Ranchers Flee Venezuela Wild West

After half a century of ranch life that nourished his soul and weathered his face, Antonio Marquina is about to wash his calloused hands of this wild western range.

Marquina and the region’s other ranchers are sick of the lawlessness that gave rise to a thriving industry of kidnaping and extortion. The palm-studded ranches of Tachira and Apure states have become a no-man’s-land of fear and violence.

In blue jeans and T-shirt, with sun-cured visage and sinewy arms, Marquina does not look like a millionaire lawyer, but that is what he is. He owns and works the 3,000-acre Santo Cristo ranch outside La Fria in southwestern Venezuela, a few miles from Colombia.

At least 90 cattlemen have been kidnaped in recent years by Colombian guerrillas or renegades, or by gangsters who try to pass off their crimes as the work of rebels from across the border. Extortion is practiced on scores of others.

“Since I could walk, I’ve worked on a ranch, with cattle,” said Marquina, 55. “That was what I loved most in life, what gave me the greatest pleasure.”

On the night of Jan. 4, that joy was “taken away forever” when more than a dozen armed men kidnaped him from Santo Cristo. The kidnapers, who described themselves as Colombian guerrillas, told him they planned to hold him for a million-dollar ransom.

They put him in a safe house on the Venezuelan side for three days, then took him on a two-day march into Colombia.

Despite their rhetoric, Marquina’s captors do not appear to have been active rebels.

He and police think some were disaffected guerrillas. Four captured later were described as Venezuelan and Colombian criminals involved in kidnaping for profit.

“There is a state of anarchy on the border,” another Tachira cattleman said. “The state’s presence is very weak.”

That rancher, who asked not to be identified for fear that publicity would make him a target, has acted as mediator in the ransoming of several kidnaped colleagues.

He said the kidnaping began in the late 1970s as a fund-raising tactic of Colombian rebels, but that most of the nearly 50 kidnapings on the Venezuelan side since January, 1991, appear to have been the work of “gangsters.”

Kidnaping has become so routine that criminals adopt practices of legitimate business. The sometime mediator said a rancher was freed last year after his family made a down payment on his ransom and agreed to pay the rest by installment.

Victor Manuel Rodriguez, regional chief of the federal Judicial Police, said a rancher whose son was taken in July invited a representative of the captors to his home and laid out deeds, bank records, loan agreements and other documents showing his net worth.

Convinced that their original demand was beyond the family’s means, the kidnapers reduced it.

Negotiations between kidnapers and a family often take months, and rarely are police notified before the victim is freed. Only one rancher, Rafael Ramirez, kidnaped by guerrillas in 1983, has been murdered.

Abductions have declined dramatically in the vast grasslands of Apure state, with only two confirmed cases in a year. Authorities cite two reasons: Virtually all the wealthy ranchers have already been kidnaped, and the kidnapers, most of whom appear to be active guerrillas, have turned to extortion.

Hotel owner Efrain Aponte, president of Apure’s Chamber of Tourism, organizes photographic safaris to several big ranches.

Flocks of scarlet ibis, pink spoonbill cranes and white storks decorate the sky above herds of cattle fattening on the rainy-season grass. The savanna’s rivers are home to caimans and freshwater dolphins.

Aponte said seven of the eight big ranchers on the tourist board’s itinerary have been kidnaped, ransomed and released.

“The security problem hurts tourism,” he complained. “But the tourist has nothing to worry about. What the heck would they do with a tourist?”

Colombian guerrillas cross the border at will, leaving their fatigues and assault rifles behind, and collect from ranchers for la vacuna , vaccination against kidnaping.

Authorities say the practice is widespread. Though individual ranchers are loath to admit paying protection money, they acknowledge the practice. Many say their neighbors pay or have paid.

The defense ministers of Venezuela and Colombia met Aug. 17 at an army base in Guasdualito to discuss ways of tightening frontier security.

On Aug. 1, Colombian rebels blew up a Venezuelan police Jeep near the border, killing four officers. Three days after the defense chiefs announced plans to cooperate against kidnaping and extortion, a Colombian rebel group declared “war” on Venezuelan forces in Apure.

Venezuela has stationed task forces of army, national guard, air force and navy troops in Apure, Tachira and neighboring Zulia, but ranchers give the special forces low marks.

Marquina is the only kidnap victim who lived to tell his tale without paying ransom.

Five days after capturing him, his abductors heard him ask a peasant woman to contact police.

They stabbed him in the abdomen and beat him, knocking out his two front teeth. Fearing that he would bleed to death, they left Marquina locked in an adobe-walled room and went for a doctor.

While his captors were gone, Marquina climbed out under the house’s eaves and reached a town several hours later.

He continues working the ranch, but it has been virtually taken over by soldiers as a base in the border security campaign.

“Now all I want is for someone to buy this place, even at a loss, so I can go live somewhere with my family in peace,” he said.