SPECIAL REPORT: REBEL HELD

THE REBEL SANCTUARY

Guerrillas reign over a 16,000-square-mile zone called the despeje that was
ceded by the government as a gambit for peace. Chronicle reporter John Otis
spent 10 days touring the area without a rebel escort. Here is his report:

SAN VICENTE DEL CAGUAN, Colombia -- Inside a green canvas tent on the
outskirts of this ranch town, two nervous farmers stand before a cross-eyed
rebel comandante.

One of the men had knifed the other in the hand over a $40 debt, and the
victim seeks redress.

"You don't recover debts by stabbing people," says Hermogenes Morales as he
waves his bandaged left hand in the muggy morning air.

His attacker, a stocky man in a white cowboy hat named Arnaldo Medina,
insists it was an act of self-defense.

The young comandante sips coffee and scribbles the details in a Snoopy
notebook. Then, with the stern countenance of a judge, he tells the two
peasants to pipe down and asks how they would like to resolve the dispute.

Medina mulls it over for a moment, then offers to pay half of Morales'
medical bills. The victim agrees, and the two men sheepishly shake hands.
But as they leave the tent, the comandante warns them not to ignore the
deal or else the FARC, or the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, will
send someone after them.

Submission to the FARC comes with the terrain.

The rebel tribunal is in an expanse of real estate in southern Colombia
under the control of the guerrillas, and in these parts, the FARC's word is
law.

Oddly enough, the rebel zone is the handiwork of the Colombian government,
the centerpiece of a go-for-broke experiment by President Andres Pastrana
to help bring the nation's 37-year civil war to an end.

In November 1998, Pastrana agreed to temporarily withdraw all police and
troops from a huge patch of jungle and plains amounting to 16,000 square
miles. The zone, known as the despeje, Spanish for "cleared-out area,"
covers 4 percent of Colombian territory and is roughly the size of
Switzerland.

Pastrana's decision persuaded the rebels to start peace talks with his
government in January 1999. But it also left the guerrillas as the
undisputed overlords of the region.

"It was a very audacious move by Pastrana," says Camilo Gonzalez, a former
Colombian health minister who heads an independent organization that
presses for peace. "It was perhaps the only card he could play in order to
start the peace process."

Still, the policy remains extremely controversial. Nowhere else in the
world has a government voluntarily ceded so much land to a rebel
organization, and some Colombians fear it will lead to a Balkanization of
the nation.

Critics note that few concrete advances have taken place in the
negotiations, which are being held in the despeje. Instead, they say, the
FARC is exploiting the entire region to grow coca, the raw material for
cocaine, to commit crimes and build up its war machine.

Government officials accuse the guerrillas of forcibly recruiting
adolescents in the zone and launching attacks on towns just outside it.

As a result, many Colombians have come to view the despeje as a no-rules
guerrilla gulag.

"You have to wonder whether the despeje has helped to construct the peace
or whether it has simply strengthened the FARC," says Carlos Eduardo
Jaramillo, a former Colombian peace commissioner.

For all of the controversy that the area has generated, few outsiders know
the region firsthand, and those who do visit rarely venture beyond San
Vicente del Caguan, the largest town in the zone with 15,000 people. Yet
the despeje would seem to be the ideal spot to observe the FARC, a rebel
army that has been around for nearly four decades and claims to be fighting
for a Marxist utopia.

Now that the guerrillas have their own state-sanctioned domain, how do they
behave? Are they any better than the government at getting things done? Are
they using the zone to pursue peace or to brace themselves for battle? To
find out, I secured permission from high-level rebel commanders to spend 10
days traveling unescorted throughout the despeje, a region that has come to
be known as "FARC-land."

'A Little Corner Of Paradise'

Beach volleyball in guerrilla territory?

It sounds like California dreaming, but the taxi driver insists. He says
it's the best way to unwind in San Vicente del Caguan.

To prove his point, he maneuvers his battered sedan down a gravel road
after dark and, moments later, pulls into an open-air discotheque on the
banks of the Caguan River.

A dry-ice machine blows fake fog across a wood-plank dance floor. Couples
gyrate to salsa music that booms from speakers the size of refrigerators.

Off-duty guerrillas guzzle beer. And, sure enough, swimsuit-clad teen-agers
play volleyball on a floodlit court by the river's edge.

Although much of Colombia has been torn asunder by the war, most of the
people in the despeje hardly know it. Neither the Colombian army nor
right-wing paramilitary groups, which target the guerrillas and their
civilian allies, have set foot in the rebel zone for nearly three years.

