Paramilitary Rule Pleases the Locals

The first clue that you’ve entered an outlaw paradise comes soon after the army checkpoint.

A cheery blue-and-white sign announces, “Here, we are all paramilitaries!”

Then come the men in camouflage, carrying huge machine guns. And the stolen gas tankers parked by the side of the road. And the clean-cut locals.

This is the capital of the “self-defense forces” of the Sur de Bolivar region, one of the most feared units of Colombia’s paramilitary army.

The right-wing paramilitary groups are listed by the U.S. State Department as terrorists. They are accused of committing massacres, selective killings and torture. The Colombian government has pledged to create a special unit to hunt them down.

And yet, finding them is as easy as taking a taxi.

“Here, everybody supports us,” Pedro, a local paramilitary organizer, says as he sits in his home in a nearby town, a 9-millimeter pistol tucked casually in his belt.

For decades, this small chunk of rolling hills and river valley in central Colombia was the territory of the National Liberation Army, or ELN, the nation’s second-largest leftist guerrilla army.

The rebels blackmailed local businesses, blockaded roads, kidnapped businesspeople and generally made life miserable.

Then, two years ago, the Colombian government offered to pull troops out of the area and turn it into a demilitarized zone for peace talks.

The locals had had enough. Some engaged in civil disobedience. Others joined the paramilitary groups, whose ranks had swelled dramatically since their formation in the mid-1990s.

After a dirty war in which hundreds of people disappeared or were killed, the paramilitary groups emerged victorious. The ELN all but vanished, confined only to the high reaches of a nearby mountain range.

Human rights groups have long accused the Colombian army of collaborating with the paramilitary forces. After all, both groups have a common enemy--the guerrillas.

Local Colombian military commanders deny that, and say they have engaged in dozens of battles with the illegal right-wing fighters. They say they simply don’t know who the paramilitary soldiers are, nor where they are.

They apparently aren’t looking too hard. There’s a Colombian army checkpoint only five miles from San Blas, where the results of the paramilitary conquest are only too obvious.

Approaching the town, the paramilitary forces have posted signs warning of $250 fines for those who pollute local streams. There are also large billboards proclaiming this the territory of the paramilitary groups’ Central Bolivar Bloc, which controls Sur de Bolivar and surrounding regions.

In town, paramilitary troops wander openly, automatic rifles in hand. They lounge at local restaurants and practice maneuvers on nearby hills.

The paramilitary headquarters is in a home on a hill overlooking the village. Camouflaged soldiers spill out in every direction, lounging on the porch, talking with neighbors.

One paramilitary soldier wears a shirt that reads: “The real counter-guerrilla squad”--a reference to the often-ineffectual Colombian army units that label themselves the same way.

Inside, computer wizards have set up an Internet connection via a cellular phone, a satellite dish and some cable wiring. “Purely homemade,” a technician says with a laugh.

Comandante Gustavo, the local commander, exercises his authority from a light and airy study reached by a concrete flight of stairs at the back of the home.

Gustavo is surrounded by fellow commanders. A telephone rings incessantly, bringing news from a nearby battle that has been raging for eight days between his forces and the FARC, the country’s largest leftist guerrilla group, which has recently begun moving fighters into the area.

Gustavo acknowledges that the battle is “fierce.” But he says his fighters will triumph because they enjoy the support of the people.

“We work very closely with the local population,” he says.

Gustavo is young, perhaps 30, and educated. He sounds as committed as any U.S. aid worker when he talks about his desire to rid the surrounding region of coca by encouraging the substitution of legal crops for illegal ones.

Of course, aid workers aren’t usually surrounded by armed followers who will enforce their hopes and dreams.

The paramilitary presence has helped transform the town. Children’s playgrounds have been installed, with brightly colored red, blue and yellow plastic swing sets that would fit into any Orange County suburb.

There are signs asking locals to pick up trash. The streets are clean. Crime is nonexistent.

And many locals are grateful.

“Things have been much better since the paramilitaries came. It’s much more calm, much more tranquil,” says Marco Antonio Parro, a local community leader.

The reaction underscores a key difference between the paramilitary groups and the FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

The paramilitary forces appear to make a concerted effort to win the support of the local populace in areas they dominate. The rebels seem largely indifferent to the fate of the poor for whom they are supposed to be fighting.

For instance, the difference is striking between San Blas and San Vicente del Caguan, the center of a demilitarized zone that served as headquarters for government peace talks with the FARC.

There, after nearly three years of rebel control, locals’ lives had worsened. Streets were dirty and crowded. Prostitution flourished. Drug crops sprouted. Roads remained unpaved.

Francisco de Roux, a Franciscan priest who runs a nonprofit alternative development program, says the paramilitary groups have been welcomed by much of the populace because they seem so much more capable than the guerrillas of improving the quality of life.

He says the paramilitary groups’ efforts at winning popular support and doing away with coca were political strategies designed to remove themselves from the State Department’s terrorist list and improve their international image.

“The self-defense forces are trying to position themselves as a political group with political concerns,” De Roux says. “They are trying to make themselves freedom fighters.”

But Gustavo, relaxing in his studio, says good PR has nothing to do with the paramilitary fighters’ actions. Instead, he says, the main concern is improving locals’ lives.

“This,” he says, “is a laboratory of peace.”