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The only other certain thing in life except death is the need to pay your taxes if you want to live...

COLOMBIA

Armed gangs continue to harass businesses

Even after the government-sponsored demobilization, Colombian paramilitary gangs still operate openly.

BY CHRIS KRAUL
Los Angeles Times Service

RIOHACHA, Colombia — Omaira Arismendi’s assassin didn’t get very far. After he shot the grocery store owner, neighboring merchants pummeled the thug to within an inch of his life.
But the seeds of terror were sown in the ramshackle maze of shops called New Market, the largest outdoor bazaar in this city on Colombia’s Caribbean coast.
Arismendi, a retired bank branch manager who opened ‘‘OK Groceries’’ to keep busy, was killed this month after refusing to pay extortion to the Black Eagles, the gang suspected of controlling much of the commerce in Riohacha, prosecutors said.
The murder of Arismendi was a reminder that even after 31,000 fighters laid down their arms in a governmentsponsored demobilization, much of Colombia is still infested with paramilitary gangs.
‘BEHAVE THE SAME’
‘‘The only thing that has changed is the name,’’ said one dispirited city official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. ‘‘Before, they were paramilitaries; now, they are Black Eagles. They act and behave the same.’’
The right-wing militias were formed by farmers and cattlemen in the 1980s as protection against leftist rebels who have fought the government for decades. They later morphed into criminal rackets that looted government coffers, extorted businesses, and made land grabs.
Today, the bands lord over much of Guajira state, whose desolate flatlands and hidden bays are ideal for drug trafficking. But Guajira is attractive to the militias for another reason: It is dominated by the Wayuu, Colombia’s largest native tribe.
Many Wayuu reservations straddle the Colombia-Venezuela border, and tribal members are eligible for dual citizenship. As a result, Colombia and Venezuela levy only token customs duty on goods that Wayuu move across the border.
Black Eagles and other gangs now control much of the cross-border trade that was once the exclusive province of the Wayuu, including incoming Venezuelan gasoline, groceries and dry goods and outgoing Colombian sugar and dairy goods.
An attorney with the national public defender’s office here says paramilitary gangs’ ambitions encompass not just illegal trafficking of drugs and arms but legitimate commerce throughout Guajira state, including farming, construction and transport.
‘‘Everyone pays them the ‘tax’ so they can work in peace,’’ said the attorney, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
Nearly everyone, that is. Arismendi, 54, a single Wayuu mother who put her son through medical school, was the third New Market store owner killed in two years. The others were also members of the tribe.
Extorting payments from store owners such as Arismendi, whose shelves included Venezuelan goods, is a means for the gangs to ‘‘tax’’ the flow of goods.
Earlier this decade, the Wayuu’s special trade status became an irresistible target for Rodrigo Tovar, alias Jorge 40, the brutal leader of the Northern Block militia. The plum: the deal the tribe signed with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez that gave the Wayuu the right to import three million gallons of gas a month, for which they paid as little as 20 cents a gallon. These days, that gas is resold for 10 times that amount.
That meant multimilliondollar profits for the taking. By 2004, Tovar had seized control of the Awatayacoop, a cooperative formed in the border city of Maicao to manage the Wayuu’s sale of imported Venezuelan gasoline, prosecutors say. When the cooperative’s board of directors resisted Jorge 40’s control, one Wayuu board member was killed. Four others promptly resigned.
Tovar surrendered in the 2006 demobilization, but sources close to the cooperative say gangs still control gasoline imports. ‘‘The Wayuu never see any of the profits. They are paid salaries, and that’s it,’’ one cooperative member said
GROCERY ITEMS
Nearly as attractive to the paramilitaries were the enormous profits the Wayuu reaped by bringing in discounted Venezuelan grocery items intended for Hugo Chavez’s cut-rate Mercal retail chain. The Wayuu repackaged the items as Colombian goods, and sold them at huge markups. It’s by extorting store owners that the militias get their piece of the pie.
Fear reigns among the merchants of New Market.
‘‘Many of us still are daring not to pay,’’ said a shop owner and friend of Arismendi’s who was too terrified to give her name. ‘‘So we’re asking ourselves who will be next.’’

By nine inch nails on Sep 3, 2008, 05:37 in Friendly Talkzone.

nine inch nails says on Sep 3, 2008, 05:38:

Better pay them taxes or else!

The Hedge funds have all gone wild on us!

0 funny, 0 helpful.

lampltr says on Sep 3, 2008, 16:16:

It is a bit more complicated than that....In certain regions of Risaralda at dusk, government troops will not hang around after dusk and roadblocks are pulled, what does this tell you....but the Gov't says the ERG (As an example) have demobilized ha! Of course if you (As a U.S. citizen), live in one of these regions and are in this situation, and just happen to survive, the U.S. will then make sure to indict you and throw away the key for supporting these guys, go figure!!

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