Vision

Sound

TC

Soldiers running in field

FX:  Gun shots, yelling

01.00.00

shooting intercut with

Music

actors,animals,soldiers, helicoptor

Some people call Colombia the 'mad country'.  Alongside the ravages of the cocaine trade, Colombia is being slowly pulled apart by South America's longest running civil war.

FX:  Chopper

Map of South America, people playing music in helicopter, aerial shot of jungle below, music being played

High above the leftist guerilla stronghold of the Choco jungle, a Colombian 'gyda' band plays as loud as possible to ward off their fear of flying.

01.53

Jones in amongst them

We were given space too in this old Russian chopper and we were just as happy to be diverted from the thoughts of the machine's maintenance record.  Not to mention the possibility that someone down there might have anti-aircraft weapons.

People getting off plane, filming, Jones walking along, soldiers

The army had brought us and it's travelling circus - to the remote jungle town of Rio Succio.

02.31

Until recently the town was the northern headquarters of the FARC guerrilla movement - now the army has won it back.

Band playing

Music

02.42

people walking, soldiers with children, helicopter, people dancing, 

A rare victory for the government side that seems to be slowly losing to the Marxist insurgency.  So rare that the head of the Colombian army is being flown in to official reclaim the town.

But despite the bravado there are still guerillas in the surrounding jungle.  A surprise attack would end the General's PR campaign in its tracks.

Music

There are echoes here of the US Army's 'Hearts and Minds' campaign in rural Vietnam.  But it all has a distinctly Colombian twist.

Children in camouflage cloths in lines

Man:  Last rehearsal, slow and hard. Children of steel, Good Morning.

03.39

Man speaking, helicoptor landing, kids waving flags, military men greeting people

Man:  We are celebrating today because of the visit of the general.  Someone's giving us the strength to live again.

Less than a week after his troops suffered their worst ever defeat against the guerillas in the south of the country General Bonnet needs a public victory just to keep his job.

04.05

Children in camouflage cloths in lines, audience clapping, instruments being played, people

Children in unison:  Beloved Country you are my heart, my life - with the respect of our elders, we will realise our dreams.

marching along

Music

But lift the flap of the circus tent and the picture changes dramatically.  To defeat the guerillas, the general's men threw away the rule book so that right wing death squads could operate freely.

04.35

Many of the people in Ria Sucio? were happy to see the end of the Marxist petty tyrants who ruled their lives for so long but they are scared to talk about the new power brokers.

Soldiers demonstrating on stage,

FX:  Yelling

05.02

people watching

For here the army allowed illegal paramilitary forces to conduct a dirty war.  

The paramilitary groups under the control of a warlord called Carlos Castano were used to 'cleanse' the countryside - overrunning hamlets, executing suspected leftists and forcing their neighbours to run.

FX:  Yelling

Interview with man

Super:

DR. DANIEL GARCIA PENYA

Commissioner for Peace

Penya:  The prime cause of displacement are the paramilitary groups, they operate as private arms linked to very specific economic interests.

05.29

Child, people working out,

Music

05.42

working, playing, children, with boat, kissing, lifting weights, sitting

Many of the refugees fled from the jungle to the coast of the Gulf of Uraba - more than a day's journey away.  They came in their thousands to squalid camps like this on in the sports arena of the town of Turbo.

All of them with stories of the coming of the paramilitary.

Interview with woman - Anna Rosa

Anna Rosa:  Over and over there was violence, they told us to leave and we left.

06.20

Interview with woman - Maria

Maria:  They came across the land accompanied by the army. 

06.27

Interview with woman - Anna Rosa

Anna Rosa:  They told us they were the paramilitary and that we had to leave.

06.34

Kids and people around tents

Only those people safely out of the jungle dare talk about what happened.  Most of them lost family members.

06.41

Interview with woman - Maria

The paramilitary tortured people, they cut people's throats.  I don't know what risk I take saying this but I have to say it because it is the truth.

06.50

Interview with Dr. Daniel Garcia Penya

Penya:  The way they operate, the paramilitary come into a town unarmed, very secretly begin to look around, see who in the town sells food to the guerillas, who are the doctors that give them medicine, who are the bus drivers - the ones who give them transportation.  And once they've identified what they consider to be guerilla sympathisers, they simply one night come in with a list of all these people and bring them together and massacre them.

