Assassins Stalk Leftist Party in Colombia

After gunmen shot Mayor Miguel Rojas to death in his home here last May, his Patriotic Union party held a meeting to choose a successor, and it came up with three names.

“None would accept; they were afraid,” a party leader recalled. “It is hard for a person to subject himself to being another martyr of the people.”

Before Mayor Rojas was killed, assassins had killed two other officials of his Marxist-oriented party in San Jose--a municipal councilman in September, 1986, and an alternate member of the national Congress in December.

Now, for security reasons, the municipal council holds its occasional meetings miles away in a remote jungle town surrounded by Marxist guerrillas.

The guerrillas present no problem. What worries most of the councilmen are assassins who they say are part of a right-wing campaign against the Patriotic Union throughout the nation. Seven of the San Jose council’s 10 members belong to the party, which is led by Communists, former guerrillas and other leftists.

Estimates 500 Slain

Nationwide, the Patriotic Union estimates that as many as 500 of its members, leaders and sympathizers have been assassinated since the party was founded 2 1/2 years ago. The victims have included a national senator, an alternate member of the Senate, two alternate members of the House of Representatives, two mayors and about 30 municipal council members.

The wave of slayings escalated Oct. 11 when anonymous gunmen ambushed and killed Jaime Pardo Leal, 46, the Patriotic Union’s president. The Justice Ministry said in November that Pardo Leal’s killers were hired by cocaine traffickers, but Patriotic Union officials insisted that right-wing extremists were behind the killing.

Pardo Leal was the Patriotic Union’s candidate in the 1986 presidential election. The party’s participation in those elections was part of a “peace process” intended to bring Colombia’s armed rebels out of the mountains and jungles and into an increasingly democratic political system. The peace process included an official cease-fire and amnesty for guerrillas.

But most of the guerrillas are still fighting, and if the political system has become more open, it also has become more deadly.

Party Gained, Lost

The Patriotic Union’s experience in San Jose del Guaviare, 230 miles southeast of Bogota, is an example of how the party has both gained and lost in the process.

San Jose, the capital of sparsely settled Guaviare Territory, clings to a bend in the Guaviare River, which flows through tropical savannas and humid jungles in Colombia’s vast eastern lowlands. The city is the seat of a mostly rural district that covers the entire territory of Guaviare.

Although the Patriotic Union carried the district in 1986 elections, no leaders of the party are to be found in the city. Many are 50 miles away in the jungle town of Calamar, which they say is safer because the great majority of Calamar residents belong to or sympathize with the party.

The San Jose municipal council has held its latest meetings in Calamar. Vicente Londono, chairman of the council, said it tried to meet in San Jose last year and early this year, but found conditions impossible.

“Hired killers surrounded the council constantly, until we had to flee clandestinely,” said Londono, a thin man of 69 with a deeply wrinkled face.

Accused Military Officers

The Patriotic Union has repeatedly accused military officers of working with “paramilitary groups” to plot assassinations around the country as well as in San Jose del Guaviare.

“Paramilitary groups are sponsored by the military base here,” said Aristobulo Briceno, 45, a dentist in Calamar.

Briceno is the Patriotic Union’s candidate for mayor of San Jose in elections scheduled for March. He admitted that what happened to the Patriotic Union’s last mayor worries him.

“There is a certain nervousness,” he said. “But we are prepared for that because this is the people’s struggle.”

Some officials say that cocaine traffickers are behind at least some of the assassinations of Patriotic Union members in Guaviare. They say the traffickers are retaliating against “taxes” levied by Marxist guerrillas on semi-refined cocaine base produced in the region.

Patriotic Union officials say the killings are purely political.

Carlos Ossa, an adviser to President Virgilio Barco Vargas, said in Bogota that feuding between guerrillas and drug traffickers has resulted in assassinations of Patriotic Union members in some areas such as Guaviare. But he also blamed many killings on right-wing extremists.

“They want to prevent the advancement of Patriotic Union forces,” Ossa said. “They consider that with the advancement of the Patriotic Union, there is a process toward communism.”

He acknowledged that “there are military people involved” in the killings, but he added, “What I do not believe is that there is any conspiracy by the army as an institution.”

Military Dismisses Charge

Lt. Col. Eduardo Arevalo, press spokesman for the Defense Ministry, dismissed accusations against the military, saying that the left has “an obsession” for blaming the country’s troubles on the armed forces.

Arevalo said that many of the assassinations may have been ordered by ranchers and farmers in retaliation for guerrilla extortion, kidnapings and killings. He said such vengeance murders make no distinction between guerrillas and the Patriotic Union.

In some areas where the guerrillas are strong, armed organizations of farmers and ranchers have been formed. Some government officials have said that such organizations receive military training and weapons, but the Defense Ministry denies that it provides any such aid.

“These are the groups that play the part of death squads,” said Alvaro Salazar, chairman of the Patriotic Union for Bogota. “There is a single national center, in the military security agencies, that coordinates all these groups.”

Before he was killed, party President Pardo Leal issued a public accusation against a long list of military officers he said were involved in death squad slayings.

Says Tension Rose

“That raised the tension between us and the armed forces,” said Salazar, 30, a former guerrilla who gave up fighting to work within the political system.

Salazar, 30, was active in organizing the 1986 campaign that won the Patriotic Union seven seats in Congress and majorities in 40 municipal councils, including the one in San Jose del Guaviare. Pardo Leal received nearly 5% of the presidential vote, the best showing ever for a Marxist-oriented party in Colombia.

The traditional Liberal Party of President Barco recognized the Patriotic Union’s gains by giving it the appointive mayoralties in 26 municipalities. Colombians will elect mayors directly for the first time next March.

Salazar said the Patriotic Union will compete in the elections despite what he called a campaign to “liquidate” the party.

“We aren’t going to hide out or go into exile,” he said. “We are not going to give up the political space we have conquered.”

Alfredo Vasquez Carrezosa, a member of the Conservative Party and chairman of Colombia’s leading human rights organization, predicted that as long as the assassins are not punished, the Patriotic Union slayings will continue and the guerrilla war will grind on.

Vasquez said one problem is that “there is a certain fear among judges to investigate too much.”

Another problem, he said, is that the civilian judicial system has no authority to try military personnel.

The result is assassination with impunity, according to Vasquez Carrezosa, who said, “It is that impunity that is killing Colombia.”