Learning to Kill by Proxy: Colombian Paramilitaries and the Legacy of Central American Death Squads, Contras, and Civil Patrols
2003; Volume: 30; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2327-641X
Autores Tópico(s)History and Politics in Latin America
ResumoIntroduction IN THE 1980s, WARS RAGED IN CENTRAL AMERICA. IN NICARAGUA, THE UNITED States waged a proxy war against the Sandinista government with the U.S.-backed Contras (see Brody, 1985). Salvadoran and Guatemalan death squads, begun by the United States in the early 1960s, brutally attacked all protest against these Central American states, both peaceable and insurrectionary. (1) Although the history of paramilitaries in Colombia is often traced to the 1997 unification of paramilitary groups under the AUC (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, or United Self-Defense of Colombia) or to the private armies of large landowners, drug traffickers, and other elites of the 1980s, paramilitarism in Colombia is neither new nor haphazard. This article traces the founding of Colombian paramilitaries to the Cold War era when the United States helped the Colombian and Central American governments establish proxy paramilitary forces in its fight against international Communism. I then summarize the devastating effects this paramilitarism had on Colombian and Central American society during the 1960s to the late 20th century. I begin with an ethnographic description of paramilitarism in the Uraba-Choco region of Colombia and then provide a testimonial account from a young, Colombian paramilitary in 2001. A concluding section provides an update on the impact of paramilitarism on human rights in contemporary Colombia, and on the implications for peace in the region. The Colombian State and Its Proxy Forces In the Uraba area of Colombia, the paramilitaries control the northern part of Uraba, Antioquia, and Cordoba; the paramilitary leader Carlos Castano dominates this area. (2) Paramilitaries in Uraba and elsewhere support local economic powers and move freely from north to south in their areas of control (except for mountainous areas dominated by the guerrillas). At its multiple margins, the state becomes legible as its relationship with paramilitary forces is revealed through army maneuvers and paramilitary checkpoints. Indeed, in Apartado, army street patrols guard the restaurants and bars where off-duty paramilitaries eat, drink, and dance. In July 2001, while traveling on public transportation with human rights workers from Apartado to the beach town of Necocli, our bus was stopped or waved through five times at paramilitary checkpoints as army vehicles moved up and down the highway. Army platoons also patrolled the highway at the periphery of each town less than a kilometer from each paramilitary checkpoint. The infrastructure of Colombian army patrols, troop maneuvers, and security checkpoints lend protection to the paramilitaries and allow them safe freedom of movement and action. This relationship between the Colombian army and the paramilitaries, which is mutually beneficial on a strategic level, unveils a power arrangement that is intended to remain hidden, that is, proxy paramilitaries of the state operating in the anonymity of the margins of the state. Thus, what initially appears to be simply a privatization of state violence is revealed in practice as state violence by proxy. Displacement in the Uraba area can be traced to the regional consolidation of the paramilitaries between 1994 and 1995. (3) Indeed, the largest barrio in Apartado is Barrio Obrero, which was founded by civilians displaced between 1995 and 1997 by paramilitaries. Today, Barrio Obrero is controlled by paramilitaries and sicarios (thugs for hire). (4) In this way, marginalized communities on the urban peripheries also become the margins of the state and sites of contention where the state reconstitutes sovereignty through violence and surveillance; and, as is the case in other areas, (5) it does so using proxy paramilitary forces. The paramilitaries have used displacement as their central military tactic in rural areas. On the urban peripheries, paramilitaries most often use threats, disappearances, and assassinations in their exercise of state power. …
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