they too had been declared a `military target.’

"Everybody with leftist leanings is in fact on the paramilitary death list," said Yolanda Becera, head of the women’s organization OFP. "The paras always find a reason to kill people. It doesn’t matter if they are friends or family of suspected guerrilla members, sympathizers, or supporters. Their aim is to spread terror and to destroy the popular base of the unions and human rights groups. The message is: Pretend not to see or know anything, just stay home and do nothing." Becera said she did not believe in bulletproof glass. "Protection should come from the police," she said wryly. "But we all know that’s a joke."

Serve the people
Several heavily-armed men in civilian clothes were hanging out at the market square of San Rafael. It was a sleepy Sunday afternoon and the armed men, some of them standing in doorways and chatting with girls, others talking on cell phones, were all but ignored by the inhabitants of the dusty village. San Rafael is a paramilitary stronghold an hour’s drive from Barrancabermeja. Commander Esteban, head of operations, agreed to an interview in a local pool bar. His men stood guard, watching the pool players and sipping colas.

"We have never killed any innocent civilian," Esteban said. "We only kill guerrillas." He did not know who had murder union organizer Rafael Attencia, and suggested that ordinary criminals were responsible. "People working for the popular organizations are just guerrilla informers and collaborators," he added.

"Colombia is tired of the guerrillas," Esteban continued. "Before we had a presence in Barrancabermeja, people were scared. You never saw army or police in the outskirts. Now the people can go out every night. The whole world should know that we are here to serve the people."