New livestock security strategy revives paramilitary fear

What the cattle ranchers' union sees as a new strategy to protect their security, another part of Colombia sees as a path that can lead to a new chapter of the paramilitary phenomenon.

Citizen security or illegal self-defense?

That is the debate that reached the president's office.

On the one hand there is the leader of the union and Government negotiator with the ELN guerrilla, José Félix Lafaurie, who says he only wants to bring public forces and State institutions closer to the ranchers, alarmed by the increase in the number of extortions and kidnappings. , with what it calls “Livestock Security Solidarity Fronts.”

On the other hand, there are several analysts and the Minister of Defense, Iván Velásquez, who see in the new fronts a parallel with the Convivir, the associations of ranchers and other businessmen formed in the nineties to defend their regions against the guerrillas, which ended up legitimizing , strengthening or giving birth to paramilitary armies that were responsible for massacres and thousands of murders of civilians.

“Crimes are fought by the authorities, not by individuals.

The Government does not sponsor, does not promote, does not support, does not support any project that links individuals in an organization of reaction against any criminal act,” said the Minister of Defense in a press conference in which he recalled the Convivir.

“I have not yet heard, in Dr. Lafaurie's explanations, clarity regarding what this brigade of ranchers is, or what the security front is.

But what I can say is: if that implies the formation of groups to react to criminal expressions, we do not agree,” he added.

The minister, as a former judicial investigator of those who financed or supported paramilitary groups, knew this chapter of the war well and that is why his immediate opposition is not surprising.

However, President Petro, a great critic of paramilitarism and extensive livestock farming, has not spoken publicly on the issue.

Meanwhile, Lafaurie has responded to Velásquez that they have not heard him well, and that he is stigmatizing the livestock union by associating it with paramilitarism.

Although some ranchers were allies of the paramilitaries, Lafaurie constantly remembers that they were also victims of the guerrillas.

And in a public letter to President Petro, released this Thursday, he asks for an audience to discuss the issue in depth.

The cattle leader writes in his letter that the fronts only want to “unite in solidarity, not to confront armed bandits who today control a large part of the national territory, nor is it necessary!, but to take preventive measures against crime and, above all, everything, to collaborate in an articulated way with the Public Force.”

A world in which ranchers can talk more quickly with police, mayors, officials or prosecutors.

A world in which ranchers have better communication with authorities in WhatsApp groups, or gather police officers in their homes to get to know each other better.

But no arming, says Lafaurie.

He also says that these fronts are not new: “there are already more than 33,000 in the cities.”

The fronts have indeed existed for many years in the cities, but they have not proven to be the solution to stopping violence.

This is explained by Jerónimo Castillo, security researcher at the Ideas for Peace Foundation.

“These fronts are an old police strategy, but there is no serious evaluation to say if they have worked,” he tells EL PAÍS.

In 2006, the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce published a survey carried out on several of these fronts in the capital, which did not reveal that they achieved considerable improvements in reducing crimes.

But it did reflect other problems: the roles of citizens were not clear, some police officers did business with the alarms that they sold to the community, and effective strategies to prevent or deter criminal activities were not developed.

José Félix Lafaurie, president of the Colombian Federation of Livestock Farmers (FEDEGAN), in 2022.Vannessa jiménez

“The problem is not that the communities talk to the police, the problem is that there are no efforts to identify the structures how crime operates, how to ensure that it does not reproduce, and that is a job for the authorities, not a co-responsibility with the citizens,” says Castillo.

There are, however, some perverse incentives that arise with these security fronts.

“What is the community you defend?

Because extortion or threats from a municipality are not only experienced by ranchers, they are all experienced by everyone—social leaders, the LGBT population, school children.

But you are creating fronts for a single group, to defend one population above the others,” she adds.

The man who will lead Fedegán's strategy comes, precisely, from the police: Fernando Murillo, a retired general who spent more than three decades dedicated to criminal investigation.

Murillo is known for having led the operation that captured the drug trafficking leader alias Otoniel, founder of the Clan del Golfo, a recycled version of the paramilitaries in the last decade.

Last week Murillo inaugurated the first eight fronts, which bring together 715 ranchers, in the Caribbean department of Cesar, in northern Colombia.

It is a cattle region where paramilitarism was also very strong during its heyday.

“My commitment to Fedegán is precisely to measure the impact of this security strategy, whether the fronts are serving the country or not, but we have to go little by little.

We have to make a pilot plan,” Murillo admits to EL PAÍS from Mocoa, a city in the south of the country where he is learning how urban security fronts work.

“I do believe that they can work where there is citizen commitment, where there is good communication, but that has not happened yet because this is a country that spends its time putting out fires,” he adds.

Murillo, like Lafaurie, considers that ranchers are being stigmatized by saying that they want to form paramilitary groups, when the logic is different.

“There is a lot of fear in the cities, even in the areas of Bogotá that are the safest.

Precisely before citizens take the law into their hands, we propose the fronts,” he adds.

Alejandro Reyes is one of the most respected land and conflict experts in Colombia, and was consulted in October 2022 when EL PAÍS revealed that WhatsApp groups of ranchers were already informally talking about forming “solidarity brigades” to defend themselves against what they then considered the greatest threat: massive land seizures.

“The ranchers are nervous about land invasions, they fear that their property is in danger and they are willing to defend themselves,” he said at the time.

The danger, he added, is that they create “forms of self-defense and that the slaughter of peasants and invaders begins.”

Almost a year and a half later, Reyes still sees some nervous ranchers.

He finds a very great parallel between what they propose and what happened with the Convivir.

“It is a very clear echo,” he tells EL PAÍS.

At that time, as now, ranchers had justified reasons to be afraid and demand greater security: they suffered kidnappings, robberies, extortion.

And at that time, as now, they resorted to figures that in principle were legal and did not imply arming: the Convivir, approved in the early 90s, were not armed associations.

“The Convivir also sought better communication between landowners and the armed forces,” says Reyes.

“But when they were born, paramilitary groups already existed, and they were absorbed by them, because for the paramilitaries they were the possibility of having a semblance of legality,” he adds.

That, in addition to having the capital of businessmen to buy weapons or uniforms.

In principle, communication between public forces and citizens is positive.

“The problem is the leads to criminal behavior, which is what has happened to us in Colombia, going from legitimate defense to murder.

One of the ranchers who made that transition was Salvatore Mancuso: he was a member of the Convivir Papagayo, a collaborator of the Army to protect his lands, and in three years he ended up as a paramilitary leader,” says Reyes.

Mancuso, extradited several years ago to the United States, will soon return to Colombia to collaborate with the transitional justice court called Special Jurisdiction for Peace.

Among the many people he has accused of being an ally of the paramilitaries is Lafaurie — accusations that the rancher leader has denied.

“We are playing with fire,” Reyes warns about Lafaurie's initiative, and adds: “I do not see the capacity of the State to put control over this initiative so that it does not lead to the organization of criminal groups.

If the State still does not control its territory today, the less it will be able to control the ranchers.”

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