If Colombia is a land with no memory as Gabriela Dale argued on Colombia Politics last week, then it is the perfect setting for Michael Jacobs´ meditation on the power of human recall.
The Robber of Memories is a spell-binding journey to the source of the majestic Magdalena river that takes us through the land of García Márquez, into the paramilitary strongholds of the Magdelena Medio and finally up deep into the mountainous FARC-held territories of Huila, near San Agustin. Read more…
Colombia´s government has signed an agreement with FARC guerrillas for agrarian or rural reform as part of the peace process currently underway in Havana.
On Tuesday I looked at the detail behind this accord, today I turn to history for the lessons we can learn from failed attempts at land reform in Colombia.
Colombia´s land; in the hands of the few, not the many
Like in many other Latin American countries, or post-colonial oligarchies/plutocracies, the wealth that comes from the land has been violently concentrated through different processes (genocide of indigenous peoples, colonialism, the encomienda system, agrarian reforms gone awry, free trade agreements/neoliberalism, and of course armed counter-agrarian reform/socio-political violence) for the last 500 years or so.
For historical reasons and due to the armed violence, however, Colombian rural inequality is particularly stark.
An astounding 52% of the land is owned by 1.15% of the population. The rural GINI coefficient (the standard measure for inequality among economists) is 0.85 (where a 1 means complete inequality/where one person owns everything). Only a fifth of the potentially productive land is actually being put to use.
Colombia is by no means a naturally unequal place. So, how did we get to to this point?
I don’t want to give a history lesson, but I think Sunday’s agreement between the FARC and the Santos Government is not just a deal within it itself, but represents a significant shift in a process of popular (often armed) mobilization for agrarian reform, and counter-mobilization and concentration by the elite.
This process refers not only to Colombia´s current violence (the 49 year long war and humanitarian disaster) but also a defining aspect of the entire way the nation has been organized since the encomienda.
The history of land concentration
Initially, land was organized around the idea of owning the land that one worked (or had workers on). Later, Spanish colonial government allowed private buyers to purchase government estates, and in 1821, the government allowed the direct transfer of public land into private hands.
Under the colonial regime, land belonging to the Church or to indigenous communities was nominally protected from colonization. However, these rights were abolished for indigenous reserves in 1810, and for the Church later on.
The legalization/formalization of uncultivated public land (baldios) was handled by a government who was (much like today’s Colombia) run exclusively by the elite, leading to the creation of even more large estates for the wealthy.
Land, as a way of avoiding taxes, fighting inflation, and building credit, made it an asset which was more valuable than just what it was able to produce, making it (like in most places) one of the most coveted assets by the elites, leaving little for the landless/popular classes.
The colonization of the Colombian territory saw small-scale peasant farmers pushed off their land, forced to move into more marginal areas which they would then make productive. The landed elites would then (often forcibly) push them off of this land, and in the process expanding their territory and further consolidating its ownership.
The peasants, now landless, would move deeper into the jungle/territory/mountains looking for land. This process to a certain extent still occurs today.
A peasants´ revolt?
By the 1920s, peasants organized themselves and went on the offensive. The elites in turn responded with more displacement. This social conflict resulted in the Agrarian Reform of 1936, which because of faulty implementation (and Colombia being a Plutocracy), resulted in the formalization of property again benefitting the elites.
The Landed Oligarchy, sick of having to deal with subversive peasants, also looked for ways of making the land productive by having more capital than labour, leading to the accentuate of cattle-ranching.
The class warfare was only exacerbated by La Violencia the civil war between the two political factions representing different sectors of the elite (the Liberals and the Conservatives). Forced displacement became an extremely common practice, and the standard method for resolving disputes over land given the general absence of the state in many rural or peripheral areas of the national territory.
In response to this crisis, in 1961 President Carlos Lleras Restrepo attempted a land reform through Law 135. Nevertheless, again, formalization and the granting of public land led to more concentration.
Only 1 per cent of the land was expropriated from the elite, and most of what was expropriated was poor or low-quality land. Ironically, as the government was promoting land reform, it was simultaneously giving large land owners the benefit of subsidies and tax incentives to increase production, increasing the value of their land, and making expropriation more difficult.
Rise of the narco-bourgeousie
From the 1970s to 1984, the rise of the “narco-bourgeousie” and their desire for land led to the decomposition of large estates, and the consolidation of medium-sized ones.
