82 A BRIEF HISTORY OF COLOMBIA
had collaborators on the inside. There is video documentation of a number of
people being taken out alive from the Palace by the military, only to be
disappear later (sometimes with their charred bodies "found" in the following
days in the ruins). Many claim that the M-19, or the army, or both, received
funding from Pablo Escobar, and that one goal of the attack was to destroy
evidence against the narcotrafficker — there is ongoing debate over who started
the fire in the building. The whole incident was a tragedy, and court cases
continue even today.
Despite all of this, negotiations with the guerrillas continued. The M-19 laid
down its arms in 1989, and entered electoral politics; members of the group
were active in writing the new 1991 Constitution, and are still involved in politics
on the left today, particularly in the Polo Democrático ("Democratic Pole" —
"Polo," established in 2003). On the other hand, thousands of members of the
UP were murdered by paramilitary groups over the course of ten years. The UP
was rural-based, and so its members were often in areas where narcotraffickers
and ranchers wanted complete control. There are serious claims that perhaps
the FARC leadership were more interested in having the UP fail in order to have
more reason to continue the armed struggle — the failure of the 1999-2002
peace talks between the FARC and the government can also lead one to this
conclusion.
Smaller guerrilla groups also laid down their arms in the late 1980s and early
1990s, including an indigenous-based movement, Quintin Lamé (named after an
early-twentieth century Indian guerrilla leader) and the Maoist Ejército Popular
de Liberación (Popular Liberation Army — EPL). The EPL was active among
banana workers in the Urabá region along the border with Panama; by the
1980s, narcotraffickers had begun to buy land at rock-bottom prices from
ranchers there who no longer wanted to deal with the EPL. When the EPL signed
a peace agreement with the government in 1991, it created a power vacuum in
the region, initiating a war between paramilitary groups and the FARC. The FARC
began murdering former EPL members, claiming that they were traitors who