The year 1997 saw a dramatic escalation of violence in Chiapas and Colombia.
The December 22 massacre of 45 unarmed civilians in Chiapas was only the tip
of the iceberg. Five hundred people were the victims of politically motivated
killings in Chiapas last year, and thousands of Chiapanecos were forced to flee
their homes. In Colombia, meanwhile, 1997 saw 185 politically motivated massacres, in
which 1,042 people were killed. Today, over a million Colombians are refugees of the vio-
lence. This is textbook low-intensity warfare, with some slight modifications. The aim is
to undermine the social bases of insurgent movements by terrorizing civilians in the areas
of conflict. The methods include massacres and the razing of entire communities at the
same time that government agencies and army units try to win the “hearts and minds” of peasants by offering
handouts, subsidies and free haircuts.
The novelty in Chiapas and Colombia, as this special NACLA report documents, is that paramilitary groups
are increasingly taking a leading role in counterinsurgency. This is particularly the case in Colombia, where the
army has been virtually replaced by paramilitaries. In Mexico, government officials of the ruling Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI) have been directly implicated in the organization and funding of several paramilitary
groups operating in the state of Chiapas.
This “privatization” of counterinsurgency, as Ricardo Vargas calls it, is directly linked to the need of these
countries to maintain a veneer of legitimacy and stability in order to assure continued foreign investment.
Organizing paramilitary groups has one crucial advantage-plausible deniability. The paramilitarization of the
war allows government officials to point fingers at “uncontrollable” paramilitary groups for the escalating vio-
lence and express their horror at the atrocities committed while assuring international investors that these are
“excesses” that will be investigated and soon “brought under control.”
Also new is that in both Colombia and Chiapas, paramilitary groups are not silent or behind-the-scenes actors.
They are in fact quite public. Carlos Castaiio, who leads the ruthless United Self-Defense Units of Colombia-
responsible for dozens of massacres throughout the Colombian countryside in the past several years-has given
a number of interviews to local and foreign journalists (including Robin Kirk in this issue), in which he has
repeatedly announced his intention of leading the battle against the FARC. The state government in Chiapas, run
by the “dinosaur” wing of the PRI, has openly financed paramilitary groups operating in Chiapas. PRI Deputy
to the Chiapas State Congress, Samuel S.nchez Sd.nchez, is an open advocate, and many say ringleader, of the
“Peace and Justice” paramilitary group.
Like the counterinsurgency wars in Central America in the 1980s, counterinsurgency in Chiapas and Colombia
has its rationalizing myths. The old myths of Soviet- and Cuban-inspired Communism are no longer functional
in this post-Cold War world, so new myths have been created. The Colombian government and its allies in
Washington are resurrecting the narcoguerrilla theory-as witnessed last October when U.S. Drug Czar Barry
McCaffrey visited Colombia and praised the soldiers fighting against the “terrible threat to democracy of 15,000
narcoguerrillas.” In Chiapas, the equally ludicrous myth is that the army must be sent in to reestablish order
among the “feuding Indians” who are allegedly responsible for the violence. Like in the 1980s, the U.S. media
has unquestioningly parroted these rationalizing myths as fact.
Counterinsurgency in the 1990s is not about protecting democracy or preventing local-level violence in either
Colombia or southern Mexico. It is, rather, about securing particular national and international interests amidst
the economic and political transformations of the neoliberal age-the interests of PRI hardliners and their sup-
porters in Chiapas; of the emerging narco-bourgeoisie in Colombia who want to protect their transportation
routes; of multinationals who want to be able to freely exploit the mineral wealth of Chiapas and the oil fields
of Colombia; and last but not least, of the United States and its desire for continued hegemony in the region.
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