With just one side reigning over the region, the despeje has become one of
the few areas outside Colombia's main cities that is free of firefights,
ambushes and massacres.

"A lot of people think we are living in the middle of hell," says Bertil
Valderrama, a rancher in San Vicente del Caguan. "But this is a little
corner of paradise."

Valderrama may have a point. Compared with other rough-and-tumble Colombian
outposts, San Vicente del Caguan seems about as menacing as Mister Rogers'
Neighborhood.

Instead of hunkering down behind sandbags, most of the rebels in town
lounge around the FARC's public relations office, which sells the
guerrillas' monthly magazine and compact discs of revolutionary anthems.

Youngsters climb trees and swim in the river. And all day long, the town
crier shuffles along the dusty sidewalks with a bullhorn announcing
upcoming cockfights and the blue-plate special at the Black Bull restaurant.

Colombian officials consider the despeje so safe that the former chairman
of the New York Stock Exchange, Queen Noor of Jordan and a U.S.
congressional delegation have all passed through to discuss the peace
process with rebel commanders.

Los Pozos, a hamlet 10 miles east of San Vicente del Caguan and the site of
the peace talks, has even become a destination for school field trips.

During one such excursion, three dozen sixth-graders from the Colombian
city of Cali sit around Ivan Rios, a soft-spoken, mustachioed FARC
commander, who gamely tries to answer their questions.

It's a tough audience.

Referring to hundreds of captured police and army soldiers held by the FARC
in jungle stockades in the despeje, one youngster asks: "Why do you keep
them in a cage? I saw it on TV."

Another wonders aloud whether Rios prays at night, prompting the guerrilla
to launch into an angry tirade about the "sins" of the Roman Catholic
Church. Later, a little girl raises her hand and demands: "Are you going to
fight forever?"

The Zone's True Enforcers

While the rebels roll out the red carpet for day-trippers, many of the
region's longtime residents offer a critical description of FARC-land. They
portray the guerrillas as control freaks unwilling to tolerate dissent.

Several people ask to remain anonymous because they fear rebel retaliation.
"If you speak out, you have to leave," says one church worker.

Legions of people have been forced out of the rebel zone.

After the Colombian army and police withdrew, the rebels shocked the
government by announcing that state lawyers, investigators and judges were
not welcome. Mayors, teachers, health workers and other civil servants
stayed behind but operate under the close surveillance of guerrilla
commanders.

In San Vicente del Caguan, law and order is supposedly provided by a
civilian constabulary made up of 30 men and women chosen by the mayor and
30 by the rebels.

But the white-shirted constables carry only whistles and nightsticks and
spend most of their time collecting trash and breaking up bar brawls. "We
go after the drunks," says constable Raul Valencia, 37.

The guerrillas, people say, are the zone's true enforcers.

The problem, some experts say, is that when Pastrana created the despeje,
he neglected to provide for any kind of independent supervision.

But others contend that the FARC never would have agreed to start the peace
talks had the government insisted on strict guidelines for the zone.

Even so, says the Rev. Francisco Javier Munera, the Catholic bishop of San
Vicente del Caguan, the government's hands-off approach "was too much like
a blank check."

Yet the rebels sometimes seem unsure of how to exercise their powers and
appear tone deaf to the nuances of local politics.

At first, they rubbed many people the wrong way by forming mandatory work
brigades. Then they held raffles to fund road-building projects and bullied
people into buying tickets. Finally, they ordered store owners to shutter
their shops to attend FARC-run town meetings.

The backlash came at the polls.

During the mayoral election in San Vicente del Caguan last year, an
independent defeated a rebel-backed candidate by a comfortable margin.

Since then, the guerillas have backed down, meddling less in the daily
lives of the townspeople.

"The guerrillas were trying to impose their way of life," Munera says. "But
they found out that it was very complicated."

Making Something Of Nothing

For centuries, people have considered this slice of Colombia a wasteland.
In the 1500s, the Spanish conquistadors dismissed the area because it
lacked gold to mine and Indians to enslave, writes David Bushnell in his
book The Making of Modern Colombia.

Today, the rebel zone contains scant resources other than a few roads, some
herds of hump-backed Brahman cattle and 96,000 people, or about one-fourth
of 1 percent of the Colombian population.

Hamlets with illusory names dot the despeje. Los Pozos, for example, means
"The Wells," and was founded by wildcatters expecting a gusher that never
panned out. La Sombra, which translates to "The Shadow," stands on a
sun-scorched crossroad and offers little respite from the heat.

