Death by the Levee

It was a lazy Sunday afternoon in the lush Cauca River Valley, deep in the Colombia interior, where the look of peace can be deceptive. Near the town of Toro, men shuffled easily down the dirt road from the cantina; women sat idly in their front yards. Then along the irrigation levee swaggered a dozen young men dressed in soldiers' olive drab, carrying submachine guns and pistols. They blocked the road in front of the hacienda La Punta and grabbed everyone who came along, robbing them and clubbing some unconscious. Then they settled back in ambush for a man they had marked for assassination.

Within minutes, a car bounced down the road. Dr. Alberto Echeverri Perea and two businessmen were driving to a nearby farm. The bandits sprang and yanked out the three men. They bound the men together by the neck, along with the previous victims. The 16 bound victims were then shoved against a barbed-wire fence and machine guns opened fire. The doctor screamed and threw himself to the ground, bringing the men tied to him down on top of him. Two bullets ripped his right shoulder, another grazed his right hand; the men atop the heap were dead.

Kicking at the limp bodies, the bandits kept saying: "Which one is Charry?" Full of the lust of battle, the bandits shot five more men, raped several women and girls, mutilated their bodies with machetes. Their afternoon's toll: 29 dead.

Apparently misled, they had missed their target: Justice Minister Hector Charry Samper, a bitter foe of bandits and banditry, who was 140 miles away in Cali.

The La Punta massacre was the latest bloody eruption of "la violencia," the backland killings--part political, part savagery--that have taken more than 300,000 lives in Colombia in the past 14 years. Last week President Guillermo Leon Valencia, just one month in office, called on his Cabinet to draft a bill giving him greater power to establish police stations in rural areas, provide stiffer penalties for violence, and funds to combat banditry.

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