Pubdate: Sun, 28 Jan 2001
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Section: Front Page
Copyright: 2001 The Washington Post Company
Contact:  1150 15th Street Northwest, Washington, DC 20071
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Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Author: Scott Wilson, Washington Post Foreign Service

CHRONICLE OF A MASSACRE FORETOLD

CHENGUE, Colombia -- In the cool hours before sunrise on Jan. 17, 50 
members of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia marched into this 
village of avocado farmers. Only the barking of dogs, unaccustomed to the 
blackness brought by a rare power outage, disturbed the mountain silence.

For an hour, under the direction of a woman known as Comandante Beatriz, 
the paramilitary troops pulled men from their homes, starting with 
37-year-old Jaime Merino and his three field workers. They assembled them 
into two groups above the main square and across from the rudimentary 
health center. Then, one by one, they killed the men by crushing their 
heads with heavy stones and a sledgehammer. When it was over, 24 men lay 
dead in pools of blood. Two more were found later in shallow graves. As the 
troops left, they set fire to the village.

The growing power and brutality of Colombia's paramilitary forces have 
become the chief concern of international human rights groups and, 
increasingly, Colombian and U.S. officials who say the 8,000-member private 
army might pose the biggest obstacle to peace in the country's decades-old 
civil conflict.

This massacre, the largest of 23 mass killings attributed to the 
paramilitaries this month, comes as international human rights groups push 
for the suspension of U.S. aid to the Colombian armed forces until the 
military shows progress on human rights. The armed forces, the chief 
beneficiary of the $1.3 billion U.S. anti-drug assistance package known as 
Plan Colombia, deny using the paramilitaries as a shadow army against 
leftist guerrillas, turning a blind eye to their crimes or supporting them 
with equipment, intelligence and troops.

But in Chengue (CHEN-gay), more than two dozen residents interviewed in 
their burned-out homes and temporary shelters said they believe the 
Colombian military helped carry out the massacre.

In dozens of interviews, conducted in small groups and individually over 
three days, survivors said military aircraft undertook surveillance of the 
village in the days preceding the massacre and in the hour immediately 
following it. The military, according to these accounts, provided safe 
passage to the paramilitary column and effectively sealed off the area by 
conducting what villagers described as a mock daylong battle with leftist 
guerrillas who dominate the area.

"There were no guerrillas," said one resident, who has also told his story 
to two investigators from the Colombian prosecutor general's human rights 
office. "Their motive was to keep us from leaving and anyone else from 
coming in until it was all clear. We hadn't seen guerrillas for weeks."

A 'Dirty War'

The rutted mountain track to Chengue provides a vivid passage into the 
conflict consuming Colombia. Chengue and hundreds of villages like it are 
the neglected and forgotten arenas where illegal armed forces of the right 
and left, driven by a national tradition of settling political differences 
with violence, conduct what Colombians call their "dirty war."

Despite peace talks between the government and the country's largest 
guerrilla insurgency, more than 25,600 Colombians died violently last year. 
Of those, 1,226 civilians -- a third more than the previous year -- died in 
205 mass killings that have come to define the war. Leftist guerrillas 
killed 164 civilians last year in mass killings, according to government 
figures, compared with 507 civilians killed in paramilitary massacres. More 
than 2 million Colombians have fled their homes to escape the violence.

In this northern coastal mountain range, strategic for its proximity to 
major transportation routes, all of Colombia's armed actors are present. 
Two fronts of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the 
country's oldest and largest leftist guerrilla insurgency with about 17,000 
armed members, control the lush hills they use to hide stolen cattle and 
victims of kidnappings-for-profit.

The privately funded United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known by the 
initials AUC in Spanish, patrols the rolling pastures and menaces the 
villages that provide the FARC with supplies. Paramilitary groups across 
Colombia have grown in political popularity and military strength in recent 
years as a counterweight to the guerrillas, and obtain much of their 
funding from relations with drug traffickers. Here in Sucre province, 
ranchers who are the targets of the kidnappings and cattle theft allegedly 
finance the paramilitary operations. AUC commander Carlos Castano, who has 
condemned the massacre here and plans his own investigation, lives a few 
hours away in neighboring Cordoba province.

