Colombian Rebels Renew Their Fight in Key Farm Region : Peasants Flee Armed Clashes; Strife Seen as Blow to President Betancur’s Efforts to Pacify Country

The Cauca Valley, Colombia’s richest farm region, echoes with the sound of gunfire and with the stutter of helicopter gunships flying into combat zones in the rugged surrounding hills.

Hundreds of peasants have come down from hamlets in the lower hills, where they plant coffee and graze cattle, to seek refuge from the fighting.

In the first week of October, 47 people were killed in clashes between left-wing guerrillas and elements of the army not far from Tulua, a sizable town surrounded by sugar plantations. The bodies of 13 guerrillas killed near Monteloro, nine miles from here, were displayed in the town’s main square. Four soldiers died in the fighting there.

The guerrillas, who belong to the Movement of April 19, or M-19, operate from hideouts in the mountains between here and neighboring Tolima state. They move on foot in two elusive columns that total about 350 combatants. In pursuit are three army brigades, totaling about 3,000 troops, and air support.

16 Soldiers Killed

“This is war,” Gen. Miguel Vega Uribe, the minister of national defense, said the other day. He said that 16 soldiers were killed in recent fighting.

The M-19 underground in Cali, an industrial city of nearly 2 million people about 50 miles south of here, has displayed photos of four soldiers it is holding and has offered to free them if an army general will accept the prisoners in person. But the army refuses to deal with the guerrillas.

The fighting in the tropical valley is a major setback for President Belisario Betancur’s three-year effort to persuade Colombia’s various guerrilla factions to come to terms.

The renewed hit-and-run fighting erupted in August, when M-19 military leaders ended a cease-fire that had been agreed to early this year with a peace commission set up by Betancur in the effort to pacify the country.

“I don’t understand the reasons why the M-19 is fighting,” Betancur said. He noted that the largest guerrilla force, the Communist Party’s Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, has kept the truce and has halted combat operations by its 8,000 armed men and women.

Guerrillas’ Grievances

The M-19 military leaders, Carlos Pizarro Leongomez and Gustavo Arias Londono, said they have resumed fighting because some of their top leaders were killed by security forces while the cease-fire was in effect.

Also, the M-19 movement--which takes its name from the April, 1970, elections here that it claims were fraudulent--blame Betancur for the failure of the Colombian Congress to enact promised reforms, including the direct election of mayors next year and an agrarian reform program.

The M-19 insurgency seems to represent no direct threat to Colombia’s democratic system, but while its guerrillas are attacking, the headlines in Colombian newspapers are of war, not peace.

In congressional debate over Betancur’s peace plan, much of the oratory has been highly critical.

Virgilio Barco, the presidential candidate of the opposition Liberal Party in the election scheduled for next May, visited Tulua after the new fighting broke out in the region and told a Liberal Party rally that he would defend the “life, honor and property” of Colombians if he is elected.

Barco said he would be willing to continue a “peace dialogue” with the dissidents but only after a suspension of armed violence. He criticized Betancur for “empty oratory” and said that the Conservative Party government has failed to carry out the economic and social programs needed to make peace possible.

Cloud Over Elections

The threat of armed violence hangs like a dark cloud over the presidential election and over the congressional election scheduled for March as well.

Sen. Carlos Holmes Trujillo, a Liberal leader in the Cauca Valley, said that the region where the guerrillas are operating accounted for 20% of the Liberal Party vote in the last election, in 1982. He said the violence poses a threat to the party’s chances.

Ramon Elias Giraldo, a lawyer here, said: “People are scared. The guerrillas take their cattle and they blackmail people here in town to pay them protection money.”

The Liberal Party meeting took place at a social club where about 400 participants were guarded by heavily armed police. From a small airfield nearby, helicopters of the 3rd Brigade, headquartered in Cali, ferried troops into the hills and returned with several wounded soldiers.

Two years ago, the M-19 movement announced that it would take control of the Cauca Valley, where 4 million people live. It has been recruiting combat forces in a huge Cali slum called Agua Blanca, where unemployment is estimated at 20%, particularly among young men looking for their first jobs. Some of the guerrillas who have been killed were only 13 years old.

Extortion Tactic

“They extort money from merchants in the towns and from wealthy farmers and offer the unemployed money to join them,” Giraldo said. “If you don’t have a job, it is a way to make a living.”

Luis Alfredo Restrepo, who has degrees in engineering and management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, works in Cali’s electronics industry. He told Barco that the insecurity in the valley calls for a major public investment effort in highways, home construction to reduce a housing deficit of 120,000 units and rural development.