Pubdate: Tue, 20 Sep 2005
Source: Washington Times (DC)
Copyright: 2005 News World Communications, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.washingtontimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/492
Author: Sharon Behn

COLOMBIAN VIOLENCE SPILLS OVER

URENA, Venezuela -- Colombian paramilitaries and Marxist guerrillas are 
running kidnapping, extortion and smuggling rackets as they infiltrate 
Urena and other communities near Venezuela's border, residents and 
officials say.

"There are more and more FARC in Apure and in Tachira [two western border 
states of Venezuela] present in the communities, and they are recruiting," 
said Virginia Trimarco, regional representative of the U.N. High 
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

"That makes people inside the country, and the Venezuelans, worried about 
security and selective killings," she said, near the end of four years of 
working in Venezuela and more than 20 years in Latin America.

FARC is the acronym in Spanish of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of 
Colombia, a guerrilla army founded in 1964 by the Communist Party of Colombia.

On the outskirts of this hot, dusty town several hundred yards from the 
border, Colombian refugees fleeing the violence take shelter in dusty 
shacks of paper and branches.

Mrs. Trimarco estimates there are about 1.5 million Colombian refugees now 
living on the Venezuelan side of the border. Government estimates are as 
high as 3 million, and nongovernmental organizations have put the number as 
low as 350,000.

Venezuelan cattle ranchers and a local state official -- who asked not to 
be named -- said the government of President Hugo Chavez turns a blind eye 
to FARC guerrillas operating in Venezuela, pushed to the border by the 
success of the U.S.-backed Plan Colombia, aimed at eradicating the cocaine 
trade in Colombia that funds the rebels.

Right-wing Colombian paramilitaries are not far behind them, running 
"protection" operations.

Restaurant owners, taxi drivers and even Colombian refugees are forced to 
pay what is locally known as a "vaccination" -- money to protect themselves 
from these armed groups.

The FARC's favorite fundraisers are kidnapping for ransom and cocaine 
trafficking. Venezuela is a major transshipment point for Colombian cocaine 
headed for the United States and elsewhere.

Illicit Commerce Rife

"There is arms trafficking, drug trafficking, people trafficking," said 
Mrs. Trimarco, one of the few officials ready to speak out about what many 
in these border towns will say only in private.

"The situation is slipping out of their control. Nobody wants confrontation 
or war, but the military are worried," she said. Much of the violence is 
invisible. Villages of whitewashed houses with red-tiled roofs clinging to 
the sides of the Andean foothills appear idyllic, but cafes are guarded 
with shotguns at night and drivers head home after 11 p.m.

"As [Colombia's President Alvaro] Uribe pushes his war and illegal armed 
groups to the borders, they are moving over the borders, and moving their 
[cocaine] labs into neighboring countries," said Mrs. Trimarco.

"The border areas are heavy with conflict between the illegal armed groups 
fighting for turf," she said.

Venezuelan ranchers reportedly sometimes hire Colombian paramilitaries to 
protect themselves -- either from the FARC or from rural workers trying to 
invade their land. Even so, in towns like San Cristobal, there are daily 
kidnappings and assassinations; the local La Nacion newspaper even runs a 
daily kidnapping column.

More obvious is the daily gasoline-smuggling operation at popular border 
crossings like San Antonio de Tachira, which leads to the bustling shopping 
town of Cucuta in Colombia.

Hundreds of beat-up Dodges, Fords and Chevrolets from the 1970s -- the 
period of Venezuela's last oil boom -- make the crossing every day, carting 
as much as 100 extra gallons of gasoline in specially built tanks.

Gasoline in Venezuela costs about 18 cents per liter -- 72 cents a gallon 
- -- but about 85 cents per liter -- $3.40 per gallon -- in Colombia. In 
addition to being a motor fuel, gasoline is also used in the processing of 
cocaine.

Moms, Children Hide

Colombian women who have survived the killings of their villages come 
straggling over the border with numerous children in tow. They settle in 
dusty shantytowns like El Cuji on the outskirts of Urena, and until they 
get Venezuelan papers, they are not allowed to travel more than 10 
kilometers [about 6.2 miles] from the border.

Their shacks are not much more than mud and paper, sometimes just plastic 
bags and empty flour sacks glued together and held up on sticks above the 
dirt floor. Many of the children suffer from respiratory diseases and 
blisters from the unsanitary conditions.

Local government officials fill each family's drum with water, but it runs 
out fast, and families are forced to cope. The lucky ones, whose children 
or newfound husbands do underpaid work in small factories nearby, pool 
their money to buy extra water.

The UNHCR, along with Caritas and Jesuit Relief Services, two Roman 
Catholic charity groups, struggle with meager resources to integrate the 
asylum seekers into the Venezuelan community and process their claims. But 
many of the Colombians streaming across the border are too afraid to 
identify themselves.

"There is a great degree of insecurity, because of the high rate of murder 
and crime" all along the border, said Jenncy Penaranda, a UNHCR protection 
assistant. The husband of one woman seeking help was slain last month on 
the dirt track outside his home, she said.

A 34-year-old mother of seven bathed her youngest child, who stood naked in 
a cement wash tub, using a small plastic pail to pour water over the crying 
child, trying to keep her children clean to prevent the diarrhea and skin 
diseases that plague many people here.

"I came from Colombia four years ago because of the violence," said the 
mother afterward, as she balanced one of a pair of twin girls on her knee 
while sitting on a broken chair. She asked that her name and those of her 
children not be used.

"I lived in a village far from the border, but my kids were in danger," she 
said, light brown hair blowing around her face. "They would cut off 
people's ears. I was so scared I could not even sleep."

One of her young sons added from behind his mother's shoulder: "And cut 
their tongues out." Life for this young mother and other families nearby is 
measurably better, she said. But the guerrillas and paramilitaries that 
tortured and killed their fathers, brothers and husbands have not 
disappeared with their move to Venezuela.

Her husband works in a furniture factory, earning the equivalent of $10 per 
week, barely enough for water and food for the family of nine. A teenage 
son manages to bring home about $2.50 a week in bolivars for working in a 
motorbike maintenance shop.

'Slow Procedure'

"There is no safety," said the mother. "Anyone can come here and rip the 
wall," she said, gesturing at the burlap bags and tin roof beside her.

"We also pay the 'vaccination' here for protection," she added when the 
UNHCR representatives were out of earshot. "Someone comes to pick up the 
money."

Government commissions have dealt with 700 asylum requests in the past two 
years, and only 300 applicants were considered refugees, said Mrs. Trimarco 
in her office in Caracas.

"It is a very slow procedure, but they are slowly getting better. At this 
pace, we will not meet the needs," she said.

And the needs increase every day as the guerrillas and paramilitaries 
penetrate deeper into the border towns, not only of Venezuela, but also of 
neighboring Brazil and Ecuador, said Mrs. Trimarco.
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MAP posted-by: Elizabeth Wehrman