The armed forces, who are outnumbered by the leftist guerrillas in a 
security zone that covers 9,000 square miles and includes more than 200 
villages, are responsible for confronting both armed groups. Col. Alejandro 
Parra, head of the navy's 1st Brigade, with responsibility for much of 
Colombia's northern coast, said the military would need at least 1,000 more 
troops to effectively control the zone.

The military has prepared its own account of the events surrounding the 
massacre at Chengue, which emptied this village of all but 100 of its 1,200 
residents. Parra confirmed elements of survivor accounts, but denied that 
military aircraft were in the area before or immediately after the 
killings. He said his troops' quick response may have averted a broader 
massacre involving neighboring villages.

"They must have been confused about the time" the first helicopters 
arrived, Parra said. "If there were any helicopters there that soon after 
the massacre, they weren't ours."

Strategic Location

Three families have flourished in Chengue for generations, tending small 
orchards of avocados renowned for their size and sweetness. The only 
residents not related to the Oviedo, Lopez or Merino families are the farm 
workers who travel the lone dirt road that dips through town. The longest 
trip most inhabitants ever make is the two-hour drive by jeep to Ovejas, 
the local government seat.

But in recent years the village, set in the Montes de Maria range, has 
become a target on battle maps because of its strategic perch between the 
Caribbean Sea and the Magdalena River. Whoever controls the mountains also 
threatens the most important transportation routes in the north.

Villagers say FARC guerrillas frequently pass through seeking supplies. Any 
support, many villagers say, is given mostly out of fear. As one 
34-year-old farmer who survived the massacre by scrambling out his back 
window said, "When a man with a gun knocks on your door at 11 at night 
wanting food and a place to sleep, he becomes your landlord."

The AUC's Heroes of the Montes de Maria Front announced its arrival in 
Chengue last spring with pamphlets and word-of-mouth warnings of a pending 
strike. The paramilitaries apparently identified Chengue as a guerrilla 
stronghold -- a town to be emptied. The AUC's local commander, Beatriz, was 
once a member of the FARC's 35th Front, which operates in the zone, 
military officials said. Ten months ago she quarreled with the FARC 
leadership for allegedly mishandling the group's finances and defected to 
the AUC for protection and perhaps a measure of revenge.

In April, community leaders in Chengue and 20 other villages sent President 
Andres Pastrana and the regional military command a letter outlining the 
threat. "We have nothing to do with this conflict," they wrote in asking 
for protection.

The letter was sent two months after the massacre of 36 civilians in El 
Salado, a village about 30 miles southeast of here in Bolivar province that 
is patrolled by the same military command and paramilitary forces. But 
according to villagers and municipal officials in Ovejas, the request for 
help brought no response from the central government or the navy's 1st 
Brigade, which is based in the city of Sincelejo 25 miles south of here.

In October, the villagers repeated their call for help in another letter to 
Pastrana, regional military leaders, international human rights groups and 
others. Municipal officials met with members of the 1st Brigade in 
November, but said no increased military presence materialized. In fact, 
municipal officials said, the 5th Marine Infantry Battalion seemed to stop 
patrolling the village.

Six Chengue residents who signed the letter died in the massacre. Col. 
Parra said the requests for help were among dozens received at brigade 
headquarters in the past year, but that manpower shortages made it 
impossible to respond to every one.

"What is clear is that the government and [the military] knew about the 
evidence of a possible massacre and did nothing," said a municipal official 
in Ovejas, who like many interviewed in the aftermath of the slaughter 
requested anonymity for fear of reprisal. "The military seemed to clear out 
of the zone."

