Mass protests follow left leader's murder KNOWN AS the country of "la violencia," Colombia probably has the longest continuous tradition of armed political and social warfare in Latin America.
Under the previous government, which left office in August 1986, there were attempts for a time to negotiate a ceasefire with the guerrillas in return for democratic guarantees. Over the last two years, however, the rulers have been turning increasingly to military and paramilitary violence to prevent protests and struggles against a putrescent neocolonial capitalism increasingly dependent on drug traffic.
COLOMBIA dismissal of these three ministers. Virgilio Barco did nothing. Congress did likewise.
The effect of this state protection for the paramilitary groups was soon made clear. In August, a wave of murders terrorized the country. Gunned down in less than five days' time were a UP senator, a mayor and two regional leaders, as well as a trade-union leader belonging to the Frente Popular group and two doctors who were leaders in humanrights work in Antioquia.
General strike against the blood-bath
Heading off a visit to the South Korean dictatorship, Barco remained indifferent to the blood-bath. On August 26, the press published a list of 33 people of the most varied political and professional connections (the full list was said to contain a hundred names) who were the next targets of the ultrarightist gangs. One of those named, Hector Abad Gómez, was murdered hours before the list was published nours before the list was publishea. Jaime Pardo Leal was in the fourteenth spot, just after Hector Abad.
The October 13 general strike and the violent clashes with the police that followed the murder of Pardo Leal left eight people dead and dozens imprisoned in Botgotá, Barranquilla and Barrancabermeja. They shattered the government's hopes that the population would remain apathetic while it pursued its policy of picking off left activists and leaders.
The method of mass mobilization against the political murders was initiated on May 7 when people in the oil port of Barrancabermeja attacked public buildings following the murder of a 14year-old girl. She was shot in the back because the night before she had witnessed an unsuccessful murder attempt on two UP members.
In the latest protests in Bogotá, two police and three civilians died in stone throwing incidents. The iron gates of the Palace of Justice were torn down. This building is the sinister symbol of the official brutality that led to the slaughter of 95 people in November 1985, when the armed forces went on a rampage against an M-19 guerrilla unit that had occupied the premises.!
Since September, demonstrations have been increasing against the application of a blanket death penalty against the left. They have taken place in the context of what is called "The Right to Life Campaign." But the regime has not shown the slightest interest in altering the gruesome course of events. 1. Same in reasons for the bloodbath," by Rodrigo 5 5 O'Farrell in /V 88, December 6, 1985.
October 26, 1987 • International Viewpoint
RODRIGO O'FARRELL G ENERAL Fernando Landazábal
Reyes must be satisfied. Jaime Pardo Leal, whom he called the "supreme commander of the guerrillas, the kidnappers and the extortionists" on a radio broadcast last May, is now dead. He was machine-gunned by mercenaries on October 11 while he was driving near Bogotá with his wife and children.
Organizer of the paramilitary murder gangs in 1981 when he was minister of defence in the government of Belisario Betancur, General Landazábal was removed from his post for plotting a coup. He appealed publicly for someone to shoot Pardo Leal, a 48-year-old former judge and university professor, after the latter had exposed the fact that active-service and retired military officers were involved in the murders and terrorist attacks directed against the Unión Patriótica (UP) and other personalities in trade-union and intellectual circles in Colombia.
Pardo Leal ran in the 1986 presidential election. He got half a million votes as the candidate of the UP, an organization formed in 1985 by the Communist Party and smaller left groups. This coalition was set up after the cease-fire negotiated between the FARC, the country's oldest and strongest guerrilla group, and the government of Belisario Betancur. (After the August 1986 elections, Betancur was replaced as president by Virgilio Barca.)
Continual death threats did not deter the UP chair. On June 2, Pardo Leal handed over written proof of his charges. On September 2, he reiterated his accusations. He specified that retired generals Landazábal and Camacho Leyva were promoting "a plan for destabilizing constitutional rule reaching into the armed forces" that included "the annihilation of the UP." With fresh documents and witnesses, he pointed to new murders and "disappearances" carried out by the army.
These revelations brought no results. The murders continued. In two years alone, more than a thousand politically motivated murders were registered. Roughly half of the victims were leaders and rank-and-file activists of the UP, including two senators, a member of Congress and several mayors. Pardo Leal was the the 471st member of his organization to die in this way.
Until a few months ago, this slaughter did not cause any great political commotion. The government of Virgilio Barco sat back and let the murderers do their job. At the beginning of July, television reporters noted that the paramilitary groups were getting arms and training from the armed forces, and that they were waging a campaign against the UP and other left currents to keep all of them from participating in the mayoral elections scheduled for March 19, 1988.
To the consternation of jurists, journalists and defenders of human rights, the minister of defence justified the existence of such groups. The same was done by the ministers of justice and agriculture. All three pointed to a 1969 law authorizing military officers to organize "self-defence" groups. The UP called for the repeal of this law and the