07.04

Soldiers with face paint and machine guns, people watching, soldier

Man:  Lord of the powerful - in whose hands is life and death - listen to these words of war.

07.37

yelling, soldiers in formation

The army is adept at promoting the myth that it can win it's own battles.  And that it can hold its ground when it does.

Man speaking at microphone

Super:

Gen. MANUEL JOSE BONETT

Army Commander in Chief

Bonett:  A lot of people in Bogota say this town is an emporium for the guerillas.  They say this place is full of drug dealers.  This is not true.  This is a town which as suffered violence.  This is a town which has been abandoned.  This is a town full of necessity.  This is a town we are going to help.

07.58

People clapping, listening, Bonett speaking

FX:  Applause

08.27

After years of conflict the people of Rio Sucio will cheer for whoever appears the strongest.  And meanwhile the General's staff are rewriting the history of their great victory and leaving out the role of the paramilitary.

Soldier interview

Man:  But these people don't work with the military, they are organised criminals who appeared in these unjust times and took justice into their own hands.

08.47

Helicopter, soldiers walking along with guns

But the officer who was second in charge of this, the biggest regional army base, during the worst fighting tells a very different story.

09.07

Interview with Colonel Alfonso Velasquez

Jones: What were the paramilitary doing that you objected to?

09.16

Velasquez:  They were killing people.  And that was making the violence grow and grow and grow.

Colonel Alfonso Velasquez was dishonourably discharged when he alleged his commander was working with the paramilitary.

Velasquez:  Many of them would say, okay, what I need is to kill guerilla and I don't care - paramilitary and if they 'help me', welcome that help.

Interview with Penya

Penya:  There are those that continue with the old idea that the paramilitary groups are their friends, their allies and in fact, have direct links.

09.49

Man walking along, kids with bike, interview with man

As many of these refugees confirmed, the paramilitary have no rules of warfare.  Their methods are brutal and have one aim - to terrorise.

10.01

Man:  They have a way of killing.  They cut their heads off.  Many people were disembowelled and their innards thrown in the river.  This is the way they do it.  They are laying down the seeds of terror so people will respect them, listen to them, obey them.

Tracking shot from vehicle, driver,

Music

10.36

meat hanging, being weighed, tracking shot, Jones in vehicle, car travelling, kid opening gate cattle,

We decided to go in search of the paramilitary warlord Carlos Castano in his home territory in the neighbouring province of Coroba.

car travelling, driver speaking

As in Uraba, the real fight here was for control of vast swathes of rich land.

Vega:  By tradition this farm always belonged to our family.  It belonged to my grandfather, then to my father and now to us - to the sons.

Tracking shot out front window,  driver (Vega) speaking, truck coming to gate, man opens gate

The paramilitary here were largely financed by wealthy ranchers like Enrique Vega, who describes Castano as a hero.

11.31

Vega:  He taught us how to fight to protect our lands.

With us too was Ramon Fragoso, the man who runs Carlos Castano's lands in Cordoba.  Despite the fact the warlord is a wanted man with a price on his head.

Man in front seat of vehicle speaking

Fragoso:  Before it was impossible for the ranchers to come here because the guerilla was in control.  The guerilla could come at any moment shooting - extorting - killing - raiding.

12.05

Driving through gate and up to house, horses running, horses being worked, shown

Enrique Vega had invited us to his hacienda to see the assets the paramilitary were paid to protect.

12.19

FX:  Horses running

Jones: The Vega family is one of the wealthiest in Cordoba - this is only one of numerous ranches they own.  They have the best cattle, the finest animals money can buy. And they intend to keep them.

Soldiers walking along, soldier with gun, men sitting at a table

They also have a very close relationship with the military who now appear to use the ranch as a training base.

12.55

Enrique Vega said Castano's men had as they put it themselves cleansed the area of subversives.

Interview with Vega Jones at table

Vega:  Yes, it was total war.  It was a war which they could have won or we could have won.  But we won and now we are enjoying it.

13.11

For years Vega and other ranchers paid protection money to the guerillas but Castano persuaded them to pay him instead for set up and arm a paramilitary force.