After weeks of not seeing any sign of the military, villagers said a small, 
white propeller plane swooped low over the village on Jan. 14, three days 
before the massacre. They identified the aircraft as the same plane used to 
drop anti-guerrilla pamphlets three months earlier -- a "psychological 
operation," Parra confirmed, although he denied knowledge of this 
particular flight. The low-altitude pass left the farmers uneasy.

Over the next two nights, as darkness fell on the village, residents said 
two green military helicopters passed over in slow circles. "They are the 
same ones I'd seen pass by before, but just coming and going, not 
circling," said a young mother. "We didn't know what they were doing."

Seven hours after the helicopters left the second time, the power went out 
in Chengue, Salitral and a series of neighboring villages that had warned 
of a pending paramilitary attack. Villagers noted the time somewhere 
between 1:30 and 2 a.m. because, as one woman remembered, "the dogs started 
barking when the house lights went out." Some villagers lit candles. Most 
remained asleep.

In the blackness, the paramilitary column dressed in Colombian army 
uniforms moved along the dirt road from the west, arriving between 4 and 
4:30 a.m., villagers said. The column was led by Beatriz, whom military 
officials said is a nurse by training; witnesses said the men in her 
command addressed her as "doctora."

The column stopped at the gray concrete home of Jaime Merino, the first on 
the road, and kicked in the door. They seized him and three workers, 
including Luis Miguel Romero, who picked avocados to pay for medical 
treatment for his infant daughter.

They were led down the steep dirt road into the village, past the church 
and school, and to a small terrace above the square where they waited. 
Three brothers from the green house on the square, a father and two sons 
from the sky blue house across the square, and Nestor Merino, a mentally 
ill man who hadn't left his home in four months, all joined them in the 
flickering darkness.

When the men arrived for Rusbel Oviedo Barreto, 23, his father blocked the 
door.

"They pushed me away," said Enrique al Alberto Oviedo Merino, 68. "I was 
yelling not to take him, and they were saying 'we'll check the computer.' 
There was no computer. They were mocking us. They took my identification 
card and said they would know me the next time."

Cesar Merino awoke on his farm above the village, and peering down, saw the 
town below lit by candles. His neighbors, 19-year-old Juan Carlos Martinez 
Oviedo and his younger brother Elkin, were also awake. The three men, who 
worked the same avocado farm, walked down the hillside into town. Elkin, 
15, was the youngest to die.

On the far side of town, where the road bends up and out toward Ovejas, the 
paramilitaries gathered Cesar Merino's cousin, Andres Merino, and his 
18-year-old son, Cristobal. One of them, father or son, watched the other 
die before his own execution.

Human rights workers and survivors speculated that the paramilitaries, who 
were armed with automatic rifles, used stones to kill the men to heighten 
the horror of the message to surrounding villages and to maintain a measure 
of silence in a guerrilla zone.

The work was over within an hour and a half. As the column prepared to 
leave, according to several witnesses, one militiaman used a portable radio 
to make a call. No transmission was intercepted that morning by military 
officials, although their log of the proceeding weeks showed numerous 
intercepts of FARC radio traffic. Then the men smashed the town's only 
telephone and set the village on fire.

The hillside was full of hiding villagers, many of whom say that between 15 
and 30 minutes later two military helicopters arrived overhead and circled 
for several minutes. The sun was beginning to rise.

"They would have been able to see [the paramilitaries] clearly at that 
hour," said one survivor, who has fled to Ovejas. "Why didn't they catch 
anyone?"

Human rights officials say the described events resemble those surrounding 
the massacre last year in El Salado. Gen. Rodrigo Quinones was the officer 
in charge of the security zone for Chengue and El Salado at that time, and 
remained in that post in the months leading up to the Chengue massacre. He 
left the navy's 1st Brigade last month to run a special investigation at 
the Atlantic Command in Cartagena, from where military flights in the zone 
are directed.

