This is the day when Salvatore Mancuso, former top leader of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) paramilitary network, is scheduled to have been released from federal prison in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. He was extradited to face drug trafficking charges in May 2008. Mancuso, 55, was likely transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention; it is not clear whether he is requesting U.S. asylum or will be returned to Colombia, or whether COVID-19 is delaying his return.
Maximum AUC paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso is to be released from U.S. custody after 12 years. This report looks at Mancuso’s deeds, the “Justice and Peace” demobilization process, and the views of AUC victims exiled in Canada.
20-year-old Alejandro Carvajal is killed in an “incident,” as the Army calls it, with soldiers accompanying coca eradication in the municipality of Sardinata, in the Catatumbo region. The Catatumbo Campesino Organization (ASCAMCAT) states that Carvajal, the nephew of a local social leader, was killed in his home.
On March 19, the Defense Ministry had pledged to continue manual coca eradication despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
The ELN hands over three civilian kidnap victims, whom it had held for a month, to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Cauca. On March 18 the ELN handed over a minor to the ICRC in rural Arauca.
Colombia’s government declares a national lockdown in an effort to arrest the spread of COVID-19. It creates an emergency fund equal to 2.8% of gross domestic product.
We’re pleased to announce the addition of a new section to the colombiapeace.org website. This is the final feature that we had planned to add during the site’s early-2020 overhaul.
Explainers is a series of brief articles offering plain-language, fact-filled explanations of persistent, evergreen topics. Each looks at an aspect of Colombia’s conflict, peace effort, human rights challenges, or U.S. policy. The format is inspired by—but less ambitious than—the “card stacks” that Vox.com used when it first launched, but later abandoned.
These Explainers are never “finished.” We will edit and update them as new information emerges or situations change. Months from now, some may look quite different than they do now.
We’ve completed three Explainers so far, and plan to add approximately one per week between now and June. Right now, you can find Explainers about:
Coca Cultivation and Eradication: An overview of the bush used to make cocaine, the criminal activity that has grown up around it, its relation to the conflict, and unsuccessful efforts to eradicate it.
Protection of Ex-Combatants: The threats and attacks former FARC fighters are facing, and the measures the peace accord proposed to protect them.
Explainers about the ELN, and about Colombia’s efforts to build state presence in rural areas, will be coming soon. We expect to maintain a total of about 10 to 15 on the Explainer page.
Researcher Carolina Naranjo Escobar highlights the importance of social leaders for local-level state building, and steps that Colombia’s government must take to protect them.
Fearing COVID-19 infection, prisoners in Bogotá’s La Modelo penitentiary protested conditions. Government forces, claiming an attempt to escape, killed 23 prisoners and wounded many more. The next day, relatives of prisoners gathered outside its gates.
A look at the state of financing for the Territorially Focused Development Programs (PDET) foreseen in the peace accords’ first chapter, by a think tank affiliated with the FARC party.
Inmates in several Colombian prisons stage protests out of concern for the spread of the COVID-19 virus amid very crowded conditions. In Bogotá’s La Modelo prison, where thousands participate in a protest, authorities claim that guards killed 23 prisoners attempting to escape.
At least four social leaders arekilled—in Putumayo, Cauca, Norte de Santander, and Antioquia—during the week after Colombia puts in place strong COVID-19 quarantine measures.
Over 100 ethnic and rural organizations are calling for a two-week ceasefire in Colombia’s most conflict-ridden areas. They are asking for a cessation of hostilities to be added to measures taken by the Colombian government to curb the spread of COVID-19.
With support from the Inter-Ecclesial Commission for Justice and Peace, the signatories sent separate letters to the national government, the ELN, the FARC dissident groups, and the “Gulf Clan” neo-paramilitary group. The communities are asking all to call an immediate halt to offensive actions until April 1, with a possible extension to May 30.
The signatories are overwhelmingly from the conflict-hit departments of Cauca, Chocó, Meta, Putumayo, and Valle del Cauca. Many communities have self-protection measures in place, like the Indigenous Guard, to peacefully work to defend their territories. Colombia must listen to vulnerable communities and meet their demands at this time.
Here is the English text of the letter that went to Colombian President Iván Duque. The letters to the illegal armed groups are closely similar.
Cessation of armed operations by COVID-19 to President Iván Duque Márquez
Our communities live in territories where violence persists in various forms.