Vega:  That decision cost us many lives.  Many were killed - there were many kidnappings.  But we would not be here today if we had not made that decision.

Tortoise walking toward camera, interview with Fragoso

As our time at the ranch wore on, it became increasingly obvious that the warlord himself would remain elusive.

13.55

Fragoso:  I think it would be very difficult for anyone to find him now.  A lot of money has been put on his head.  It is very difficult.

Cattle moving along, horsemen working with cattle

FX:  Whistling, yelling, cattle

14.18

The fact is that having 'cleansed' the area, Castano and his men moved on to greener pastures.  But some of those who fought with his paramilitary here stayed behind.  Justo Ortega, the manager of the Vega ranch - had the rank of captain in Castano's private army.

Both Ortega and Castano were first motivated by revenge.  Castano's rancher father was murdered by guerillas.  And so to was Justo Ortega's brother.

Man with cow on ground, interview with him

Man:  It was a war of mortal hatred.  They would hit us and we would hit them back.  We don't have guerillas now we don't have thieves.  We have no problems now, we're clean.

15.00

Soldier walking along with

FX:  Truck

ammunition, soldiers

When the paramilitary appeared in the neighbouring province of Uraba in the early 1990s it quickly became the most violent place in Colombia.

15.27

Typically the army does not appear in force until an area has already been 'cleansed'. 

Man holding flowers, Jones walking along reading grave stones, statue

But you can track the arrival of the paramilitary in the cemetery of the main town Apartado.  That's when the massacres started.

15.47

Jones: Garcia Lazonos September 21, 95, Annabelle Julio September 21, 95, September 21 ...

Massacres and counter-massacres by both the paramilitary and the guerillas.

Jones: September 21, September 21, September 21, ...

In the remote rural areas beyond Apartado, it's still going on.

Tracking shots from car of road,

Music

16.26

people, driver, Jones riding in vehicle, tracking shot

Jones: The strategy of using paramilitary forces to fight the guerillas is spreading throughout Colombia.  Barely a week goes by without reports of a new massacre.

We heard of a town called San Jose where people caught in the middle decided to make a stand.

Jones in vehicle speaking to camera

Super:

TONY JONES

Until recently there were paramilitary check points on this road.  San Jose is effectively outside the army's control.  It's about a half an hour down the end of this road in the jungle in a sort of no man's land surrounded by both paramilitary and guerillas. 

16.59

And since both sides have been killing civilians, the community declared itself neutral - they want no part in the conflict.  They call themselves a peace community.  But even since they did that, more than 40 of them have been murdered.  The last only a week ago.

People dancing, waving white flags

Music

17.32

banner with names, musical instruments being played

White flags flutter all through the town.  A symbol only of hope over bitter experience.

It is one year today since they declared themselves a peace community but this banner shows the names of those who have been murdered since then.  San Jose's many martyrs who's number increases each week.

People sitting in foreground, crowd in background on basketball court, people watching, kids, interview

The town is full of refugees from the tiny rural communities deep in the jungle.  And among them many widows like Sylvia Martinez and her sister.

18.04

with woman, woman with child, kids, interview with woman

Martinez:  Our husbands were killed at the same time.  They were coming from work and were kidnapped - they were taken to a house and killed.

Their husbands were murdered by the paramilitary but the guerillas have shown no mercy either.

Martinez:  The violence comes from both sides.  If you go towards the mountains the guerilla takes you, the other way thee paramilitary get you.  We are always frightened.  If you go to one side or the other you are in danger.  We don't know what to do.

Horses in rain, village in rain, man watching, people waiting, people in the rain

In spite of the danger the refugees want to return to their homes.  A return is planned for today, two hours walk through the jungle to the hamlet of Union.

19.04

The people of San Jose say that no one can help them but God but today even that faith seems misplaced.

Man on megaphone

Man:  This is to tell everyone planning to go home to Union, it is impossible because of the rains.  The return is postponed, we will try again tomorrow.

19.29

Man and horses walking along in rain, woman watching, woman walking, child squatting, kids watching

The Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez says that his country is being consumed by a biblical holocaust.  More and more innocents are being dragged into the conflict and for the powerless there seems little prospect of escape.

19.48

Ends 20.13