Colombians accuse gov't of ties to death squads

Several Colombians who had traveled to Washington, D.C., primarily to expose their government’s crimes against its people, testified in early March at a hearing of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States.

Iván Cepeda Castro in front of a display about his father’s assassination. Photo: Latin America Working Group

One of those testifying was Iván Cepeda Castro. His father, Manuel Cepeda Vargas, had been assassinated on the morning of Aug. 9, 1994, while riding in a car on his way to Congress in the Colombian capital, Santa Fe de Bogotá.

Cepeda Vargas was a senator elected by popular vote and representing the party Unión Patriótica (Patriotic Union). The UP was an electoral formation, initiated by the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) in 1984, that brought together progressive opposition organizations and individuals hoping to build a democratic country where social and economic justice and peace would prevail.

In spite of written agreements with the government of then President Belisario Betancourt to guarantee the free exercise of electoral campaigns, more than 3,000 UP members were assassinated, tortured, disappeared, displaced and arbitrarily detained. These crimes and their perpetrators remain unpunished.

In 1999, a Special Circuit Court in Bogotá found two former Colombian Army lower-ranking officers guilty in the killing of Cepeda Vargas. Infamous narcotrafficker Carlos Castaño was found to be the intellectual author of the murder. Now, for the first time, the Colombian government, represented by Interior Minister María Isabel Nieto and Ambassador to the OAS Camilo Ospina, acknowledged its responsibility in the death of Cepeda Vargas at the Washington hearing.

Workers World spoke with Cepeda Castro about his father’s case and the current situation of “para-politics” in Colombia. He is director of the Manuel Cepeda Vargas Foundation, part of a larger national network called the Movement of the Victims of Crimes by the State (MVCS).

Asked his opinion on the Colombian government’s statement about his father’s murder, Cepeda Castro replied, “In Colombia, the genocide against the political movement UP has meant the assassination and disappearance of at least 5,000 people. There are only 10 cases in which there has been a conviction. The case of Manuel Cepeda is the only one in which the Colombian state had to recognize its responsibility in action and omission, i.e., that state agents killed him and that the state did not protect him.

“Our struggle now is to take the case to the Inter-American Court so that the connection between the state and the paramilitaries is recognized and all guilty parts are convicted.”

He added that, “We very rapidly realized that the state’s authorities were not going to bring justice in this case, so we made the investigations ourselves, working with the Jose Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective.”

Cepeda Castro talks about these topics slowly and patiently, explaining every detail, responding to the questions with the confidence of a person who is familiar with the suffering of thousands of Colombians of all ethnic backgrounds, from all parts of the country. They are all bound together by the extreme cruelty and horror of these crimes but also have a fierce determination to finally obtain truth, justice and reparation from the state and are risking their very lives in the process.

This writer has read extensively about the current “para-political” situation in Colombia, where paramilitaries are increasingly associated with politicians close to President Álvaro Uribe. Eight of them are already in prison because of their ties to paramilitaries. But Cepeda Castro’s personal accounts make these horrors so much more vivid.

Explaining how the MVCS has helped uncover this para-political scandal, he said: “The MVCS has helped develop processes of public knowledge, exposing the ties between agents of the state and paramilitary groups, especially in strategic regions like Sucre. This province in the north has the double characteristic of being a cattle-raising rural area and also a coastal zone. This made it a military target as a corridor for narcotraffickers and also as a place to steal the wealth for the benefit of strengthening the paramilitaries’ structure.

“In this region, the politicians’ criminal boss was Senator Álvaro García. He did not hide his ties to the paramilitary. It was public knowledge that the paramilitary boss Rodrigo Mercado Peluffo, alias ‘Cadenas,’ was the senator’s neighbor. Politicians used to gather at his ranch, which was a center of operations and extermination. It was also a place used as a torture center and a clandestine cemetery, because the bodies of the victims that disappeared from San Onofre were buried there. There, the paramilitary boss invited the chief of police and also the province’s governor, Salvador Arana, who is accused of being the intellectual author of several crimes and today is a fugitive evading justice.”

Senator García is currently in La Picota prison in Bogotá for his association with paramilitaries. Some interesting information appeared in an article published in El Tiempo on March 24 under the headline “From Jail, Senator Álvaro García still manages politics in Sucre.”

According to a source in the article: “García is the boss there. He has his own freezer where he keeps ducks that he himself prepares.” He holds meetings with visitors from his political circle in Sucre in order to plan candidacies for the upcoming elections. The article adds, “The political group of the senator comprises 13 mayoralties, the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare, the Invias, Carsucre and Corpomojana.”

Cepeda Castro mentioned how this criminal group tries to divert attention by celebrating beauty pageants and many social events that “were presented as a tourist attraction for the people who traveled through the area on their way to vacationing at the shore.”

Why have these crimes come to public light now? Cepeda Castro said that the signing of a secret agreement between paramilitaries and politicians in Ralito in the year 2001, for the purpose of elevating these connections to a national level, helped push forward a “political force clearly identified with paramilitarism and its project. The coming to power of Uribe and his sector of politicians in great part is a result of that political pact between paramilitaries and people of different groups that were part of the pro-paramilitary coalition,” he said.

Equipo Nizkor, a human rights organization, says that, “After signing the (Ralito) document, the congressmen eliminated the political status as a requirement to negotiate, offered seats in Congress for the Self Defense Units [paramilitaries] and voted the Justice and Peace Law.” The Justice and Peace Law has been used to provide reduced sentences, in fact, impunity, to the paramilitaries as long as they confess to their crimes.

But Cepeda Castro said that the mistake they made was to make impunity a principal part of the project, thinking there would be no significant reaction from the public. “Today, we are beginning to see the real face of the situation caused by this alliance: 4,000 common graves, 14,000 people disappeared by force, millions more displaced. This situation generates horror and shame among many sectors of the country,” he added.

He also mentioned some sectors of the Colombian elite who “see this with a certain concern. But let’s say that the reality does not make them uncomfortable, what makes them uncomfortable is to be associated with the narcotraffickers when there is a U.S. policy of extradition.”

He added, “There are sectors that historically developed a highly hypocritical double relation with all this. They would condemn the paramilitaries with words but on the other hand would openly support them. There is now a conjuncture of facts that is allowing us in Colombia to move forward. It is still a situation with great risks and great instability, but it is toward the correct path, in the correct direction, which is truth, justice and reparations for the victims.”

Next: Role of the United States in Colombian paramilitarism.