The Backlands Violence Is Almost Ended

The orders read like the work of a bored general trying to inject a little life into a standard peacetime troop maneuver: the Colombian army and air force were to invade, conquer and hold the "Independent Republic of Marquetalia," a 1,400-sq.-mi. enemy enclave deep in the Andean highlands 170 miles southwest of Bogota. But this war is real, and so is Marquetalia. Colombians know it as the stronghold of Pedro Antonio Marin, 34, alias "Tiro Fijo" (Sure Shot), last of the country's bigtime bandit chieftains.

Communist Country. By wiping out Tiro Fijo, Colombia would just about end the savage backlands violence that began in 1948 as a feud between the country's Liberals and Conservatives. But catching Sure Shot is no sure thing. Reared in poverty and squalor, he drifted into a Communist guerrilla band in the early 1950s. By 1960 he had his own gang, and moved his family and followers onto a 10,000-acre hacienda near the foot of snow-topped Mount Huila--after killing the hacienda's owner. From his new home Tiro Fijo began taking over all neighboring haciendas, establishing Communist cells throughout the area, indoctrinating peasants, levying a monthly head tax and collecting up to 30% of farmers' profits. His bandit gang numbered some 250 men; to the area's 6,000 population, he was the only law.

Busy with outbreaks of banditry elsewhere, the federal government let the remote coffee-growing land slip away by default. Marquetalia paid no taxes, and death awaited any police or military force rash enough to cross its borders. Last December Tiro Fijo and his men ambushed an army patrol, killing six soldiers. All told, the army credits him with 200 murders.

Two-Stage Assault. The army started planning Tiro Fijo's downfall months ago. Combat units were divided into small, tightly organized teams, given extensive training in anti-guerrilla warfare. To backstop the military campaign, new roads, schools and other civic-action projects were planned to draw the peasants closer to the government. The offensive began four weeks ago as units of five battalions--totaling 3,500 men--poured into Marquetalia.

Flitting through the thickly wooded mountainsides, Tiro Fijo's men fought half a dozen bitter skirmishes. But in the deadly game of hide-and-seek, the guerrilla-wise soldiers came out on top, pressed steadily on toward Tiro Fijo's hacienda headquarters. Early one morning last week, a fleet of helicopters airlifted 170 crack troops into position surrounding the hacienda. The desperate Communists opened fire from underbrush and foxholes. In the three-hour fight, they wounded only one soldier; finally Tiro Fijo put the hacienda to torch and retreated into the mountains. That night his men ambushed an army patrol, killing two soldiers; four nights later they killed four more.

But "Operation Marquetalia" was virtually complete. The yellow-blue-and-red Colombian flag now flew over the area for the first time in its history. Tiro Fijo himself was holed up with 50 to 80 men in a narrow canyon six miles from his old base, and at week's end two army pincer columns were closing in for the kill.

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