In a report issued this month, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch 
and the Washington Office on Latin America called specifically for 
Quinones's removal. As a regional head of naval intelligence in the early 
1990s, Quinones was linked to the killings of 57 trade unionists, human 
rights workers and activists. He was acquitted by a military court. 
According to the human rights report, a civilian judge who reviewed the 
case was "perplexed" by the verdict, saying he found the evidence of 
Quinones's guilt "irrefutable."

El Salado survivors said a military plane and helicopter flew over the 
village the day of the massacre, and that at least one wounded militiaman 
was transported from the site by military helicopter. Soldiers under 
Quinones's command sealed the village for days, barring even Red Cross 
workers from entering.

"We are very worried and very suspicious about the coincidences," said 
Anders Kompass, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights representative 
in Colombia. "This involves the same officer in charge, the same kind of 
military activity before and after the massacre, and the same lack of 
military presence while it was going on."

'There Is a Terror Here'

During the two hours following the killings, survivors emerged from hiding 
and into the shambles of their village. Eliecer Lopez Oviedo, a 66-year-old 
Chengue native, said his son arrived at his small farm at 9 a.m.

"He told me they had burned Chengue, killed my brothers, my sister and my 
niece," he said. "I arrived there to find that they hadn't killed the 
women. But my three brothers were above the square, dead."

What Oviedo and others found were two piles of bodies -- 17 on the dirt 
terrace above the square, seven in front of the health center. Cristobal 
Merino's Yankees hat, torn and bloody, lay near his body. The rocks used in 
the killings remained where they were dropped. The bodies of Videncio 
Quintana Barreto and Pedro Arias Barreto, killed along with fathers and 
brothers, were found later in shallow graves.

Ash from more than 20 burning houses floated in the hot, still air. 
Graffiti declaring "Get Out Marxist Communist Guerrillas," "AUC" and 
"Beatriz" was scrawled across the walls of vacant houses. "The bodies were 
all right there for us to see, and I knew all of them," said a 56-year 
Chengue resident whose brother and brother-in-law were among the dead. "Now 
there is a terror here."

Officials at the 1st Brigade said they were alerted at 8:45 a.m. when the 
National Police chief for Sucre reported a possible paramilitary 
"incursion" in Chengue. According to a military log, Parra dispatched two 
helicopters to the village at 9:30 a.m. and the Dragon company of 80 
infantry soldiers based in nearby Pijiguay five minutes later. Villagers 
said the troops did not arrive for at least another two hours.

When they did arrive, according to logs and soldiers present that day, a 
gun battle erupted with guerrillas from the FARC's 35th Front. Parra said 
he sealed the roads into the zone "to prevent the paramilitaries from 
escaping." The battle lasted all day -- the air force sent in one Arpia and 
three Black Hawk helicopters at 2:10 p.m., according to the military -- and 
village residents waved homemade white flags urging the military to stop 
shooting. No casualties were reported on either side. No paramilitary 
troops were captured.

Three days later, the 1st Brigade announced the arrest of eight people in 
connection with the killings. They were apprehended in San Onofre, a town 
15 miles from Chengue known for a small paramilitary camp that patrols 
nearby ranches. Villagers say that, though they didn't see faces that 
morning because of the darkness, these "old names" are scapegoats and not 
the men who killed their families.

A steady flow of traffic now moves toward Ovejas, jeeps stuffed with 
everything from refrigerators to pool cues to family pictures. The marines 
have set up two base camps in Chengue -- one under a large shade tree 
behind the village, the other in the vacant school. The remaining residents 
do not mix with the soldiers.

"We have taken back this town," said Maj. Alvaro Jimenez, standing in the 
square two days after the massacre. "We are telling people we are here, 
that it is time to reclaim their village."

No one plans to. Marlena Lopez, 52, lost three brothers, a nephew, a 
brother-in-law and her pink house. Her brother, Cesar Lopez, was the town 
telephone operator. He fled, she said, "with nothing but his pants."

In the ashes of her home, she weeps about the pain she can't manage. "We 
are humble people," she said. "Why in the world are we paying for this?"
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D