Sucre Department appears in the account as a stronghold of paramilitary influence, where the AUC’s territorial power reached into the 2002 elections. The episode shows how armed control could turn political participation into a process directed by the group rather than freely exercised by local residents.

The AUC’s Expansion

By 1997, paramilitaries led by the Castaño brothers had formed the AUC, a national organization that spread across large areas of Colombia. Its presence was particularly strong in the country’s hot country, including Sucre Department, Córdoba, Magdalena, and César. By 2001, the AUC may have commanded as many as thirty thousand armed men, organized into separate blocks. This expansion gave it the means to exercise more than military influence: it could also intervene in local political life.

Electoral Coercion in San Onofre

The 2002 elections provide a specific account of that intervention in San Onofre, a municipality in Sucre Department. Cadena, a paramilitary leader, arranged the election there. Trucks sent by his organization gathered hundreds of peasants from neighborhoods, rural areas, and smaller settlements and took them to Plan Parejo to see the candidates they were expected to support: Jairo Merlano for the Senate and Muriel Benito Rebollo for Congress.

The pressure continued at the municipal level. Cadena placed the names of municipal council members in a bag, drew two, and threatened to kill them, along with other people selected at random, if Muriel did not win. The account says the threat appears to have worked: each candidate received forty thousand votes across Sucre Department. The mayor of San Onofre also signed the Santa Fe de Ralito Pact, linking local government to the wider political accommodation between paramilitaries and politicians.

Territorial Power and Political Consequences

The coercion in San Onofre formed part of a broader effort by the AUC to turn territorial control into political influence. Paramilitary leaders and prominent politicians courted one another, and at a meeting in Santa Fe de Ralito they issued a joint pact calling for the country’s refounding. The episode in Sucre Department shows how such alliances could operate on the ground: organized armed power shaped who could campaign, how residents were mobilized, and what risks followed an unwanted electoral result.

The broader consequences were not confined to elections. The AUC fought the FARC, but also murdered civilians, terrorized communities, and displaced hundreds of thousands of people. Its leaders described controlling areas where they collected taxes, administered justice, and exercised military and territorial authority. In practice, these functions did not amount to public service: the group’s extraction served its own interests, while its political reach weakened the independence of public institutions. Sucre Department’s election episode therefore illustrates how paramilitary rule could constrain political choice while presenting itself through formal electoral procedures.