A BRIEF HISTORY OF COLOMBIA
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supported the paras (some former EPL members did fall into this category). But
the struggle was larger than the EPL, or even the banana industry: lucrative
cocaine shipments left the Gulf of Urabá, while illegal arms shipments arrived.
The paras engaged in almost daily massacres of suspected guerrilla
sympathizers, union organizers, and human rights workers in the late 1990s,
finally winning the area from the FARC by 1999. The Colombian armed forces
were conspicuous in their absence.
Beyond Urabá, actions of the paras have been felt in every region and city of
Colombia. They are largely responsible for displacing up to three million
peasants from their farms in the countryside — after terrorizing an area with
selective massacres, the paras take the land while the displaced find refuge in
the cities. According to the human rights reports issued by U.S. State
Department, by the 1990s paramilitary groups were responsible for 65% of all
extrajudicial killings (the guerrillas were responsible for 25% and state forces for
10%). The most recent report points to this same proportional breakdown
(although overall annual numbers of political murders today are in the hundreds,
rather than in the thousands).
By the election of 1990, narcotraffickers — in particular the Escobar-led
Medellín cartel — had begun assassinating any judges, lawyers, police officers,
and journalists who were working against them. Pressure from the Reagan and
Bush administrations in the late 1980s led to a strengthened extradition treaty,
and several major traffickers were tried and sentenced in the U.S. - Escobar and
his organization would have none of it, and used terror tactics to pressure the
government, blowing up police stations, newspaper offices, and other targets,
killing dozens of innocent bystanders. During the 1990 political campaign, no
less than three major candidates were assassinated by narcotraffickers, including
the leaders of the UP, the M-19, and the reform wing of the Liberal Party. The
winner of the election, Cesar Gaviria, came from this last political group.