But while the armed counter-agrarian reform of the expansion of paramilitarism, as well as the booming cocaine industry which laundered much of its wealth in large estates reversed this trend, it also introduced drug trafficking into the historical trend of violent conflict between peasants and landed oligarchs.
In 1994, President Cesar Gaviria Trujillo tried another land reform with Law 160. Instead of focusing on formalization or expropriating land from the elite and redistributing it to the peasantry, however, it worked on the transfer of property through market mechanisms, where by the government would supposedly subsidize 70% of land bought by peasants from land owners.
However, as is evidenced by the case of the women of the Enchanted Valley, a group of displaced women who tried to purchase some land through this scheme and are now not only menaced by armed groups but also by debt collectors, the deal was only real in the halls of power in Bogota.
Paramilitarism resulted in the violent expropriation of 1.8 million hectares of land, or 2.5 more land that had been re-distributed through the latest agrarian reform.
How different will the FARC, Santos Government reform be?
The Agrarian Reform thrashed out in Havana runs the risk of not being very different from previous failures.
But this reform forms part of a larger peace deal which is suppose to be transformative for Colombian society. and so the stakes are higher.
Have Paramilitaries entered where the state hasn´t bothered to go?
Sure the “New Colombian Countryside” deal sounds promising, but will it run the same risk as the 2011 Victim’s Law (Law 1488).
Countless courageous community leaders in places like El Choco and Cordoba have been threatened or murdered by neo-paramilitary groups simply for advocating for their land rights.
In Cordoba, there is even a neo-paramilitary group that has deemed itself the “Anti-Restitution Army“.
This resurgence of armed agrarian counter-reform (or perhaps, a consolidation that already took place during the height of the AUC paramilitaries), shows that when it comes to land in “The Other Colombia”, not much has changed in 100 or even 200 years.
The government´s apparently noble policy of trying to help the most disenfranchised in Colombian society is fine, but both the fact that the State is co-opted by the elite, and that the state has no little to no legitimate presence beyond the military in “The Other Colombia”, means it has neither the mandate, authority, or capacity to carry out these reforms.
The State can’t re-distribute land in places it has never bothered to show up for.
Simon is the owner of the website The Banana Plutocracy
Plan Colombia was sold to the US public as a counter narcotics initiative, a plan to reduce the flow of cocaine from rural Colombian to urban America.
But the blurred distinction between the drug trade, the guerrilla groups and the paramilitaries (a distinction that virtually disappeared post 9/11, as President Bush launched his ‘War on Terror’), meant Plan Colombia was never solely about cocaine, but also about taking the fight to the illegal armed groups of the right and the left.
Particularly so following the inauguration of Alvaro Uribe as president in 2002, who unlike his predecessor Andrés Pastrana was unwilling to negotiate with the guerrilla groups and set about using the money to push the FARC back.
Almost as soon as it began to function, Plan Colombia had evolved into a strategy to secure Colombian democracy, reducing the production of cocaine meant cutting off the “gasoline” which fuelled the guerrillas and helping to defeat those had left the international community to view early 2000s Colombia as a failing state.
Plan Colombia´s tainted success?
In my first article on Plan Colombia I showed how production of cocaine has been reduced, and in the third article I will explore how the policy achieved success in reducing the threat posed by the FARC.
But while both these successes are undeniable, Plan Colombia will always also be tainted by the numerous human rights abuses that were carried out in its name – abuses by the Colombian military, the paramilitary groups, and the politicians with links to the latter.
These abuses ensure that while, yes, the immediate threat to democracy has passed, lasting and real damage has been done to the country´s institutions.
I will look briefly at three key criticisms – the Justice and Peace Law, the Parapolitics, and the False Positives scandals.
Justice and Peace Law
In 2005, President Alvaro Uribe passed the Justice and Peace Law in an effort to demobilise the paramilitary groups. Such groups were generated from wealthy land owners in the 1980’s in opposition to the leftist movement of the FARC and ELN. They soon became actively involved in the drug trade, however, and have only added to the complexity of the Colombian conflict.
The Justice and Peace Law called on demobilised paramilitary soldiers to provide a full record of their crimes in return for conditional amnesties. Failure to provide this detailed account would render the amnesty void and thus result in full punishment.
