Colombia’s Right-Wing Terror
Colombia’s Right-Wing Terror
Despite ongoing peace talks, Colombia’s left has much to fear from right-wing violence.
by Kieran Duffy
Kieran Duffy is an Irish writer and journalist currently based in Bogotá, Colombia.
5.19.16
On March 30, Los Urabeños, Colombia’s largest right-wing paramilitary group, distributed leaflets across the north of the country calling for a “pacific strike.”
The next day, the streets of many towns and cities were virtually deserted. Businesses and schools were closed, and people stayed home for fear of violence. Their concerns were warranted. Paramilitaries staged dozens of attacks on security forces, injuring several police officers, and in the days that followed they mounted assaults in neighborhoods across the country, including Medellín, Colombia’s second-largest city.
If there was any doubt about who controls much of the nation’s territory, the “pacific strike” dispelled it: right-wing militants, not the Colombian state, have the monopoly on violence in significant swaths of the country.
That worries the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP), the militant group currently in peace talks with the government after decades of waging armed struggle against the Colombian state. In a country where leftists have often been assassinated by state forces, paramilitaries, or cartels, FARC members say they’ll meet the same fate if they put down their guns and the paramilitaries remain armed.
. . .
First elected in 2002 on a platform of “democratic security,” Uribe carried out a huge offensive against the guerrillas. While his scorched-earth tactics isolated the guerillas, they also displaced millions of civilians. Uribe also colluded with paramilitaries who committed brutal atrocities. Villagers were routinely dismembered or decapitated as soldiers and police stood by and watched.
More:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/05/colombia-peace-farc-urabenos-santos-uribe-up/