Mayor Killed in South Colombia

A mayor here in Colombia’s major coca-growing province was killed Wednesday, authorities said, as a Marxist rebel protest against U.S.-backed drug crop eradication entered its third month.

Two men on a motorcycle--a common assassination team in Colombia--killed Carlos Julio Rosas, the authorities said. Rosas was the mayor of Orito, a town in the southern province of Putumayo, which is under siege by insurgents opposed to the fumigation of coca fields.

Rosas’ death followed an attempt to assassinate the mayor of Sibundoy, in the same province, and came two weeks after a bomb exploded a block from the police station here in nearby Puerto Asis, killing two civilians and injuring 16 other people, including several police officers, according to authorities.

Since late September, roads into the province have been blocked by Marxist guerrillas protesting “the push into the south”--the military component of Plan Colombia, this nation’s anti-drug initiative.

For the first month, the national government ignored the siege, Putumayo Gov. Jorge Devia said in an interview earlier this month. But after citizens began organizing a delegation to talk to guerrilla representatives to the country’s now-suspended peace talks, officials took action.

Military authorities took control of the province earlier this month, police said, and have organized and escorted caravans of supply trucks that have broken the rebel blockade.

Because no group has claimed responsibility for either Rosas’ killing or the bombing here, it wasn’t clear whether the incidents were a response to the breaking of the blockade. “These events frustrate the majority of Colombians who long for a peaceful nation,” a national government statement lamented.

As the province that grows an estimated two-thirds of the coca in Colombia, the world’s major cocaine producer, Putumayo has become the focus of the guerrilla protest against the anti-drug plan. The rebels are especially opposed to the $1.3 billion in U.S. aid, which will be used mainly for military training and hardware to fumigate opium poppies and coca.

The province is already a major target of the new military anti-narcotics base at Tres Esquinas, Colombian authorities have said, and anti-drug activity is slated to increase as more U.S. funds arrive. The rebels and right-wing private armies that have been fighting for control of Putumayo’s coca fields for the past two years are both hostile to the eradication project, according to military authorities.

But the roads have been blocked only by four fronts of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the country’s largest guerrilla group, known by the initials FARC.

The siege contrasts with the rebels’ largely successful effort four years ago to prevent aerial spraying in this part of Colombia. Then, the guerrillas organized marches of thousands of coca farmers to protest the proposed spraying.

The current protest, U.S. and Colombian officials claim, is directed against the civilian population.

“This whole thing is unwinding in a bizarre fashion,” U.S. anti-drug czar Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey said in a telephone interview on a recent trip to Bogota, the capital. “I’ve never seen an organization with less political sense than the FARC demonstrates.”

Gov. Devia said the blockade has made the FARC increasingly unpopular. “The civilian population is becoming tired of the FARC yoke,” he said.

When the supply trucks entered Puerto Asis escorted by the Colombian army, he said, it was met by motor scooters honking their horns in celebration and residents who lined the street to shout, “Long live the army,” in this town that is traditionally guerrilla-controlled.

In recent weeks, posters have appeared here featuring a map of Putumayo--a long, thin province that stretches along Colombia’s border with Ecuador and Peru. A chain is locked firmly around the map.

“Putumayo demands freedom,” the simple Spanish legend demands. No one admits to knowing who put them up on power poles and walls of stores, but no one has taken them down, either. Similarly, four-wheel-drive vehicles spray-painted with anti-FARC slogans have begun cruising through town in what residents consider a sign of the presence of the right-wing private armies.

Despite the success of the military-escorted caravans, prices for staples such as rice remain at double or triple their usual level. Gasoline is $6 a gallon from clandestine sellers; local gas pumps are empty.