Supporters of the law point to its impact in achieving the successful demobilisation of several thousand paramilitary soldiers.
Critics on the other hand, argue that despite these achievements, the law has allowed – 1. High level drug traffickers to bypass prosecution, 2. Former paramilitaries to legalise properties that they acquired by violence. And worse still, civilians continue to be victimised by newly formed neo-paramilitary groups, such as the Aguilas Negras.
The Organisation of American States (OAS) has expressed concern at the ‘institutional frailty’ of the Justice and Peace Law. The report cited failure in the following areas:
A lack of interest in victims’ rights by the Uribe government.
Inadequate support for the institutional response
The persistence of the armed conflict – that the violence has not abated
And the inability to prevent the emergence of the new illegally armed groups.
Human Rights organisations remain concerned that the paramilitaries have not been held accountable for their crimes, and that by underreporting their illegally obtained assets, the militants have avoided paying adequate justice to their victims.
Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America, argues too that the law has been incredibly slow in its implementation, revealing that until 2009, the law had not punished anybody, and that it had failed to return land and property that paramilitaries stole from hundreds and thousands of families.
And finally, in March 2010, a UN report claimed that ‘…the Justice and Peace Law has not achieved the transitional justice intended for paramilitary crimes.’
Parapolitics
Links between paramilitaries and politicians were uncovered in late 2006, in a scandal known as Parapolitics.
Initially 3 congressmen were arrested for their role in establishing paramilitary groups in the department of Sucre. Of the 268 congressmen from the period between 2006 and 2010, a staggering 128 were accused of having paramilitary ties.
Alvaro Uribe’s second cousin, Mario Uribe was arrested and convicted in early 2011, while the total number of politicians, businessmen and officials being investigated runs into the thousands.
False Positives
The False Positive scandal is the extra judicial killing of innocent civilians by the Colombian military – civilians who once murdered were later dressed in guerrilla uniforms (as a way of increasing their body count against the FARC).
The motivations for such atrocities were said to be the awards offered by President Uribe for successes against the guerrilla group.
A report by the International Federation of Human Rights indicates that there were over 3000 cases of extra judicial killings in between 2002-2008. It must be pointed out, however, that these figures are disputed.
The most shocking case is alleged to have occurred in 2008. 19 young men from the Soacha region were said to have been promised employment by the Colombian military, driven hundreds of miles from their homes, only to be executed as if they were guerrilla soldiers.
No full marks for Plan Colombia
So despite the military advances, the Plan Colombia years do not emerge as a spotless success.
If the universal truth of political science that the primary role of the state is to provide security to its citizens then Plan Colombia can be said only to have had partial success.
The execution of innocent civilians as False Positives, the links between the ruling class in congress and the paramilitaries, and the legally questionable demilitarisation of these paras all taint the period which began in 2002.
Democracy is build on justice and on institutional stability, impunity and injustice are her enemies.
Without justice for the victims, Colombia will only fragment further.
Photo, Confidencial Colombia
Thursday marked the 11th anniversary of the massacre of Bojayá in Chocó, Colombia. Anywhere from 79 people, the majority of whom were minors, were killed when the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC-EP), the Marxist guerrillas, launched an explosive into a church in the community of Bellavista where 300 people were seeking protection from a battle between the revolutionaries and the paramilitaries.
Every year, chocoano communities commemorate the massacre, and use it as a space to advocate for their rights facing current challenges of poverty and marginalization. For the tenth anniversary of the massacre, it was all over the media, yet this year, there is scant word from any of the nation’s major newspapers including El Tiempo, El Espectador, Semana, etc.
This massacre had huge implications in national politics, Colombia’s image abroad, its relationship with the United States, and most importantly, it evidences the huge gap between ‘The Two Colombias’, and how one promises reparation, and the other is still waiting for it 11 years after one of the country’s worst tragedies.
The massacre bears not only memorializing, but also understanding as it is a microcosm for state abandonment, and the interests and dynamics of how paramilitarism and the guerrillas work within peripheral, marginalized, underdeveloped, and overexploited regions of Colombia like Chocó.
The FARC shot the cylinder-bomb which exploded in the church, allegedly, because the counter-revolutionary paramilitaries were using the church as a human shield during the combat. Many of the civilians fled into the church given that it was the only concrete structure in the town where people could be protected during the armed confrontations between different armed groups. Apparently, the order to shoot the cylinder-bomb came from as high as members of the Secretariat (who some analysts now say they would like to see in Congress instead of continuing in the armed struggle), and the decision to use this illegal and non-conventional weapon was made despite the fact that the weapon is made for static objects, and the paramilitaries were moving.
