Colombian United Self-Defense Forces

The United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) was a national paramilitary organization whose growing reach turned armed territorial control into political leverage. Formed amid conflict between left-wing guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries, it expanded across parts of Colombia, intervened in elections, and developed ties with politicians. Its leaders could influence who held office and how public resources were used; the demobilization arrangement made under President Álvaro Uribe did not end paramilitarism, but allowed it to become embedded in parts of the state and political system.

Origins and Organization

The AUC grew out of a landscape of violence in which guerrilla groups and paramilitaries confronted one another. In 1981, members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) kidnapped and killed dairy farmer Jesus Castaño after his family had raised a ransom by mortgaging its farm. Three of his sons—Carlos, Fidel, and Vicente—responded by forming Los Tangueros, a paramilitary group intended to hunt FARC members and avenge their father. Similar groups emerged in other areas where landowners and communities faced guerrilla violence. These organizations were not simply defensive: paramilitaries also engaged in drug trafficking, extortion, kidnapping, and murder.

By 1997, the paramilitaries under the Castaño brothers had formed a national organization, the AUC. It expanded through large parts of the country, particularly the hot-country departments of Córdoba, Sucre, Magdalena, and César. By 2001, it may have had as many as 30,000 armed members and was divided into blocks. In Córdoba, the Bloque Catatumbo was led by Salvatore Mancuso. This structure helped turn a collection of regional armed groups into a force able to exert influence across multiple territories.

Territorial Power and Electoral Coercion

As its power grew, the AUC made a strategic move into politics. Its leaders and politicians courted one another, and in the town of Santa Fe de Ralito in Córdoba, AUC leaders met prominent politicians and issued a pact calling for the refounding of the country. Signatories included paramilitary leaders Jorge 40, Adolfo Paz, and Diego Vecino, as well as national senators William Montes and Miguel de la Espriella. The pact reflected a relationship of mutual political usefulness: armed groups held territory and could shape political outcomes, while elected officials could provide access to public authority.

That influence was visible in the 2002 congressional and Senate elections. In San Onofre, Sucre, the paramilitary leader Cadena organized the election. His trucks carried people from neighborhoods and rural areas to Plan Parejo, where hundreds of peasants were made to see the candidates they were expected to support: Jairo Merlano for the Senate and Muriel Benito Rebollo for Congress. Cadena also threatened to kill two municipal council members and others chosen at random if Rebollo did not win. The threat appears to have achieved its purpose: each candidate received 40,000 votes across Sucre. The mayor of San Onofre signed the Santa Fe de Ralito pact.

The scale of paramilitary political power extended beyond one municipality. The book estimates that roughly one-third of congressmen and senators owed their 2002 election to paramilitary support. Mancuso described the group’s influence in terms of territorial control: in areas where self-defense groups operated, he said, they collected taxes, administered justice, and controlled the military and the territory; politicians seeking office had to deal with their political representatives. In practice, these functions did not amount to ordinary public administration. The AUC’s reach allowed it to direct political life while collecting revenues for its own benefit.

Government Capture and Its Consequences

The consequences reached into local government and public policy. A pact between paramilitary leader Martín Llanos and mayors in Casanare required the municipalities to give the Paramilitary Peasants of Casanare 50 percent of their budgets to manage. The example shows how territorial influence could be converted into control over public funds, rather than merely into support for candidates. The AUC’s expansion was also violent: it fought the FARC, murdered civilians, and terrorized and displaced hundreds of thousands of people. In early 2010, approximately 10 percent of Colombia’s population—nearly 4.5 million people—was internally displaced, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre of the Norwegian Refugee Council.

The AUC’s political reach also intersected with presidential elections. Álvaro Uribe, elected president in 2002, opposed his predecessor’s attempts to make peace with the FARC; his father had been killed by the guerrillas. Uribe’s vote share was three percentage points higher in areas with paramilitary presence than in areas without it in 2002, and the difference had grown to 11 points when he was reelected in 2006. These figures do not by themselves establish how every vote was secured, but they sit alongside the documented capacity of paramilitaries to influence elections and deliver political support. In 2005, Mancuso’s deputy Jairo Angarita publicly expressed pride in working for Uribe’s reelection.

Demobilization and Institutional Significance

Once elected, paramilitary senators and congressmen supported Uribe’s priorities, including a constitutional change that permitted him to seek reelection in 2006, which had not been allowed when he first took office in 2002. In return, Uribe’s government offered a highly lenient law under which paramilitaries could demobilize. The resulting arrangement did not mean the end of paramilitarism. Instead, it allowed paramilitary power to become institutionalized across large parts of Colombia and within a state that the groups had already penetrated.

The AUC’s history illustrates how armed organizations can convert a lack of state control into political and economic power. In large areas of Colombia, lawlessness and insecure property rights persisted because the national state lacked control. Political institutions did not sufficiently encourage politicians to provide public services and order, or constrain them from making explicit or implicit deals with paramilitaries. The AUC was therefore more than an armed opponent of the state: through territorial control, electoral intervention, agreements with officeholders, and access to public resources, it became part of the institutional weakness that sustained extractive power.