In July 1997, the paramilitary group known as the United Self-Defense Units of Colombia (AUC) went on a grisly killing spree in Mapiripán, a small coca-growing town in southeastern Colombia. According to eyewitness accounts, the paramilitaries hacked their victims to death with machetes, decapitated many with chainsaws and dumped the bodies—some still alive—into the Guaviare River. At least 30 people were killed, though the true number of dead may never be known. Carlos Castaño, the self-anointed leader of the AUC, immediately and unabashedly took credit for the massacre.
But Castaño did not act alone. Human rights observers immediately noted the complicity of the Colombian armed forces in the Mapiripán massacre. The paramilitaries used an army-guarded air strip to land from their stronghold in northern Colombia and from which to launch their attack. Nor did the authorities respond to repeated calls by a local judge to stop the attack, which lasted six consecutive days.
Evidence later emerged suggesting that the role of the Colombian military in the massacre was in fact much deeper, and in March 1999 Colombian prosecutors indicted Colonel Lino Sánchez, operations chief of the Colombian Army’s 12th Brigade, for planning, with Castaño, the Mapiripán massacre. This is not surprising, given that the links between paramilitaries and the Colombian army have been well established. According to a February Human Rights Watch report, half of the Colombian Army’s 18 brigades have undeniable links to paramilitary groups.
In recent weeks, evidence has emerged suggesting that weeks, if not days, before the Mapiripán massacre, Colonel Sánchez received “special training” by U.S. Army Green Berets on Barrancón Island, on the Guaviare River. While it cannot be said that U.S. forces were directly involved in the massacre, or even knew that it was being planned, the events offer compelling evidence that U.S. equipment, training and money can be easily turned to vile purposes in what Human Rights Watch has called a “war without quarter.”
The reports linking U.S. military forces to an army unit involved in gross human rights abuses should give pause to legislators contemplating a massive infusion of taxpayer money to the Colombian military. This may be difficult for Washington legislators, addicted as they are to campaign money from corporations like Sikorsky Aircraft, a subsidiary of United Technology, and Bell Helicopter Textron, makers of Blackhawk helicopters, who stand to gain millions of dollars from the aid package, and amenable as they are to the interests of big corporations like Occidental Petroleum with megabucks at stake in Colombia. Though observers rightly note that human rights violations by the Colombian military have decreased, they ignore that this is because the military has farmed out much of its dirty work to the paramilitaries, parceling out areas of the country and aiding and abetting paramilitaries in their push to establish territorial control.
The $1.7 billion aid package proposed by the Clinton Administration threatens to dramatically escalate Colombia’s war and undermine the possibilities for a lasting peace. If the current aid package is approved, it will mean that Washington will provide direct aid to the Army—which has been minimal over the past decade because of human rights considerations and because of the Colombian military’s refusal to engage in counternarcotics. This, in turn, will mean financing a long-term counterinsurgency effort to control southern Colombia, the heart of activity of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
In order to sell U.S. taxpayers on the underwriting of the region’s most notorious military, policy makers insist that their concern is not guerrillas, but drugs. Even as they maintain that the U.S. government will not get mired down in the counterinsurgency war, Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey has said that fighting the drug war means fighting the guerrillas. But the argument that getting rid of the FARC will get rid of the drug trade ignores the structure of the drug trade itself—and the central role of the paramilitaries and the Colombian military in it.
Administration officials argue that U.S. aid will not be used to pay for army units involved in human rights abuses—a policy that is now law thanks to the Leahy Amendment passed in 1996. In order to not violate this law and still send money and training to Colombia’s military, Washington is helping the Colombian army create new brigades of “clean” officers that will operate in “counternarcotics” operations in southern Colombia. These “clean” operations will get much of the planned U.S. assistance, while the paramilitaries continue their “dirty war” and their drug trafficking operations, unimpeded, in the north.
As the ties between U.S. training and abusive officers in the Mapiripán massacre underscore, Washington cannot possibly know or fully control how its aid and equipment will be used. How can effective oversight exist in a country in which human rights activists, independent journalists and academics are being systematically killed and threatened? In which the government cannot even keep its own prosecutors safe?
BOX:
The reporter who broke the story about the role of U.S. forces in training Colonel Sánchez, who orchestrated the Mapiripán massacre, is Ignacio Gómez. Head of Investigative Journalism at the Bogotá daily El Espectador, Gómez represents the best tradition of hard-hitting investigative journalism. This year, he was awarded the Sam Chavkin Prize for Integrity in Investigative Journalism, an award established by the Chavkin Family and administered by NACLA. Over the past decade, 14 of Gómez’s colleagues at El Espectador have been assassinated; since 1986, 150 Colombian journalists have been killed. Gómez’s investigation helped expose what happened in Mapiripán, including the presence of U.S. military officials on the ground at the time and their relationship with forces responsible for gross human rights abuses. At a time when journalism is under siege in much of Latin America, and with particular vehemence in Colombia, NACLA is proud to honor the work of such a valiant practitioner of the trade.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jo-Marie Burt is the Editor of NACLA Report on the Americas.
