Paramilitaries reemerge in pockets of Colombia

Increased activity among armed rightist groups coincides with reports of their links to top politicians.

from the March 12, 2007 edition

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Epicenter is the oil capital of Colombia

Nowhere is the apparent rise of a "new generation" of paramilitaries on display more than in Barrancabermeja. The city has been rocked by 17 execution-style shootings so far this year, as well as three grenade attacks, one of which killed a young secretary at a real estate agency.

"The AUC in this region numbered around 5,000. Now, after demobilization, there are six or seven commando-style groups of 50 or less, such as the Black Eagles," says Father Eliécer Soto, the director of the human rights program of the Catholic diocese of Barrancabermeja.

José Celdales, a farmer and community leader running for mayor of nearby Santa Rosa del Sur in October, says that he has survived four paramilitary attempts on his life since 2004. The latest of those killed his brother just last month. Mr. Celdales says that he was targeted for denouncing murders by drug-traffickers, adding: "The author of the attacks is the local commander of the Black Eagles, a demobilized AUC commander. He told me personally that he would kill me."

Doris Parra, human rights adviser to Colombia's national police, says the situation in Barrancabermeja is "very worrying," and that the Black Eagles are a concern for the police in many areas. "We will review our systems of protection for human rights workers," she says, adding that she is preparing a report on "emerging illegal armed groups."

Barrancabermeja police spokesperson Lt. Col. Gomez Auella Alfonso blames the fresh violence on criminal groups fighting over their stake in the illegal drug trade, rather than politically motivated paramilitary violence. "There are definitely criminal gangs operating. Some of them claim that they are the Black Eagles, but the police don't accept that that means there is a real armed group here called the Black Eagles."

But Soto refutes this. "[The AUC] had to disarm a strong part of their military structure so they could reintegrate their chiefs into civilian life," he says "but there are thousands of paramilitaries active around Colombia, and the massacres are continuing." He estimates that 40 to 50 percent of paramilitaries are still active. But he warns that the problem they represent to critics of "para-political" corruption is the same as before demobilization, Now, he says, it's more terrifying because it's clandestine. So, he says, "the effects on the people are the same."

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