San Onofre, in Sucre, became a telling example of how Colombia’s paramilitary forces could turn territorial control into electoral influence. During the 2002 elections, the AUC’s local coercion helped secure votes for favored candidates, making the municipality a concrete instance of political authority being exercised outside the formal state.

Setting and Political Context

By the late 1990s, the AUC, a national paramilitary organization led by the Castaño brothers, had expanded across much of Colombia. Its presence was especially extensive in hot-country departments including Córdoba and Sucre. The organization had both armed strength and a political strategy: paramilitaries and politicians courted one another, and AUC leaders met prominent politicians in Santa Fe de Ralito to issue a pact calling for the country’s refounding.

San Onofre lay within this broader landscape of paramilitary control. The account describes the group as powerful enough in parts of the country to influence who entered elected office, while claiming functions normally associated with government. The municipality’s 2002 election episode shows how that power operated at the local level.

The 2002 Election

For the parliamentary elections, trucks sent by the paramilitary leader Cadena went through San Onofre’s neighborhoods, rural areas, and corregimientos to collect residents. Hundreds of peasants were taken to Plan Parejo, where they were shown the candidates they were expected to support: Jairo Merlano for the Senate and Muriel Benito Rebollo for Congress. Voters were not simply approached by a campaign; transport and candidate exposure were organized under armed pressure.

Cadena also threatened municipal council members. He placed their names in a bag, drew two, and said that he would kill them, along with other people selected at random, if Muriel Benito Rebollo did not win. The threat appears to have achieved its intended result: each favored candidate received forty thousand votes across Sucre.

From Local Coercion to National Influence

San Onofre’s mayor signed the Santa Fe de Ralito Pact. More broadly, the book estimates that about one-third of Colombia’s congressmen and senators owed their 2002 election to paramilitary support. The example therefore sits within a national pattern in which armed groups could shape electoral outcomes across areas under their control.

AUC leader Salvatore Mancuso described the organization’s reach in terms of territorial control and the performance of state functions: collecting taxes, administering justice, and controlling the military presence. In practice, the account distinguishes those claims of government from their purpose and effect: taxes became expropriation for the group’s own benefit, while threats and organized voter transport undermined meaningful political choice.

Significance and Consequences

The episode makes the relationship between territorial power and formal politics unusually concrete. In San Onofre, the routes taken by trucks, the gathering at Plan Parejo, the threatened council members, and the resulting vote totals connect coercion on the ground to representation at the national level. The election was not merely affected by intimidation; it became one means through which paramilitary power could enter and shape public institutions.

The broader consequences were severe. The AUC’s expansion involved fighting the FARC, killing civilians, and terrorizing and displacing hundreds of thousands of people. By early 2010, around 4.5 million people—nearly 10 percent of Colombia’s population—were internally displaced. San Onofre’s election account thus belongs to a wider argument about how armed territorial control can deform both political participation and the institutions that govern economic and public life.