CARLOS CASTAÑO GIL, the leading paramilitary commander in Colombia, whose remains were identified last week more than two years after his violent death, was probably murdered on the orders of his elder brother, Vicente, to prevent him disclosing details of the paramilitaries’ drug-trafficking businesses to the Colombian and US authorities. His charred bones were found in a shallow grave near Valencia, in northern Colombia, several miles from where he had disappeared in April 2004. Dental records and DNA tests indicated that the odds that the remains were not those of Carlos Castaño were a billion to one.
Castaño was killed, execution-style, with a bullet in the head, while negotiations were going on between paramilitary leaders and the Government of President Álvaro Uribe. The President had offered thousands of right-wing gunmen who dominated large parts of Colombia the chance to lay down their arms. They could return to civilian life if they accepted a degree of responsibility for the atrocities committed during the years of conflict with the left-wing guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN).
But agreeing on the terms for the surrender of their weapons proved to be a drawn-out process. Talks began in late 2002 and, until just before his death, Castaño was the paramilitaries’ lead negotiator. He was head of a paramilitary umbrella organisation, the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), which he founded in 1997, and which had more than 15,000 fighters across the country.
Castaño had reached that position on the strength of his experience in one of the oldest regional paramilitary organisations, the Peasant Self-Defence Forces of Córdoba and Urabá (ACCU), which was set up by his elder brother, Fidel, in 1982 to avenge the kidnapping and murder of their father, a reasonably prosperous rancher, by FARC guerrillas. Fidel, whose nickname was Rambo, was murdered, probably by guerrillas, in 1994, and Carlos took over command of ACCU from him.
Like the guerrillas they confronted, the paramilitaries financed their operations with the proceeds of drug trafficking and extortion. They became immensely wealthy and influential, and were regarded by some — but not all — army commanders as useful allies in operations against the FARC and ELN. These connections gave them immunity from prosecution for many years.
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By the time negotiations began, Castaño seemed to have undergone a transformation. He came across as a moderate, accepting the Government’s view that the paramilitaries should admit some responsibility for their crimes and pay for them with short prison terms. He also agreed that they should hand over some of their ill-gotten gains and cut their links with drug trafficking. In 2001 Castaño had published an autobiography, Mi Confesión, in which he admitted that most of the AUC assets came from drug trafficking, in alliance with one of the country’s main cocaine cartels, and that he had been involved in many assassinations and massacres of innocent civilians over the years.
But this honesty and apparent contrition did not please some of Castaño’s paramilitary colleagues. They felt that they had nothing to apologise for, and had no intention of giving up their businesses; among them was Vicente Castaño. He faced possible extradition to the US on drug-trafficking charges, and he feared that his brother was negotiating a deal with that country’s Drug Enforcement Administration. So did other powerful regional bosses, including Salvatore Mancuso, Iván Roberto Duque (“Ernesto Báez”) and Diego Fernando Murillo (“Don Berna”), with whom Carlos Castaño had quarrelled over the drugs issue.
By the time at least 20 heavily armed men cornered Castaño at the Rancho al Hombro farm, near San Pedro de Urabá, on April 16, 2004, he had become an increasingly isolated figure, marginalised from the negotiations and protected by only a handful of bodyguards. Most of them died in a hail of bullets, and Castaño was never seen again. Contradictory reports emerged: that he had been captured, tortured and eventually strangled; had escaped and gone into hiding; even that he had handed himself over to the Americans. What had really happened was revealed on September 4, 2006, after information was provided by a paramilitary enforcer, Jesús Ignacio Roldán Pérez, known as “Monoleche”, who said that he had taken part in the assault on the ranch. The orders, he said, had come from his boss, Vicente Castaño.
Carlos Castaño was born on a small farm in Gómez Plata district, near Amalfi, in the northern department of Antioquia, in 1965. He was one of 12 children of Jesús Antonio Castaño. His career as a gunman began when he was recruited into a “self- defence” militia organised by his brother, Fidel, and financed by the notorious drugs boss Pablo Escobar, to fight the guerrillas in the valley of the Magdalena river. Carlos Castaño’s skill with a gun, organisational experience and ruthlessness helped him to rise quickly through the paramilitary ranks.
By the early 1990s Carlos and Fidel Castaño had fallen out with Escobar, and formed an organisation, financed by his rivals, that helped the police to track Escobar down to a house in Medellín, where he was shot dead in December 1993. Castaño was later responsible for the assassination of a number of leading left-wing politicians, including Carlos Pizarro and Manuel Cepeda. Over the years he faced 35 murder charges, and was wanted in both the US and Spain, as well as in Colombia.
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Castaño’s umbrella force, AUC, was highly successful in driving both the FARC and the ELN from their long-established strongholds. But by 2001, it had split into rival factions, and many of its commanders had become leading drug traffickers. After Castaño’s disappearance, they took over the negotiations with the Government, which subsequently agreed to many of the concessions that they had demanded. One of the few paramilitary commanders yet to give himself up is Vicente Castaño.
Carlos Castaño Gil, Colombian paramilitary commander, was born on May 15, 1965. He was probably murdered on April 16, 2004, aged 39. His remains were identified on September 4, 2006.