On the WhatsApp app, the signed messages from the Black Eagles arrived on January 18: “We are going to exterminate the vermin that live in this community. “ In total, sixteen people are specifically threatened. In a few hours, fear regained its rights in El Salado and throughout the region known as the “Montes de Maria” in northern Colombia.
Twenty-one years ago, in February 2000, this sun-drenched village three hours’ drive from the very touristic city of Cartagena was the victim of the biggest massacre committed in Colombia by paramilitary militias. For three days, the armed men installed on the village soccer field raped, tortured, impaled, disembowelled, beheaded, without the police intervening. Sixty-six peasants were killed because the paramilitaries suspected them of complicity with the guerrillas.
The number of missing remains uncertain. “A carnival of blood and death”, says the report prepared by the National Center for Historical Memory.
“At the time, too, we first received threats”, recalls Maria. Survivor of the massacre, now 49 years old, she prefers not to give her name. “A massacre is never forgotten, continues Maria. We slept badly. Since last week, we no longer sleep. ”
Officially, the paramilitary militias demobilized in 2006. Ten years later, the peace agreement signed with the Marxist guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) ended fifty years of armed conflict. Twelve thousand guerrillas laid down their arms. But in this rural country rife with mafias, militias and corrupt elites, violence continues. Targeted assassinations are almost daily, massacres frequent.
According to the NGO Indepaz, 91 massacres were perpetrated in 2020, including four in the department of Bolivar, where El Salado is located. Indepaz defines the massacre as “The collective and intentional homicide of three or more people unable to defend themselves”. President Ivan Duque disputes this notion and considers that there are only “Collective homicides”. In 2020, 381 people were victims.
Ruined hovels
Between the Andes Cordillera and the sea, the Montes de Maria region, the scene of historic peasant struggles, has acquired strategic value for tobacco and palm oil growers, land speculators and traffickers in gold or drug. Land and territorial control are the sinews of Colombian violence.
You have 67.62% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.