In other words, it was quite clear to many powerful leaders within the FARC the tremendous danger that using this weapon posed for the civilians caught in the crossfire.
Despite many early warnings by the UN, and a variety of NGOs, it seems that the Colombian Army was complicit in allowing the incursion of paramilitaries in the territory that set off a several day long armed confrontation in the Middle Atrato region of Chocó which eventually culminated in the massacre.
The Colombian government refused to acknowledge its responsibility. The FARC-EP say that it was an “unfortunate accident” and it blamed the paras for using the civilian population as a human shield. The government and the paras said that this proves the ‘barbarity’ of the ‘narcoterrorists’.
The use of the improvised explosive, or pipeta in Spanish, constitutes the use of irregular weapons by the FARC and is therefore a war crime and potentially a crime against humanity. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other international NGOs as well as Colombian ones have condemned the FARC’s use of the weapon as such.
The massacre, and combat between guerrillas and paramilitaries which had begun in late April of that year, are part of a much larger trend in which Chocó has become a focal point for the armed conflict since 1997.
The war over the Middle Atrato can be considered as a continuation of the war for Urabá. After the federation of paramilitary groups into the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (las Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia or AUC) in 1997, paramilitary groups tried to take the Atrato region of Chocó as it was a key corridor for moving drugs, arms, and people from the Urabá region and the Caribbean coast (which by the 90s had become a paramilitary stronghold) into the Pacific region of the country.
Previous expansions of the counterinsurgency in the territory such as the Cacarica and Genesis Operations in 1997 have been linked to the expansion of agribusinesses such as the mono-cultivation of African Palm Oil.
At the same time, the strategic corridor and lack of state presence in Chocó also makes it a very coveted territory by the guerrillas.
The massacre can be seen as part of a much larger pattern of the insurgents taking over the territory, then the counterinsurgents, then the insurgents…
This left, and continues to leave, the people of chocoano communities in a state of vulnerability as the presence of one armed group or the army provokes reprisals and suspicions from the other side.
However, the communities in Chocó were anything but passive objects in the crossfire; since 1999, communities such as Bellavista, have declared themselves ‘Peace Communities’ (Comunidades de Paz) and they have rejected the presence of all armed groups, including even at times the Colombian Army itself.
The massacre led to mass displacements of 5,700 people, and consequently a cultural alienation for the predominantly Afro-Colombian communities affected, who had to leave their traditional territory.
Many of the survivors had to flee the town of Bellavista immediately after the bomb exploded. Many have yet to return to the community, some only returned 8-10 years later. Many of the community’s practices of saying farewell to the dead were unable to occur, leaving a lack of spiritual closure.
Survivors of the massacre however, are not victims. 11 years on and that the community continues to wait for the reparations it is entitled to, and justice in terms of recognizing the complicity of ALL armed actors. The community has, though, organized in several civil-society groups and continues to demand this justice, reparation, and memory.
Many members in the community see the massacre as genocide and a continuation of their historical displacement from Africa; many consider the battles over their territories as ongoing colonialism.
Simon is the owner of the website The Banana Plutocracy
Photos, Mauricio Moreno, and El Tiempo.
Colombia’s record on human rights will face international scrutiny in April when the United Nations Human Rights Council carries out its Universal Periodic Review on all member states.
It is expected that Vice President Angelino Garzon will lead the Colombian delegation at the hearing should his health permit, and he will be keen to emphasise the progress Colombia has made in protecting the human rights of its citizens.
The previous review in 2008 saw 139 recommendations made to the Colombian government, and the progress Colombia has made in responding to these recommendations will be examined during the hearing in April.
Key among these was “to effectively investigate and prosecute crimes against human rights defenders and punish those responsible”; “to intensify efforts to combat all forms of impunity”; “to continue efforts in seeking to break the linkages between elements of the armed forces and State security forces”; and “to guarantee access to justice and the right to reparation to victims in a non-discriminatory manner”.
Colombia’s record in these areas will be viewed in the light of the revelations of widespread extra-judicial killings known as the “false positives” scandal (during the Uribe years), as well as accusations that paramilitaries who have carried out human rights violations do so with impunity.
