CHRONICLE OF A MASSACRE FORETOLD

CHENGUE, Colombia -- In the cool hours before sunrise on Jan. 17, 50
members of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia marched into this
village of avocado farmers. Only the barking of dogs, unaccustomed to the
blackness brought by a rare power outage, disturbed the mountain silence.

For an hour, under the direction of a woman known as Comandante Beatriz,
the paramilitary troops pulled men from their homes, starting with
37-year-old Jaime Merino and his three field workers. They assembled them
into two groups above the main square and across from the rudimentary
health center. Then, one by one, they killed the men by crushing their
heads with heavy stones and a sledgehammer. When it was over, 24 men lay
dead in pools of blood. Two more were found later in shallow graves. As the
troops left, they set fire to the village.

The growing power and brutality of Colombia's paramilitary forces have
become the chief concern of international human rights groups and,
increasingly, Colombian and U.S. officials who say the 8,000-member private
army might pose the biggest obstacle to peace in the country's decades-old
civil conflict.

This massacre, the largest of 23 mass killings attributed to the
paramilitaries this month, comes as international human rights groups push
for the suspension of U.S. aid to the Colombian armed forces until the
military shows progress on human rights. The armed forces, the chief
beneficiary of the $1.3 billion U.S. anti-drug assistance package known as
Plan Colombia, deny using the paramilitaries as a shadow army against
leftist guerrillas, turning a blind eye to their crimes or supporting them
with equipment, intelligence and troops.

But in Chengue (CHEN-gay), more than two dozen residents interviewed in
their burned-out homes and temporary shelters said they believe the
Colombian military helped carry out the massacre.

In dozens of interviews, conducted in small groups and individually over
three days, survivors said military aircraft undertook surveillance of the
village in the days preceding the massacre and in the hour immediately
following it. The military, according to these accounts, provided safe
passage to the paramilitary column and effectively sealed off the area by
conducting what villagers described as a mock daylong battle with leftist
guerrillas who dominate the area.

"There were no guerrillas," said one resident, who has also told his story
to two investigators from the Colombian prosecutor general's human rights
office. "Their motive was to keep us from leaving and anyone else from
coming in until it was all clear. We hadn't seen guerrillas for weeks."

A 'Dirty War'

The rutted mountain track to Chengue provides a vivid passage into the
conflict consuming Colombia. Chengue and hundreds of villages like it are
the neglected and forgotten arenas where illegal armed forces of the right
and left, driven by a national tradition of settling political differences
with violence, conduct what Colombians call their "dirty war."

Despite peace talks between the government and the country's largest
guerrilla insurgency, more than 25,600 Colombians died violently last year.
Of those, 1,226 civilians -- a third more than the previous year -- died in
205 mass killings that have come to define the war. Leftist guerrillas
killed 164 civilians last year in mass killings, according to government
figures, compared with 507 civilians killed in paramilitary massacres. More
than 2 million Colombians have fled their homes to escape the violence.

In this northern coastal mountain range, strategic for its proximity to
major transportation routes, all of Colombia's armed actors are present.
Two fronts of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the
country's oldest and largest leftist guerrilla insurgency with about 17,000
armed members, control the lush hills they use to hide stolen cattle and
victims of kidnappings-for-profit.

The privately funded United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known by the
initials AUC in Spanish, patrols the rolling pastures and menaces the
villages that provide the FARC with supplies. Paramilitary groups across
Colombia have grown in political popularity and military strength in recent
years as a counterweight to the guerrillas, and obtain much of their
funding from relations with drug traffickers. Here in Sucre province,
ranchers who are the targets of the kidnappings and cattle theft allegedly
finance the paramilitary operations. AUC commander Carlos Castano, who has
condemned the massacre here and plans his own investigation, lives a few
hours away in neighboring Cordoba province.

The armed forces, who are outnumbered by the leftist guerrillas in a
security zone that covers 9,000 square miles and includes more than 200
villages, are responsible for confronting both armed groups. Col. Alejandro
Parra, head of the navy's 1st Brigade, with responsibility for much of
Colombia's northern coast, said the military would need at least 1,000 more
troops to effectively control the zone.

The military has prepared its own account of the events surrounding the
massacre at Chengue, which emptied this village of all but 100 of its 1,200
residents. Parra confirmed elements of survivor accounts, but denied that
military aircraft were in the area before or immediately after the
killings. He said his troops' quick response may have averted a broader
massacre involving neighboring villages.

"They must have been confused about the time" the first helicopters
arrived, Parra said. "If there were any helicopters there that soon after
the massacre, they weren't ours."

Strategic Location

Three families have flourished in Chengue for generations, tending small
orchards of avocados renowned for their size and sweetness. The only
residents not related to the Oviedo, Lopez or Merino families are the farm
workers who travel the lone dirt road that dips through town. The longest
trip most inhabitants ever make is the two-hour drive by jeep to Ovejas,
the local government seat.

