One by one, the grief-stricken mothers shuffled silently into the local prosecutor’s office to provide a DNA sample to help identify more than 70 bodies unearthed from secret graves in this cattle-ranching region.
The victims were shot, beaten and hacked to death by Colombia’s outlawed paramilitary fighters, who are suspected of hundreds of killings in this one region alone but are now being given lenient treatment by the government in exchange for disarming.
Among the mothers offering DNA was Hemenegilda Julio, whose 21-year-old son was watching an afternoon baseball game in 2003 when right-wing militiamen snatched him. He was never seen again.
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Next in line was Catalina Banquez, whose 18-year-old son was pulled out of bed six months ago by four paramilitary gunmen, tied up and then stoned and beaten to death. Banquez never found her son’s body.
There also was Ines Primera de Berrio, whose 39-year-old son was grabbed by paramilitaries 2 1/2 years ago as he went out to make a phone call to his daughter. He, too, was never heard from again.
“I want to know what they did to my son,” said Berrio, 57, fighting back tears as she waited to provide DNA. “I hurt so much.”
Berrio demanded a death sentence for the paramilitary leader suspected of ordering her son’s killing.
But under a law approved by the Colombian Congress in June and backed by President Alvaro Uribe, right-wing commanders implicated in massacres and other atrocities, including San Onofre militia leader Rodrigo Mercado Peluffo, could spend only two or three years in confinement in exchange for demobilizing their troops.
Human-rights advocates and other experts say the law fails to guarantee that militia commanders detail their crimes or relinquish vast tracts of land and other wealth gained through violence or purchased with money from drug trafficking.
“We call this law the law of impunity,” said Gladys Avila, an official at the Bogota-based Association of Families of the Detained-Disappeared. “This law protects the victimizers and not the victims.”
But Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos argued that disarming up to 15,000 illegal fighters would prevent countless deaths in the future.
Santos said critics failed to understand the law ensures some measure of truth and justice while helping ease Colombia’s 40-year-old conflict that pits government troops often allied with the paramilitaries against two Marxist insurgencies.
The same law applies to Colombia’s leftist rebels, and the first group of 38 guerrillas recently joined the disarmament process. But rebel commanders have shown little interest in negotiating with the government.
“They start from the end of human rights–which means you have to hang them [paramilitary commanders] by their guts,” Santos said in an interview, referring to critics. “We are starting from a different end. We are negotiating a solution to this violence.
“If we can stop the killing, let’s try the best we can do to do it,” Santos said.
The human cost of Colombia’s civil war has been horrific.
The conflict has claimed at least 3,000 lives annually and more than 7,100 civilians have disappeared, nearly half of them in the last five years and many at the hands of paramilitary forces, Avila said.
10,000 put down arms
Under government auspices, about 10,000 Colombian militia fighters have disarmed since late 2003, though there are indications that some commanders might be holding back their most hardened troops in case the peace process collapses.
Colombian officials are expected to ask the U.S. for more than $100 million to provide training and jobs to help return the soldiers to civilian life.
But even Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the influential chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a strong supporter of Uribe, has expressed concerns the new law does not ensure that paramilitary commanders dismantle their organizations.
There also are worries that top militia leaders participating in disarmament might avoid extradition to the United States, where they are wanted on drug-trafficking charges.
Uribe visited Washington last week to discuss the law and other issues with Lugar, House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois and other key U.S. legislators.
“The meeting with President Uribe was very productive, and we hope that our concerns can be addressed,” said a staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Colombia’s paramilitary units emerged two decades ago to battle growing leftist insurgencies at a time when the nation’s military and police were weak and ineffective.
The units, known by their umbrella group, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, were financed by large landowners but later became criminal enterprises that experts say are responsible for trafficking much of the cocaine reaching the U.S.
Residents of San Onofre, a city of 57,000 people 370 miles north of the capital, Bogota, said the militia led by Mercado, who is known by his alias “Cadena,” or Chain, moved into the region about a decade ago.
The militia members cowed political leaders, intimidated the police, confiscated the best farmland, extorted money from businesses and smuggled cocaine through the region’s Caribbean coastline, according to residents and officials.
Strolling the streets of San Onofre in camouflage and carrying assault rifles and 9 mm pistols, Mercado’s troops took any woman they fancied, drank whiskey in whatever bar they chose and murdered anyone who dared oppose them.
“They would knock on the door, take people out and kill them,” said Hermes Verbal, a 43-year-old tractor mechanic in San Onofre. “There was no law for them.”
Among the scores of victims were two former mayors and Verbal’s 52-year-old brother, who was run down by a car and killed in January 20 minutes after he filed a complaint against the militia with local authorities.
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Residents were so afraid that even family members of the dead and disappeared kept silent.
“The paramilitaries told me that if I filed a complaint they would kill me and my other kids,” said Julio, the 38-year-old mother whose son disappeared while watching a baseball game. She has nine other children.
But the fear eased earlier this year after the Colombian military drove out most of the paramilitary forces.
Officer reassures residents
Col. Rafael Colon, a local marine commander, then gathered hundreds of San Onofre residents in the city’s quaint central plaza and assured them it was safe to speak out about the atrocities.
So far, Colombian authorities have arrested 11 paramilitary fighters–though none of the top commanders–in the killings.
Mercado has sought refuge in a government-created haven for several dozen top paramilitary leaders participating in disarmament.
And forensic experts have started the grim task of hunting for mass graves in the region’s countryside.
Alberto Diaz, a forensic anthropologist working for the attorney general’s office in San Onofre, said 74 bodies have been unearthed in the region. He suspects paramilitary forces killed at least 300 civilians.
One of the primary killing fields is a sprawling cattle ranch known as El Palmar just west of San Onofre. The ranch served as a paramilitary headquarters until the militia fled eight months ago. Twenty-six bodies have been unearthed there.
“They took them near one of the trees, judged them and assassinated them,” Diaz said. “The majority of the bodies were dismembered.”
Only a handful of the 74 victims have been identified.
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