The Colombia government will, however, be keen to point to the peace process with the FARC and important reforms such as the “victims law” adopted in 2011 which allowed relatives of those killed in the country’s armed conflict to be compensated.
Prior to the review sessions in April, the process gives the opportunity for submissions of evidence from the Colombian Government, independent experts on human rights as well as NGOs. The review session on the 23 April takes the form of UN member states submitting questions to the Colombian delegation.
A report is then prepared by a troika of member states assigned randomly – in Colombia’s case, Gabon, India and Ecuador, and will contain recommendations on which the government should act.
An ever ready and ever optioned presidential candidate, electorate favorite German Vargas Lleras might very well represent Colombia’s political future. The principle cause being, that German Vargas Lleras is a politician who embodies Colombia’s political past. He embodies that certain archetype of Colombia politician, who’s born into a family with political power, changes parties according to political convenience, fiercely opposes former political allies when necessary, and is not overly concerned about sharing party ranks with members of Colombia’s illegal armed groups.
Vargas Lleras has promoted and led movements whose names evoke change, like Nuevo Liberalismo (New Liberalism) and Cambio Radical (Radical Change),and yet, he has always managed to become an active member of traditional officialism.
As the grandson of former president Carlos Lleras Restrepo, Vargas Lleras was born into political power. He holds a lawyer’s degree from traditional Universidad del Rosario as well as a master’s Degree in Government and Public Administration obtained at Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
Vargas Lleras’ career as a politician began at a very young age, not yet surpassing his late teens. Following his grandfather’s footsteps, Vargas Lleras joined the ranks of the Liberal Party. At first, he was part of the dissident branch named Nuevo Liberalismo headed by Luis Carlos Galan. Galan appointed Vargas Lleras to coordinate his campaign, and also to coordinate political support in Los Martires sector of Bogota.
In 1988, Vargas Lleras was voted councilman for the Bojaya City Council. A year later, while giving a speech during his presidential campaign, Luis Carlos Galan was assassinated. Galan’s death led to the dissolution of Nuevo Liberalismo, and thus, Vargas Lleras decided to return to his grandfather’s Liberal Party. Time would later show that Galan’s magnicide was planned by then Liberal Party Senator Alberto Santofimio, in coordination with another (by then former) Liberal Party Senator, Pablo Escobar.
As a member of the Liberal Party, Vargas Lleras was elected to the Bogota City Council, occupying the post of councilman from 1990 to 1994. During his time there, Vargas Lleras became its president, in 2011, he received a decoration from that institution recognizing his political career.
After his second term as councilman, Vargas Lleras successfully made the leap to the senate. He would be elected another three consecutive terms, holding senatorial office from 1994 until 2006. During his first years in the Colombian Senate, Vargas Lleras became known for his ardent opposition to Conservative President Andres Pastrana’s peace talks with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
The Liberal Party’s favorable stance regarding the peace talks resulted in a party change for Vargas Lleras. And thus, the Colombia Siempre movement was born. Vargas Lleras secured another term in the senate running for Colombia Siempre. At the same time, he supported another Liberal Party dissident’s campaign, that of former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. The fierce opposition to Pastrana’s peace talks with FARC created the Vargas Lleras-Uribe political alliance for the 2002 congressional and presidential elections.
These eventful times also witnessed the first of two assassination attempts made on Vargas Lleras, presumably by the National Liberation Army (ELN). In 2003, Vargas Lleras became President of the Senate as the Colombia Siempre movement became a part of Radical Change Party. Soon after, Vargas Lleras also became the President of Radical Change.
After securing these important posts, the now hugely influential Uribista figure suffered a second assassination attempt in 2005, this time presumably, orchestrated by Colombian secret police state forces. During this period of his stay in the senate, Vargas Lleras supported Alvaro Uribe’s presidential reelection, his call for constitutional reform and his presidential campaign, despite evidence of corruption and paramilitary infiltration in officialist U Party. In terms of public policy, Radical Change supported officialism, as a member of Alvaro Uribe’s governing coalition.
Scandal maculated Vargas Lleras in 2006 as a result of the so called “parapolitics” congressional disgrace. Forty percent of the congressmen belonging to Vargas Lleras’ Radical Change party were suspended for alleged ties (many later proven true) with terrorist organizations. As the head of Radical Change, Vargas Lleras stood accountable for the party’s political actions.
