In 1999, in the expansion plan of the Castaño brothers, a paramilitary group came to Nariño to form the Libertadores del Sur de las AUC bloc. Since this year and until 2004, according to reports of the Rutas del Conflicto, at least 11 massacres were perpetrated by this bloc.
According to the decision of the Tribunal of Bogotá in 2014, this group was also born from interests of palm tree growers, merchants, landowners and industrialists that wanted to stop FARC crimes and de facto resolve conflicts for the land. Guillermo Pérez Alzate, alias “Pablo Sevillano”, was sentenced for 41 crimes in the department (among them homicide, kidnapping, forced displacement and enforced disappearance), including the murder of sister Yolanda Ceron Delgado who led the Pastoral Social de la Diócesis de Tumaco and worked for the land titling of indigenous and black communities.
According to the Tribunal, the alliance between the Public Force and paramilitaries went beyond common joint actions to fight the FARC, and “implicated non aggression pacts and the exchange of information from Intelligence agreements, supply of arms, munitions and equipment, and search for merchants, sympathisers and military personnel supporting the rebellion”. Specifically, the concerned groups are the Macheteros del Cauca and Batalla de Boyacá, the Police Station of the Municipality El Rosario (Nariño), the Third Brigade of Cali, the Air Force y the Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad – DAS (State organism in charge of the intelligence and counterintelligence). (Read the full news on Elespectador.com).
After the signature of the Peace Agreements on the 9th of October 2017 the Public Force killed seven landowners in Tumaco. The event was named the Tandil massacre and still has to be clarified. In the meantime police officers have been suspended and the Commandants Javier Enrique Soto and Jorge Niño León are on trial for aggravated murder. This happened in the context of disputes over forced eradication and the communities’ resistance to the integral substitution of their cultures. Moreover, in the zona veredal (demobilization zone) called Aldemar Galán, demobilized Farc reported that paramilitary groups were present on April 28th in El Rosario, Nariño.
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