We call upon you, combatants of all forces, to protect your own lives and the lives of we, the civilians, in our territories.
We call on you as the main commander of the Armed Forces and National Police to protect the lives of the official combatants and the lives of civilians in our territories with a cessation of hostilities. We make this call on all armed groups operating in our regions based on the WHO declaration of the pandemic called COVID–19, which is already causing irreparable loss of human life.
In particular, we propose:
Inform all personnel of the COVID–19 pandemic and the consequences for their lives and those of those who are in contact with them.
Train them in preventive mechanisms.
Only act in case of attacks and non-compliance by opponents of this proposal, which is implicit in the Global Humanitarian Agreement by the Pandemic. This request is also made explicitly to the Armed Forces and Police, security agencies, and eradicators. we have reports of the virus infection in armed forces personnel of the United States.
Remove your personnel from our environments or communities and place them at distances that prevent the virus from spreading.
Refrain from convening any kind of mandatory meeting.
Our communities in some regions are experiencing droughts, other regions are affected by heavy rains. Their lives and our lives are precious. The armed strategies, for reasons of humanity—of all humanity—must stop for at least two weeks, until 1 April, starting tomorrow with a possible extension until at least 30 May.
The pandemic has very severe social, environmental and economic effects that are calling us to take the path of a different society. Today no one is exempt from dying from this virus, not even the most powerful in weapons and wealth.
Let’s take advantage of COVID–19 to think about the life of each one of you, in the life of each of us, in the life of the country. Assume the reflection among your crews, fronts, brigades, battalions, commanders. Nothing remains of our arrogance, nor of our vain pride. It is the time of solidarity, and from it peace in a new democracy.
We invite you to listen to our request for a partial cessation of hostilities.
Life is teaching us. It is a time for everyone. The isolation experienced by the citizenry in the country must lead us, perhaps, to reflect on the confinement and lack of food for years that we have lived in the regions.
We need a social, environmental and legal state that consolidates a transversal and integral peace. With this crisis, the importance of an inclusive country without corruption, in cooperation with all of humanity, in which you can contribute, will be recognized.
Marco Rivadeneira, a well-known campesino leader who had accompanied peace accord-mandated crop substitution programs in Putumayo, is killed in Puerto Asís municipality. Three men took Rivadeneira from a crop-substitution meeting by force; his body was found shortly afterward.
Here’s a new Colombia-related installment in WOLA’s podcast series. A conversation with Alex Fattal, whose 2018 book “Guerrilla Marketing” tells the story of the Colombian military’s employment of advertising campaigns to convince guerrillas to demobilize during the country’s armed conflict. His work explores the overlap between national security, global capitalism, and “branding.”
WOLA’s March 18 podcast is with Toby Muse, who spent almost two decades as a foreign correspondent in Colombia. He traveled to dozens of places affected by the war on drugs and recorded innumerable conversations with people—participants in the drug trade, officials, reformers, and victims caught in the middle. His new book, Kilo: Inside the Deadliest Cocaine Cartels – From the Jungles to the Streets, draws heavily from all of his conversations. It comes out on March 24, 2020.
After the peace accord, “the national government failed to ensure a functional institutional presence in several PAs [protected areas],” and deforestation increased.
More than 100 ethnic and rural organizations call on all armed groups to observe a two-week cessation of hostilities in order to help curb the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
The Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) accords victim status to the Patriotic Union (UP) political party. The UP was founded during a 1980s peace process with the FARC, as a means to ease the guerrillas’ foreseen entry into civilian life. More than 3,000 of its members were killed in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) refuses to admit former top paramilitary leader Carlos Mario Jiménez alias “Macaco,” who was extradited to the United States in 2008 and returned to Colombia in 2019. Macaco’s war crimes, the JEP contends, are already covered by the Justice and Peace transitional justice system set up for the AUC paramilitaries’ 2003-06 demobilization. However, the JEP holds out the possibility that Jiménez might participate in order to be held accountable for crimes he committed as a paramilitary supporter, before he joined the AUC.
For public health reasons, President Iván Duque orders the closure of all seven official Colombia-Venezuela border crossings, and deploys 5,000 security-force personnel to guard unofficial crossings.
El Tiemporeveals that corrupt Colombian police embezzled funds, including U.S. assistance, by falsifying over 25,000 hours of aircraft flight time over several years.