The desolate conditions made the region an ideal refuge for the FARC, which
moved into the area in the 1960s and later set up its military headquarters
near the town of Uribe.

With no government oversight, the guerrillas concocted a variety of ways to
make the zone pay off, which is why it has become the focus of intense
national and international scrutiny.

"Now, if a donkey dies in the despeje, it's broadcast on CNN," jokes
Gonzalez, the peace activist.

CIA satellite photographs show that plantations of coca, the main
ingredient for cocaine, have jumped from 14,900 acres inside the area to
19,600 acres in the past year. The FARC earns millions of dollars annually
by taxing and providing protection to drug farmers and traffickers.

Guerrillas rustle cattle in the zone and expropriate lands, says Jorge
Visbal, who heads the Colombian Ranchers Federation.

In addition, the rebels use the area to hide their kidnapping victims, many
of whom are middle-class Colombians snatched purely for profit.

Despite all the accounts of rebel wrongdoing, most of the guerrilla foot
soldiers seem friendly.

At a FARC encampment on the outskirts of La Macarena, a handful of men and
women gossip and flirt while they prepare lunch.

The rebels have just slaughtered a cow and waste nothing. Ribs, flanks and
even the hooves are tossed into aluminum cooking pots that hang over smoky
wood fires. The beef is fatty and almost impossible to chew, but the yucca,
rice and green peas taste fine.

After cleaning his plate, a shirtless rebel named Eduardo brushes brown
paint on a stack of sandbags and asks about the United States. He wants to
know why so many school shootings occur, and he asks which guerrilla group
was responsible for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

Eduardo talks a little about himself. He comes from a poor family, one of
11 children, and he joined the FARC because, he says, "Rich people control
everything and don't want to give up any power."

He explains that the farmhouse where he grew up had no electricity and,
therefore, no television, which is why his parents had so many kids. Then
he breaks into a belly laugh.

Partying With The Enemy

A caravan of sport utility vehicles pulls into La Macarena, a town of
4,000, and out jumps Jorge Briceno, the FARC's top field commander.

Surrounded by a coterie of bodyguards, the barrel-chested Briceno sweeps
through the village like visiting royalty.

He has arrived to provide security for a delegation of government peace
negotiators. But his first stop is the town's new Catholic church, where
its Spanish-born priest, the Rev. Ricardo Cantalapiedra, offers a tour.

Like most priests in the rebel zone, Cantalapiedra tries to get along with
everyone. He once helped secure the release of a townsman who had been
kidnapped by the rebels, Cantalapiedra says. Later, the victim's family
chipped in for the church's floor tiles and stained-glass windows.

The priest also accepted cash donations from the guerrillas for the
gleaming white church.

The rebels, Cantalapiedra explains, officially proclaim atheism, but he
adds that because so many Colombians are Catholics, the FARC has tried not
to pick fights with the church.

Still, the guerrillas have taken a hard line toward conservative Protestant
evangelical denominations that are aggressively trying to proselytize the
population. The FARC has shut down 62 of their churches, including several
in the despeje, evangelical ministers charge.

As Briceno huddles with his top aides over breakfast at a street-side cafe,
La Macarena fills up with rebels. Many arrive on troop transports which,
like most FARC vehicles in the region, carry no license plates.

The guerrillas take up positions at the town's airport and wait until a
twin-engine plane touches down on the dirt runway.

The charter carries a team of government negotiators, who are anxious to
meet with the FARC's leadership. They all pile into minivans, and, as the
caravan speeds into the countryside, the rank-and-file rebel fighters stay
behind and kill time.

When some swagger around the town, it's easy to see how the community's
impoverished and bored adolescents might be persuaded to join the FARC.

A few guerrillas duck into grocery stores for supplies and stagger out with
50-pound bags of rice and crates of juice. Others hit the pool halls.

A rebel named Juancho, who wears twin bandoleers of bullets Rambo-style
across his chest, persuades a young woman to play a game of eight ball.

"Isn't she beautiful?" Juancho says. "Maybe we will get married."

Then, he looks at me. As a joke, he wraps a bandoleer around my torso.
"You're big," Juancho says. "If you joined the FARC, you could carry the
heavy weapons."

At the airport, rebel sentries wait for the negotiators who are supposed to
return to Bogota that afternoon. But they fail to show up because they are
partying.

