Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

618 • SELF-DEFENSE FORCES OF COLOMBIAForces of Colombia, the Peasant Self-Defense Groups of Córdobaand Urabá, “paramilitaries,” “paracos,” and “paras,” is a grouping ofright-wing paramilitary death squads that seeks to counter militarilythe leftist insurgents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces ofColombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN) and alsoto stymie Colombian government efforts to revive a national peacedialogue with the leftists that effectively ended in 1994. The AUCbegan in April 1997 with about 800 men and was organized by CarlosCastaño Gil (1965–2004), who was from a landowning family inPereira in Antioquia Department. The group expanded to more than20,000 fighters at its height in 2003. Castaño reportedly was onceclose to Pablo Escobar, a leader in the Colombian cocaine cartels,against whom he later turned, and himself was suspected of involvementin the cocaine trade.The AUC was credited with pushing the leftists out of three ofColombia’s departments but frequently engaged in summary executionsof people suspected of having helped the leftists. AUC raids ofteninvolved public hangings, decapitations, or quarterings of the bodiesof their victims. The group began its death squad activities in earnestin 1996. In the first nine months of 1996, about 19,688 homicideswere reported in Colombia, of which 2,492 were politically motivated.About 59 percent of these political murders were the work of the AUCand similar groups, while leftist rebels accounted for 34 percent, theremainder being the work of the police and military. On 25 November1996 the Human Rights Watch/America group released a report allegingU.S. support for the creation of so-called self-defense forces orantileftist paramilitaries that would engage in death squad attacks onleftist forces and their civilian supporters, a tactic also used in Guatemalaand Peru. Castaño allegedly was a graduate of the School ofthe Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, which human rights activistsassert had instructed military officers of Latin American nations ininhumane or illegal techniques of suppressing insurgents.In July 1997 the AUC killed 30 peasants at Mariripán in MetaDepartment, and on 4 May 1998 the AUC ransacked the town ofPuerto Alvira, also in Meta Department, killing at least 21 people.On 17 May 1998 the AUC struck the Atlantic coast town of Barrancabermaja,killing 11 people and abducting 39 others, who arepresumed to have been killed. Clashes between FARC and the AUCover control of the Urabá corridor joining Colombia and Panama,