investigation: el tiempo, bogotÁ, colombiaphotography: stephen ferry / alicia patterson foundation

colombia searches for 10,000 missing

Up until now, authorities have not dug up any bod-ies dismembered by chain-

saw, contrary to the popular belief that the paramilitaries (or ‘United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia’, AUC) liked to use that particular tool on their victims. “Among other reasons, it was not practical because the chainsaw gets caught up in the clothes, and so the killers prefer the machete,” explains a prosecutor spe-cialized in exhumations. 70% of the bodies exhumed along the Atlantic Coast had been dismembered by machete. The majority of the 106 cadavers found in Putumayo - where Carlos Castaño (commander of the AUC) first exported his death ma-chinery from Urabá and Córdoba - were shot in the head and later severed in each prominent articula-tion.

Testimony by paramilitaries and the work of forensic teams permit one to conclude that the AUC not only designed a method of quarter-ing human beings, but that they even

Weekly vigil held by the madres de la candelaria - a mutual supportgroup organized by relatives of disappeared persons.church of the candelaria, medellin, antioquia

“colombia busca 10,000 muertos” - investigation by el tiempo, coordinated by luz maria sierra and marisol gomez, published april 24, 2007

held courses using live persons who were brought to their training camps for the purpose.

In legal testimony, Francisco Villalba (alias ‘Cristian Barreto’) - the paramilitary who was in charge of the massacre that took place at El Aro (Antioquia), in which they tortured and murdered 15 persons over the course of five days - reveals details of this traning, until now un-known to the press. “In the middle of 1994 they sent me to a course at the farm “La 35,” en El Tomate, Antioquia, where the training camp was situated,” he says in his account to the prosecutors’ office. There, his day began at 5 in the morning and he received instructions directly from top commanders, like “Double Zero.”

Villalba states that for instruc-tional material they used peasants that they seized when they took over nearby towns. “They were older persons that they brought in covered trucks, alive, and tied up.” Then came the ‘lesson in courage’: The woman and men were taken out of the rooms where they were held, in their underclothes. Still with their hands tied up, they were taken to the place where the teacher was

tierradentro, córdoba. march 3, 2007

waiting to start the class,” Villalba states in his testimony. “The in-structor told us to take up positions around the body, ‘so you can watch the back of the guy who is doing the cutting. Whenever we take over a town and we are going to dismem-ber someone, it is necessary to pro-vide security to those who are doing the work.’ The instructions were to cut off an arm, the head, dismem-ber them alive. They would cry and and begged one not to do anything to them, that they had families.”

The training was meant to “test your courage and learn how to make a person disappear.” The bodies were taken to graves right there, on the farm known as La 35, where it is calculated that they buried over four hundred persons.

Why dismember people? Because of a macabre practicality: The para-militaries wanted to hide their vic-tims in order to avoid prosecution for crimes against humanity by local and international courts. And in order not to waste effort, not to have to dig deep graves, it was best to cut them into pieces.

The website of Colombia’s Attorney General’s Office has an exten-

sive photo gallery showing the clothes of exhumed persons. The site

has helped families locate the remains of their missing relatives.

WWW.fiscalia.gov.co

tierradentro, córdoba. march 3, 2007

This image –found in the cellphone of a

paramilitary soldier– shows an instructor

of the AUC demonstrating how to use a

machete to dismember a man. The Self-

Defense Forces focused on training their

young recruits to torture and quarter people

as a matter of routine.

Investigators of the Attorney General's Justice and Peace team exhume the remains of a woman who was killed and quartered by

paramilitary troops of the Tolová Heroes Front, under the command of Diego Murillo, alias ‘don Berna’ o ‘Ádolfo Paz’, Inspector

general at the time of the United Self -Defence Forces of Colombia [AUC]. According to witnesses, the victim would have been

a prostitute who lived alone in the nearby town of Tierradentro, Cordoba.

san onofre cementery, san onofre, sucre. march 2, 2007

Mrs. Teresita Melendez (right)

lost her son and husband to para-

military violence. The last time

she saw Marco Tulio Velasquez,

her husband, and Alfredo Manuel,

their son, was twelve years ago

as they left the house one morn-

ing to go to work as day laborers

on a nearby farm.

Because she never saw their

bodies, nor had the chance to

properly bury son and husband,

Mrs. Melendez could never fully

accept the fact of their deaths

nor grieve for them.

In the instant of this photo-

graph, Mrs. Melendez still had

not recognized the piece of her

husband’s clothing shown to her

by a forensic investigator. A mo-

ment later, her daughter whis-

pered to her, “but Mama, you

yourself sewed up those under-

pants.”

san onofre cementery, san onofre, sucre. march 2, 2007

Mrs. Teresita Melendez is

grief-stricken as she recognizes

the cloth, proof of her her hus-

band’s death.

The investigation carried out

by the Attorney General’s office

reveals that paramilitary troops

under the command of alias

‘Cadena’, commander of the He-

roes of the Montes de Maria Block

of the AUC, killed her husband

and son along with four other

laborers in a woodshed and lat-

er hid the bodies in the San On-

ofre, Sucre cementery.

There is no evidence of con-

nections between the murdered

men and guerrilla groups, nor of

any other motive for the mas-

sacre.

puerto libertador, córdoba. febrary 2, 2007

An investigator of the Attorney General’s office exhumes a person presumably disappeared by the Heroes of the Montes de Maria Block of the AUC

under the command of alias ‘Cadena’. The AUC in this region hid victims by ordering cementery workers to bury them underneath official graves,

thus complicating any potential exhumation of the bodies.

madres de la candelaria, medellín, antioquia