Three months after a deadly attack by Colombian paramilitary forces was repelled by the Venezuelan military, residents of this small border community are making their way back home to rebuild their lives in the shadow of war.
The impoverished farmers and fishermen said they would rather be somewhere else as Colombia’s deadly mix of right-wing paramilitary groups, leftist guerrillas and drug traffickers spills across the border into their district. Many said they had no choice but to return.
“What else can we do?” asked Miguel Duran, sitting next to the charred remains of the town’s health clinic and social club. “This is where we have our work and our crops.”
With Colombia’s civil war intensifying, the conflict is spreading rapidly to its neighbors and bringing with it a confusing mix of violent actors who have terrorized Venezuela’s border region.
First came the leftist rebels who arrived here several years ago to rest and rearm. Then came right-wing paramilitary forces who are battling the guerrillas in a ruthless campaign to control the frontier.
There also are black marketeers, a shadowy Venezuelan guerrilla force and a plethora of violent criminal gangs that are contributing to the unprecedented wave of violence that reaches across Venezuela’s 1,300-mile western border with Colombia.
More than a dozen Venezuelan ranchers, merchants and others have been kidnapped in recent months by guerrillas and criminal gangs. Some ranchers have abandoned their land; others are paying paramilitary groups protection money, known here as “vaccinations.”
The paramilitaries also have killed dozens of Venezuelans and Colombian refugees in recent months to “cleanse” the area of suspected guerrillas and common criminals, according to residents and local officials.
Paramilitaries are the law
Dressed in civilian clothes and armed with automatic weapons, the paramilitaries have become the law in many Venezuelan border towns to which an estimated 180,000 Colombians have fled from the fighting in their own country.
One Colombian refugee suspected of being a guerrilla sympathizer was shot seven times and killed by paramilitaries as he was talking on the telephone. The victim’s three brothers also were gunned down by paramilitaries in a separate attack, local officials said.
Terrified residents say Venezuelan authorities are helpless in the face of such violence and are more concerned about avoiding conflict than battling the illegal armed groups.
“The situation is very difficult,” said Jorge Mendez, who heads a local ranchers association. “We don’t want the guerrillas. We don’t want the paramilitaries. What we want is the state security bodies to function and stop the anarchy.”
Spurred by the attack at La Cooperativa and by repeated criticism from Colombian officials, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez recently ordered 4,000 troops to buttress the 20,000 soldiers stationed along the frontier.
The two-lane road that snakes through one section of the border region is checkered with military and police roadblocks. The army has stepped up patrols, and small navy boats ply the rivers that are the only means of reaching La Cooperativa and other remote villages.
But experts say Chavez is battling for his political survival, and it is unclear how much attention he is paying to the growing problems on the frontier.
One Venezuelan officer who commands a base less than a mile from the border said he recently was assigned more troops, but he denied the widespread presence of Colombian rebels or paramilitary forces.
“I suppose they are up there,” the army captain said, pointing to Colombia. “But in my sector they are not around.”
The rising violence along the border has repercussions for the United States, which imports large quantities of oil from Venezuela and to a lesser extent from Colombia, experts say.
A broader conflict between the often antagonistic neighbors also could hamper an enormous U.S.-funded anti-narcotics program in Colombia that in part is using fumigation to destroy thousands of acres of illegal crops.
Colombia is the world’s largest supplier of cocaine and a major source of heroin, while Venezuela is a key transit route for Colombian drugs destined for the United States and Europe.
Experts say increased anarchy along the border has allowed traffickers to expand the cultivation of coca and opium poppies–the raw material for cocaine and heroin–into Venezuela.
Venezuelan officials are considering an offer from the U.S. to provide aerial reconnaissance and other assistance to eradicate the illicit crops in the mountains along the northwestern border with Colombia.
“Colombian producers see the mountains in Venezuela as perfect to move their crops because there is fumigation on the other side,” said Jairo Coronel, a top Venezuelan counternarcotics official. “It is a zone where the presence of the Venezuelan state is small.”
The Colombian-Venezuelan frontier has long been a no man’s land where people cross freely and smuggling and other criminal activity have been a way of life.
Experts say Colombia’s largest guerrilla force–the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC–has used the Venezuelan side of the border as a rear base and for arms trafficking and other logistical support.
The rebels’ presence increased last year after peace talks between the FARC and Colombian authorities broke down, and the Colombian military launched a major offensive.
The United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, a coalition of Colombia’s largest paramilitary groups, joined the battle and crossed the frontier in increasing numbers to pursue the guerrillas.
One high-level United Nations official said the intense fighting in Colombia has sent an estimated 300,000 Colombian refugees into neighboring countries, more than half settling in shantytowns and cities along the Venezuelan border.
On the edge of Urena, a dusty outpost only minutes by car from Colombia, hundreds of refugees live in makeshift tin, brick and wood shacks that reach gently up the slope of a mountain.
Neighborhood leaders say paramilitary forces arrived about a year ago and circulated a flier warning dozens of residents to leave town or face execution.
Since then, the paramilitaries have killed scores of suspected guerrillas, rapists, robbers and others, local officials say.
Official: Up to 500 executed
One local official estimated that as many as 500 people have been executed on the Venezuelan side of the border since last fall, including killings carried out by the guerrillas and criminal gangs. A killer can be hired here for less than $10.
Martiza Blanco said her 24-year-old brother was pulled off a bus in December and shot five times. She has no idea why he was targeted, though one neighbor said Blanco’s brother had assaulted residents.
“We don’t know anything,” Blanco said. “The paramilitaries have killed a lot of people in their cleansing.”
Landowners and merchants are under threat in La Fria, a frontier town north of Urena where an average of four residents are kidnapped each month. The AUC recently held meetings with residents promising protection in exchange for a one-time $10 payment, an offer that some locals reportedly accepted.
One La Fria rancher said he abandoned one of his farms after FARC guerrillas set up camp on a nearby hill and tried to recruit a field hand into their ranks. The rancher, who said he has narrowly escaped three kidnapping attempts, packs a pistol and has two Venezuelan soldiers acting as bodyguards.
“Every day it’s more dangerous,” said the rancher, who asked not to be identified. “I want to leave.”
But it is the recent fighting in La Cooperativa that best illustrates the danger that the violence along the border could trigger a wider military confrontation between Colombia and Venezuela.
In late March, Colombian paramilitary forces crossed the Gold River and entered the village in pursuit of FARC guerrillas. The Venezuelan military sent dozens of troops to retake the town and bombed and strafed the paramilitaries even as the insurgents retreated back into Colombia, residents and officials say.
Colombian officials said the action violated their airspace and accused the Venezuelan government of openly siding with the leftist rebels. Venezuelan officials denied the allegations and criticized Colombia for failing to prevent incursions by paramilitary forces.
A subsequent meeting between Chavez and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe cooled tensions, but anxiety remains high among local residents who began returning home last week after months of displacement.
Jorge Fernandez, a primary-school teacher in La Cooperativa, said the attack by paramilitaries killed a half-dozen residents and destroyed several homes, the town’s school and other structures.
He said the paramilitaries are seeking to establish a permanent camp here and believe that residents, many of whom are Colombian war refugees, are sympathetic to the guerrillas. He fears they will return.
“I am afraid to be here,” Fernandez said.