But in recent years the village, set in the Montes de Maria range, has
become a target on battle maps because of its strategic perch between the
Caribbean Sea and the Magdalena River. Whoever controls the mountains also
threatens the most important transportation routes in the north.

Villagers say FARC guerrillas frequently pass through seeking supplies. Any
support, many villagers say, is given mostly out of fear. As one
34-year-old farmer who survived the massacre by scrambling out his back
window said, "When a man with a gun knocks on your door at 11 at night
wanting food and a place to sleep, he becomes your landlord."

The AUC's Heroes of the Montes de Maria Front announced its arrival in
Chengue last spring with pamphlets and word-of-mouth warnings of a pending
strike. The paramilitaries apparently identified Chengue as a guerrilla
stronghold -- a town to be emptied. The AUC's local commander, Beatriz, was
once a member of the FARC's 35th Front, which operates in the zone,
military officials said. Ten months ago she quarreled with the FARC
leadership for allegedly mishandling the group's finances and defected to
the AUC for protection and perhaps a measure of revenge.

In April, community leaders in Chengue and 20 other villages sent President
Andres Pastrana and the regional military command a letter outlining the
threat. "We have nothing to do with this conflict," they wrote in asking
for protection.

The letter was sent two months after the massacre of 36 civilians in El
Salado, a village about 30 miles southeast of here in Bolivar province that
is patrolled by the same military command and paramilitary forces. But
according to villagers and municipal officials in Ovejas, the request for
help brought no response from the central government or the navy's 1st
Brigade, which is based in the city of Sincelejo 25 miles south of here.

In October, the villagers repeated their call for help in another letter to
Pastrana, regional military leaders, international human rights groups and
others. Municipal officials met with members of the 1st Brigade in
November, but said no increased military presence materialized. In fact,
municipal officials said, the 5th Marine Infantry Battalion seemed to stop
patrolling the village.

Six Chengue residents who signed the letter died in the massacre. Col.
Parra said the requests for help were among dozens received at brigade
headquarters in the past year, but that manpower shortages made it
impossible to respond to every one.

"What is clear is that the government and [the military] knew about the
evidence of a possible massacre and did nothing," said a municipal official
in Ovejas, who like many interviewed in the aftermath of the slaughter
requested anonymity for fear of reprisal. "The military seemed to clear out
of the zone."

After weeks of not seeing any sign of the military, villagers said a small,
white propeller plane swooped low over the village on Jan. 14, three days
before the massacre. They identified the aircraft as the same plane used to
drop anti-guerrilla pamphlets three months earlier -- a "psychological
operation," Parra confirmed, although he denied knowledge of this
particular flight. The low-altitude pass left the farmers uneasy.

Over the next two nights, as darkness fell on the village, residents said
two green military helicopters passed over in slow circles. "They are the
same ones I'd seen pass by before, but just coming and going, not
circling," said a young mother. "We didn't know what they were doing."

Seven hours after the helicopters left the second time, the power went out
in Chengue, Salitral and a series of neighboring villages that had warned
of a pending paramilitary attack. Villagers noted the time somewhere
between 1:30 and 2 a.m. because, as one woman remembered, "the dogs started
barking when the house lights went out." Some villagers lit candles. Most
remained asleep.

In the blackness, the paramilitary column dressed in Colombian army
uniforms moved along the dirt road from the west, arriving between 4 and
4:30 a.m., villagers said. The column was led by Beatriz, whom military
officials said is a nurse by training; witnesses said the men in her
command addressed her as "doctora."

The column stopped at the gray concrete home of Jaime Merino, the first on
the road, and kicked in the door. They seized him and three workers,
including Luis Miguel Romero, who picked avocados to pay for medical
treatment for his infant daughter.

They were led down the steep dirt road into the village, past the church
and school, and to a small terrace above the square where they waited.
Three brothers from the green house on the square, a father and two sons
from the sky blue house across the square, and Nestor Merino, a mentally
ill man who hadn't left his home in four months, all joined them in the
flickering darkness.

When the men arrived for Rusbel Oviedo Barreto, 23, his father blocked the
door.

"They pushed me away," said Enrique al Alberto Oviedo Merino, 68. "I was
yelling not to take him, and they were saying 'we'll check the computer.'
There was no computer. They were mocking us. They took my identification
card and said they would know me the next time."

Cesar Merino awoke on his farm above the village, and peering down, saw the
town below lit by candles. His neighbors, 19-year-old Juan Carlos Martinez
Oviedo and his younger brother Elkin, were also awake. The three men, who
worked the same avocado farm, walked down the hillside into town. Elkin,
15, was the youngest to die.

On the far side of town, where the road bends up and out toward Ovejas, the
paramilitaries gathered Cesar Merino's cousin, Andres Merino, and his
18-year-old son, Cristobal. One of them, father or son, watched the other
die before his own execution.

Human rights workers and survivors speculated that the paramilitaries, who
were armed with automatic rifles, used stones to kill the men to heighten
the horror of the message to surrounding villages and to maintain a measure
of silence in a guerrilla zone.

