Content area
Full Text
Introduction
As former paramilitary leader Fernando Morales walks along the steep alley on the fringe of his neighbourhood, Comuna 13, he recalled how guerrilla fighters in the hills shelled the neighbourhood and how he heard women in the houses screaming as his paramilitary group responded to the fire. After the guerrilla was expelled and paramilitaries took control of the neighbourhood, Morales participated in the first disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR)-process of paramilitaries in Colombia. Nearly three years after the disarmament ceremony he is proud to be a community leader, showing off new projects, such as a workshop where women make handicrafts or a children's zoo with small animals. At first sight Morales exemplifies the success of the local DDR-process. His neighbourhood was previously one of the most violent areas in Colombia. After years of guerrilla presence, the Comuna 13 was the object of Operation Orion in 2002, a military operation without precedent in an urban area in Colombia. Shortly following the army succeeded in expelling the guerrilla, paramilitaries moved in. At the end of 2003, the paramilitaries took part in the local DDR-process. According to Morales, afterwards everything changed for the better.1 He and other demobilised paramilitaries began to dedicate themselves to community projects. Yet when we arrived at the children's zoo, I was struck by a powerful symbol of the violent past: the zoo was named after the former paramilitary commander Don Berna, a man held responsible for mass killings among civilians. Don Berna had also been part of the Medellin drugs cartel and was for a long time considered a powerful figure in the criminal underworld of Medellin.2 Morales waved away such criticism of the man he considered a hero, stating: 'Don Berna expelled most of the guerrilla from the city, he saved Medellín, we are proud of him.' The children's zoo symbolises the contradictions involved in the peace process with paramilitaries in Medellín, a process that has been controversial from the outset.
In 2003 Medellín was chosen as the site for a pilot-project involving the demobilisation of the local paramilitary group Bloque Cacique Nutibara, preceding a nationwide demobilisation of paramilitaries. These paramilitary groups were initially created to combat the guerrilla in areas with limited state presence, but many of them...