Putumayo's Discouraging Trends, by CIP Intern David Coddon

Putumayo's Discouraging Trends
By David Coddon, CIP intern
March 29, 2005

The Department of Putumayo in southern Colombia, a center of paramilitary and guerilla activity and a major source of much of the country’s cocaine, has been called Plan Colombia’s “Ground Zero.” As such, it is one of the main recipients of U.S. aid to the region and a central focus of CIP’s Colombia Project. We recently updated our running timeline of events in Putumayo. While the news has not all been bad, trends have been largely disappointing. Four are of particular concern.

1. Paramilitaries continue to violate their declared ceasefire

In December 2002, as a first step in demobilization talks with the government, the AUC (Colombia’s largest paramilitary group) agreed to a unilateral cease-fire. Since then, however, paramilitaries have continued a wave of violence and intimidation. In October 2004, the government’s Human Rights Ombudsman (Defensoria del Pueblo) registered 342 complaints of cease-fire violations in eleven departments nationwide. Putumayo, a center of paramilitary activity, has been particularly hard hit.

On August 25, the Cali-based El Pais reported that four farmers and two members of indigenous groups had been killed by paramilitaries in the town of La Hormiga.
On November 22, La Agencia de Noticias Colombia detailed how 100 farmers in Putumayo were systematically murdered by paramilitaries: “survivors who fled the massacres say the paramilitaries forced residents of the villages to stand in columns, then tied them up, interrogated them and tortured them physically and psychologically before hanging them from beams and cutting them to pieces with machetes and chainsaws.
On January 4, the Pasto-based Diario Del Sur reported that several mayors in Putumayo had received death threats. The Mayor of Mocoa, Elver Porfirio Ceron, said he had received death threats from a group identifying themselves as members of the AUC.
On February 16, paramilitaries murdered Jose Hurtado, an Ecuadorean businessman who lived in La Dorada, Putumayo, and was a leading opponent of paramilitary activity in the region. Mr. Hurtado, who had led a January 28 protest against the paramilitaries, was murdered in his home, in front of his wife and children.

2. A growing number of civilians have been forcibly displaced by violence

In late January, the Colombian NGO Codhes released a report claiming that the number of Colombians displaced by violence was 38.5 percent greater than the previous year. The Paramilitaries’ campaign of murder and kidnapping, combined with continued violence by the FARC, has forced hundreds, maybe thousands, of Putumayo farmers to flee, many of them to neighboring Ecuador.

On November 12, El Tiempo reported that 250 Colombians had fled to Ecuador after paramilitaries killed three people in Colombia.
On December 2, El Pais reported that illegal armed groups and narco-traffickers had seized close to five million hectares of land from farmers throughout Colombia over the past nine years. The majority of displaced persons were small landholders.

3. Indigenous groups suffer greatly from armed violence and a lack of socio-economic services

Colombia’s 83 indigenous groups continue to pay a price for their commitment to autonomy. The groups, which include Wiwas, Wayuus, Ingans, Tunebos, and Pijaos—to name a few—have been the target of frequent attacks by the FARC and paramilitary groups. Indigenous groups—especially those in Putumayo--have also suffered from the government’s fumigation campaign and its lack of attention to socio-economic concerns.

A November report by the Delegation of the Defense of Indigenous Peoples and Ethnic Minorities claimed that indigenous peoples from five departments—Arauca, Casanare, Caqueta, Tolima, and Putumayo—suffer from hunger and a lack of basic medical services.
In August, paramilitaries murdered two members of indigenous groups in La Hormiga, Putumayo.

4. The FARC continues to pose a serious threat to Colombia’s security

Despite President Uribe’s repeated claims to the contrary, the FARC continues to be a formidable enemy. In Putumayo alone, the FARC has been responsible for several devastating acts of violence since May.

On November 13, El Pais reported that members of the FARC had allegedly murdered the district attorney for Corinto, who had been working on a case against them.
On February 2, one civilian and eight soldiers died in a bridge explosion caused by the FARC. The soldiers had been attempting to secure the path between Puerto Asis and Santa Anna.

Conclusions

To be sure, there have been some positive signs in Putumayo in recent months. The Colombian army has had some successes in thwarting potential terrorist acts. USAID-funded alternative development projects are showing some success and have proceeded largely unhindered by the security situation.

But these achievements have been vastly outweighed by negative trends. Paramilitaries continue to act with impunity, creating an atmosphere of intimidation in which the rule of law has no place. The FARC appears as powerful as ever in the department’s vast ungoverned zones. And finally, despite a massive fumigation campaign, the street-price of cocaine in the U.S. has not gone up, and the price of coca paste in Putumayo has hardly budged. In short, it is time to rethink a policy that punishes farmers, fails to confront paramilitaries, and does absolutely nothing to achieve Plan Colombia’s stated objective—the reduction of cocaine consumption in the United States.