The work was over within an hour and a half. As the column prepared to
leave, according to several witnesses, one militiaman used a portable radio
to make a call. No transmission was intercepted that morning by military
officials, although their log of the proceeding weeks showed numerous
intercepts of FARC radio traffic. Then the men smashed the town's only
telephone and set the village on fire.

The hillside was full of hiding villagers, many of whom say that between 15
and 30 minutes later two military helicopters arrived overhead and circled
for several minutes. The sun was beginning to rise.

"They would have been able to see [the paramilitaries] clearly at that
hour," said one survivor, who has fled to Ovejas. "Why didn't they catch
anyone?"

Human rights officials say the described events resemble those surrounding
the massacre last year in El Salado. Gen. Rodrigo Quinones was the officer
in charge of the security zone for Chengue and El Salado at that time, and
remained in that post in the months leading up to the Chengue massacre. He
left the navy's 1st Brigade last month to run a special investigation at
the Atlantic Command in Cartagena, from where military flights in the zone
are directed.

In a report issued this month, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch
and the Washington Office on Latin America called specifically for
Quinones's removal. As a regional head of naval intelligence in the early
1990s, Quinones was linked to the killings of 57 trade unionists, human
rights workers and activists. He was acquitted by a military court.
According to the human rights report, a civilian judge who reviewed the
case was "perplexed" by the verdict, saying he found the evidence of
Quinones's guilt "irrefutable."

El Salado survivors said a military plane and helicopter flew over the
village the day of the massacre, and that at least one wounded militiaman
was transported from the site by military helicopter. Soldiers under
Quinones's command sealed the village for days, barring even Red Cross
workers from entering.

"We are very worried and very suspicious about the coincidences," said
Anders Kompass, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights representative
in Colombia. "This involves the same officer in charge, the same kind of
military activity before and after the massacre, and the same lack of
military presence while it was going on."

'There Is a Terror Here'

During the two hours following the killings, survivors emerged from hiding
and into the shambles of their village. Eliecer Lopez Oviedo, a 66-year-old
Chengue native, said his son arrived at his small farm at 9 a.m.

"He told me they had burned Chengue, killed my brothers, my sister and my
niece," he said. "I arrived there to find that they hadn't killed the
women. But my three brothers were above the square, dead."

What Oviedo and others found were two piles of bodies -- 17 on the dirt
terrace above the square, seven in front of the health center. Cristobal
Merino's Yankees hat, torn and bloody, lay near his body. The rocks used in
the killings remained where they were dropped. The bodies of Videncio
Quintana Barreto and Pedro Arias Barreto, killed along with fathers and
brothers, were found later in shallow graves.

Ash from more than 20 burning houses floated in the hot, still air.
Graffiti declaring "Get Out Marxist Communist Guerrillas," "AUC" and
"Beatriz" was scrawled across the walls of vacant houses. "The bodies were
all right there for us to see, and I knew all of them," said a 56-year
Chengue resident whose brother and brother-in-law were among the dead. "Now
there is a terror here."

Officials at the 1st Brigade said they were alerted at 8:45 a.m. when the
National Police chief for Sucre reported a possible paramilitary
"incursion" in Chengue. According to a military log, Parra dispatched two
helicopters to the village at 9:30 a.m. and the Dragon company of 80
infantry soldiers based in nearby Pijiguay five minutes later. Villagers
said the troops did not arrive for at least another two hours.

When they did arrive, according to logs and soldiers present that day, a
gun battle erupted with guerrillas from the FARC's 35th Front. Parra said
he sealed the roads into the zone "to prevent the paramilitaries from
escaping." The battle lasted all day -- the air force sent in one Arpia and
three Black Hawk helicopters at 2:10 p.m., according to the military -- and
village residents waved homemade white flags urging the military to stop
shooting. No casualties were reported on either side. No paramilitary
troops were captured.

Three days later, the 1st Brigade announced the arrest of eight people in
connection with the killings. They were apprehended in San Onofre, a town
15 miles from Chengue known for a small paramilitary camp that patrols
nearby ranches. Villagers say that, though they didn't see faces that
morning because of the darkness, these "old names" are scapegoats and not
the men who killed their families.

A steady flow of traffic now moves toward Ovejas, jeeps stuffed with
everything from refrigerators to pool cues to family pictures. The marines
have set up two base camps in Chengue -- one under a large shade tree
behind the village, the other in the vacant school. The remaining residents
do not mix with the soldiers.

"We have taken back this town," said Maj. Alvaro Jimenez, standing in the
square two days after the massacre. "We are telling people we are here,
that it is time to reclaim their village."

No one plans to. Marlena Lopez, 52, lost three brothers, a nephew, a
brother-in-law and her pink house. Her brother, Cesar Lopez, was the town
telephone operator. He fled, she said, "with nothing but his pants."

In the ashes of her home, she weeps about the pain she can't manage. "We
are humble people," she said. "Why in the world are we paying for this?"