"Gerardo" is a leader in a place known as "Communa 7". On the morning of January 30th, armed men forced their way into the local "Communa 7" headquarters of a women's organisation and demanded the keys to the building. When the women, who use the building to run a community kitchen and provide refuge for displaced families, refused to hand them over, the paras gave them until 4 p.m. to leave and ordered "Gerardo" to organise a demonstration outside the building to drive the women away. "It's an order," they said. "If you don't obey we will know. It's simple. You work for us. Or you leave town. Or you die."
Why, I asked "Gerardo", can't you ask the police to escort the phone company to reconnect the phone service? He shrugged. "The paras make fun of us if we call the police. What idiots you are to bring the army and police here," they say. "They work with us, didn't you know?" The city's civilian leaders have no illusions. Unless the government can re-establish the rule of law and regain control of the streets, they expect the paramilitaries' totalitarian backers to prevail. "It's the historic Latin American phenomenon," says the bishop. "In moments like these an ultra-right appears to impose its own political and economic model. Based on the logic of force rather than the force of logic, it leaves no spaces for liberty, much less for human rights, or for economic and social development based on sustainability and consensus. But their rhetoric is seductive. It promises peace, security, employment.
People applaud. I've seen it. In moments like these they'll go along." A prominent Barrancabermeja human rights defender agrees, and adds: "If this happens in Colombia we will have 20 years of dictatorship in this country." As the AUC closes in on Bogota and other cities, it is this dark vision, bleaker than any yet seen during the 40-year insurgency, that lies behind any future escalation of the war. Powerful economic forces drive this AUC campaign for control of the city and the region. Barrancabermeja is the largest city in the Magdalena Medio, a region of vast potential wealth and strategic importance.
The routes connecting the rest of the country to northern Colombia and the Pacific, and the main road linking Bogota to the industrial heartland of Medellin and the Atlantic coast, all pass through Magdalena Medio. In addition to oil, Colombia's most important deposits of gold and nickel are buried in the San Lucas mountains north of the city, and large cattle ranches and agro-industry dominate in the east.
Yet 80 per cent of Magdalena Medio's economy comes from drugs; the fourth largest drug crop in the country, some 50,000 acres of coca plants, provides the cocaine that finances the AUC and underpins the political power of regional narco-traffickers. In 2000, by the end of the summer Castano's Magdalena Medio campaign had routed the ELN from their strongholds, and after October's regional elections he controlled the local administrations in 28 of Magdalena Medio's 29 municipalities. Barrancabermeja is number 29.
Barrancabermeja is a young town, a raunchy, tough, independent-minded, blue-collar town with an anarchic streak. It is not the place you would pick to establish the bridgehead of a totalitarian regime, and the communities on the front lines of the AUC's offensive are resisting. Pressure on military and police commanders from the American Embassy has helped - Ambassador Anne Patterson visited Barrancabermeja in December to meet civilian leaders. Support from diocesan workers, local activists and the international community have all been crucial to the daily effort to protect lives, and the communities suffering AUC assaults will not give up easily.
As I said goodbye to Monsignor Prieto, he had this to say: "Colombia's worst enemy is the culture of illegality which is de-legitimising the government. Magdalena Medio is the mirror through which we will see whether the state is capable of eliminating all suspicion concerning its relations with these paramilitaries. Personally, that is why I feel so strongly about the ELN `peace zone'. That is where we will be able to measure the state's response."
In the second week of February, General Carreno, commander of the army's Fifth Brigade, with responsibility for the region, disassembled the AUC's operational base, which is located on a bluff overlooking the river 15 minutes from the city. The army found two bunkers, classrooms for political studies, a heliport for a fleet of helicopters, and five cocaine processing laboratories. General Carreno's action offers hope that one senior commander, at least, has assumed the challenge defined by Monsignor Prieto. Yet, the government still fails to impose the "peace zone", and Barrancabermeja bleeds. Eduardo Cifuentes, Colombia's courageous ombudsman, said recently that Barrancabermeja's human rights defenders were threatened not with death, but with extinction. "The conscience of society is being murdered here," he said.
On March 4th, Castano posted a letter addressed to President Andres Pastrana on the AUC website, and for the first time he threatened the Colombian army: "The United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia are on high alert," Castano's letter said, "our troops are ready to die or to kill, confronting the guerrillas, or whomever, in order to defeat a new demilitarised zone."
Last week the number of assassinations in Barrancabermeja, since January 1st, rose to 145.