Two years later, Vargas Lleras once again made big headlines by withdrawing support from former President Uribe’s attempt at a second constitutional reform, which would give legal base to his second reelection. Instead of supporting Uribe, Vargas Lleras left the Senate, and announced his candidacy for presidential office.
And thus, Vargas Lleras paradoxically ended up running against former political ally, and political heir to Uribe, Juan Manuel Santos (amongst other candidates) in the 2010 Colombian Presidential election. Vargas Lleras’ attempt at the presidency was quite ill-fated, securing just 10% of the votes. Yet his political career was not over yet, former election rival (now president) Juan Manuel Santos, appointed Vargas Lleras as his Interior and Justice Minister, and thus, Radical Change returned to officialism.
Shortly after, Vargas Lleras was named Housing Minister, were he has promised to deliver 100.000 houses for the poor. Regardless of the many scandals around him (perhaps even because of them), Vargas Lleras remains a political figure with ample support, holding a considerable chance of one day becoming Colombia’s Head of State.
Colombian´s Supreme Court has ordered the capture of Senator Piedad Zuccardi for supposed links with the country´s murderous right-wing paramilitaries.
Zuccardi is currently in Panama and will return to Colombia on Tuesday to hand herself into the authorities, and relinquish her seat in the senate.
The U Party senator was a key player in President Santos´re-election bid in the coastal department of Bolívar, and her departure from the political scene will (indirectly) damage not only the president but the already disastrous reputation of the political class.
Since Pablo Escobar entered congress in the 80s, Colombian politics have had a highly visible association with the illegal paramilitary groups with the dirty money from their narcotraficking and other criminal activities financing numerous election campaigns across the 80s, 90s and into this century.
Zuccardi is just one on a long list of shamed politicians the full extent of which began to become apparent in the last parliament as part of the “parapolitics” scandal that led to the charging of countless members of parliament from across the political spectrum.
There are many that try to pin the parapolitics on to the government of Uribe, but the reality of the situation is much more complex. Financial links to the paras have by no means been limited to senators who supported Uribe – the fact is, the paras go where the power is, they finance those they believe will have influence.
Many on the left will try to present this now as Santos problem. It is not – at least not directly. It is a problem with the way politics are financed in Colombia.
Be wary of any holier the thou claims from NGOs or politicians out to make a capital out of the situation. No one wins from this situation, all politics is tainted.
Colombia´s former Congress President and cousin of Alvaro Uribe, Mario Uribe Escobar, sent to jail in 2011 for links to the country´s right-wing paramilitary groups is now a free man, having completed 54 of his 90 month sentence.
More than half of the politicians convicted as part of the 2007 Parapolitics scandal have now been released from prison, with Luis Alberto Gill and Juan Carlos Martínez Sinisterra joining Uribe as the most recent paroled ´paracos´.
Forty lawmakers in total were imprisoned, and 24 are now free having served as little as three fifths of their punishment.
Uribe is the most high profile of recent releases on account of his familial ties with the country´s ex-president. Alvaro Uribe continues to face-down rumours of his closeness to paramilitary groups, accusations that have been ever present since he took office.
In 2007, left-wing Senator Jorge Enrique Robledo coined the phrase Para-Uribismo, claiming that majority of para-politicians were Uribe supporters. Uribistas argue that paramilitary money funded the campaigns of parliamentarians across various parties and that the numbers of paras in Uribe´s coalition were proportionally similar to that of other, smaller groupings.
Mario Uribe´s release comes at an unfortunate moment for his cousin. Just yesterday news emerged Yair Kein, an Isreali mercenary, had testified that Uribe had paid to train paramilitaries in Colombia´s Magdelena Medio.
Kein´s testimony has since been discredited, but Uribe is plagued by the persistent innuendo.
In February 2011, Mario Uribe (elected senator in 2002) was found guilty by the Supreme Court of receiving aid and financial assistance from the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC). The group´s former commander, Salvatore Mancuso labelled (Mario) Uribe, alongside Eleonora Pineda as one of the AUC´s “socios” or partners in congress.
In 2008, Mario Uribe fled the country to seek political asylum in Costa Rica, but following sentencing served his time in Bogotá´s Picota and Medellin´s Yaramitu prisons.