Drug Violence Clouds Colombia’s Day of Love

Colombians observed their annual Day of Love and Friendship on Saturday by counting more police victims of the drug war and nervously awaiting the onslaught of what narcotics gangs have said would be “black September,” a time of murder, terrorism and destruction in retaliation for the government’s anti-cocaine campaign.

With the streets and key installations of major cities under virtual martial law, citizens moved cautiously about to exchange the gifts and greetings that mark a holiday here that in some ways resembles Christmas and Valentine’s Day.

But the joy was muted by the beginning of one of the most violent weekends since the war against the drug traffickers began nearly a month ago after the assassination of presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan, an implacable enemy of drugs.

At that time, leaders of the major cocaine operations in Medellin and Cali publicly vowed to carry out “a total and absolute war” against the government.

Two Banks Dynamited

And so it seemed Saturday. Bogota branches of the government-owned Banco Popular and the private Banco Santander were hit by dynamite bombs. Two people were injured, one seriously.

Fire department officials said the explosions took place about 5 p.m. in a semi-industrial section on the capital’s west side near the headquarters of the Department of Security Administration, Colombia’s equivalent of the FBI. The Banco Popular building was heavily damaged; the Santander branch less seriously. Police attributed the bombings to drug dealers.

The attacks on the banks, favorite targets of the narcotics traffickers, came after three policemen were killed late Friday night in ambushes. Two died in Bogota when their car was sprayed with gunfire from a passing pickup truck. Another policeman died in Medellin, the nation’s leading drug center, when a bomb exploded near his car. Two other officers were wounded. Police spokesmen blamed both attacks on the traffickers.

In less than a month, Medellin has been the scene of more than 30 bombs and dozens of other incidents of violence, including a terrorist attack on the drug capital’s airport.

The violence, which had been focused on Medellin and, to a lesser degree Bogota, also spread for the first time to Cali, Colombia’s other major drug center, where a series of bombs Friday night and Saturday morning wounded 13 people, two of them policemen, according to national police officials. A dozen small businesses and three banks were damaged.

Police officials in Cali said in a telephone interview that “we think the violence is starting here now because the narcotics traffickers are beginning to feel the pressure (from the government drive).” However, they also said that the explosions could have resulted from intramural warfare between the dealers themselves, a not uncommon happening in the city.

Although authorities “guaranteed peace and safety” for the holiday, reports of “black September” drove people off the streets and out of public places and put the 200,000-man military and the country’s 80,000 police on full alert with all leaves canceled.

Streets Almost Deserted

In the Chico, Bogota’s most upscale neighborhood of shops, restaurants and clubs, the streets were virtually deserted on a sunny day when people normally are shoulder to shoulder looking for presents and treating one another to drinks and meals.

Not even the police felt secure in spite of their commander’s assertion that “we have absolute control of the city, and the people therefore should have confidence in the armed forces and security organizations.”

Col. Nassin Yanine Diaz, Bogota’s police chief, added that the rumors about the so-called “black September” are “without foundation and designed to terrify the Bogota population.”

Yet, the city’s police were under orders not to travel alone. All police cars had to be escorted by another vehicle or motorcycles. A police spokesman, who asked not to be named, said that “these precautions are necessary because of threats from the narcotics traffickers. We are being threatened.”

At the same time, areas in central Bogota, Cali, Medellin and the coastal cities of Cartagena and Barranquilla were occupied by troops and police, who set up roadblocks and stopped pedestrians in searches for guns, bombs and wanted drug dealers.

The police action, including the edginess of the officers, appeared to inspire outright fright in an already nervous population.

“The police are targets,” said Maria de Sola, a shopkeeper in the Chico, “so when they are out among us, we also become targets.”

Growing apprehension about a possible major assault by the traffickers has led some government officials to worry that the threat of violence is forcing police to divert attention from the main goal of the government’s drive: to capture the leaders of the major narcotics gangs.

“They are pulling men back into the cities to protect banks and other buildings,” a source in the president’s office said, “and that means there are fewer police looking for Gacha and Escobar,” a reference to Pablo Escobar and Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, leaders of the Medellin cartel and reputedly the plotters of the anti-government violence.

Meanwhile, the military high command announced that the air force was being ordered to shoot down planes suspected of ferrying drugs in and out of Colombia.

Declaring that suppressing the drug traffic “is of vital and transcendent importance,” the air force said that any civilian plane that does not identify itself will be assumed to be a drug runner and forced down or destroyed in the air.