Pact of Santa Fe de Ralito

The Pact of Santa Fe de Ralito was an agreement issued by Colombia’s paramilitary leaders and prominent politicians as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) expanded its reach into formal politics. Made in a town in Córdoba, it called for the “refounding of the country”; in practice, it accompanied a political order in which armed groups could influence elections, collect taxes, and administer justice while extracting resources for themselves.

From paramilitary expansion to political alliance

The AUC emerged from the consolidation of paramilitary groups formed in opposition to left-wing guerrillas. In 1981, after the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) kidnapped and killed dairy farmer Jesus Castaño despite his family’s effort to raise the ransom, three of his sons founded Los Tangueros to pursue the guerrillas. Similar groups arose in other areas where rural residents faced guerrilla violence. Landowners also used paramilitaries for protection, while the groups themselves became involved in drug trafficking, extortion, kidnapping, and murder.

Under the leadership of the Castaño brothers, the paramilitaries established the AUC as a national organization in 1997. It spread through large areas, particularly in the hot-country departments of Córdoba, Sucre, Magdalena, and César. By 2001, it may have commanded as many as 30,000 armed men, arranged in separate blocks. Its growing territorial power gave it leverage beyond the battlefield and set the stage for an alliance with politicians.

The pact and its signatories

Paramilitary leaders and politicians courted one another as the AUC chose to enter political life. Several AUC leaders met prominent politicians in Santa Fe de Ralito, Córdoba, and issued a joint document calling for the “refounding of the country.” Among the paramilitary signatories were “Jorge 40,” the nickname of Rodrigo Tovar Pupo; Adolfo Paz, a nom de guerre of Diego Fernando “Don Berna” Murillo; and Diego Vecino, the name used by Edwar Cobo Téllez. National senators William Montes and Miguel de la Espriella were among the politicians who signed.

The agreement joined actors with unequal but complementary forms of power: the AUC controlled territory and armed forces, while politicians held public office and sought electoral support. The pact’s language of national refoundation thus accompanied a practical alignment between the paramilitary organization and political representatives, rather than a transfer of authority to accountable public institutions.

Electoral coercion and political reach

The AUC’s influence was visible in the 2002 congressional and senatorial elections. In San Onofre, Sucre, the paramilitary leader Cadena arranged the local election. Trucks collected residents from neighborhoods and rural areas and took hundreds of peasants to Plan Parejo to see the candidates they were expected to support: Jairo Merlano for the Senate and Muriel Benito Rebollo for Congress. Cadena threatened to kill two municipal council members and others chosen at random if Muriel did not win.

The threat appears to have worked: each candidate received 40,000 votes across Sucre. The mayor of San Onofre signed the pact, and the account estimates that perhaps one-third of the members of Congress and the Senate owed their 2002 election to paramilitary support. The pact was therefore associated not only with a public declaration but with a political landscape in which armed control could shape who was elected and who could safely participate.

Government without public accountability

The AUC’s control extended beyond electoral influence. Its leader Salvatore Mancuso described areas where paramilitaries collected taxes, delivered justice, exercised military and territorial control, and required aspiring politicians to deal with their political representatives. These were functions of government, but the taxes collected amounted to private expropriation rather than public provision.

The consequences reached far beyond the signatories and candidates. The AUC fought the FARC, but also murdered civilians and terrorized and displaced hundreds of thousands of people. In early 2010, around 10 percent of Colombia’s population—nearly 4.5 million people—was internally displaced. The pact’s significance lies in how it brings the political dimension of that armed power into view: a group able to control territory could bargain with officeholders, influence elections, and perform state functions without being constrained by the obligations of public authority.