In an effort to break an impasse in the peace talks, the rebel commanders
had tossed a surprise party for the government team. The spread included
plenty of vodka and whiskey, a buffet of hors d'oeuvres and plates of steak
and chicken. Later, a 14-piece guerrilla orchestra began to play, and rebel
women paired off with the government men.

"We were dancing with the enemy," David Manzur, a member of the government
delegation, says later. "It's like the Stockholm Syndrome. They can kill
you. But when you are with them, the guerrillas seem like your best friends.

"Everyone was hugging, calling one another 'comrade.'"

Roadways Of Progress

The road peters out at La Macarena. Travelers who want to reach the next
town must ferry up the Guayabero River for eight hours to a village called
Brisas where, according to the locals, the FARC is building a road.

The river knifes through granite-walled canyons and a jungle-covered butte,
part of a national park that tourists avoid now because the land is
controlled by the FARC. The forest echoes with the jackhammer-like sounds
of woodpeckers attacking tree trunks while multicolored toucans fly overhead.

Brisas amounts to just five wooden huts and one tiny store, its shelves
nearly barren. The shopkeeper, Francelina Mendez, invites me to stay in her
two-room shack.

Few decorations hang on the walls, just a poster of the Virgin Mary and
Mendez's framed diploma from the John F. Kennedy elementary school in La
Macarena. The hut also shelters her husband, parents, four children and a dog.

Because the village lacks electricity, the family bunks down at 8 p.m. The
guest bedroom turns out to be a porch next to a chicken coop. At 4 a.m. the
roosters crow, and the smell of brewing coffee fills the air.

Over a breakfast of watery fish soup, Mendez recounts how she and her
husband moved to the village a few years ago as homesteaders full of hope.
But they barely manage to scratch out a living these days by farming just a
few acres of yucca and by fishing.

Brisas is a kind of no-man's land in the rebel zone. The Colombian
government ignores the village because the FARC holds it, Mendez says. The
guerrillas, in turn, claim that providing health, education and other
social services is the state's responsibility.

Indeed, the despeje is hardly a showcase for the benefits of rebel rule.
Much of the zone seems every bit as poor as the backward rural areas
controlled by the government.

"This was a historic opportunity for the FARC to do marvelous things with
this area," says a government human rights worker who remained in the
despeje when the army withdrew. "But they haven't been the least bit
interested."

Many experts point out that the FARC has never tried to permanently hold or
develop the territory it dominates because it has not wanted its fighters
to become easy targets for the military.

"Tying down troops and getting heavily involved in administration implies a
fundamental shift in the way they act," says Bruce Bagley, a Colombia
expert at the University of Miami. "They consider the despeje a temporary
deal and figure that, the day after tomorrow, they might have to leave."

The one task the guerrillas have assumed with relish is their own version
of the adopt-a-highway program.

Outside Brisas, a rutted dirt track turns into an unpaved highway wide
enough for three cars. Dump trucks, bulldozers and backhoes manned by
guerrillas fill holes and grade the surface. The road is so smooth that
vehicles can zip along at 70 mph.

Colombian military officials claim the FARC is upgrading the roads and
building new ones throughout the rebel zone to transport troops, weapons
and supplies and consolidate its control of the area. But to peasants
living in forgotten pockets of the jungle, the roads are a sign of progress.

"Farmers need roads to get their goods to market," says Ancizar Garcia, a
local official in the town of La Julia. "The government never cared, so the
FARC decided to go ahead and open up the area."

What Lies Ahead For The Zone

In the despeje town of Mesetas, a woman named Maria Teresa lives with her
91-year-old mother who suffers from Alzheimer's disease. The old woman
doesn't realize that the uniformed fighters she sees on the streets are
guerrillas, not soldiers.

"Every day she greets them warmly," Maria Teresa says. "I think it's better
that she doesn't know. It's better that she dies in peace."

One way or another, most of the townspeople in Mesetas have learned to live
alongside the rebels. They have no choice.

Without seeking the opinions of the people who live here, President
Pastrana announced the despeje as a done deal.

Residents of Mesetas and other towns in the rebel zone face all sorts of
problems. Bankers often refuse to lend money to the area's residents
because they are considered high-risk customers.

Traveling outside the area can be dangerous because right-wing paramilitary
fighters view the despeje residents as FARC allies.

As a result, some people refuse to leave the zone. But if the government
abruptly ends its hands-off treatment, some fear the right-wing militias
will inundate the otherwise defenseless region and slaughter its inhabitants.

The paramilitary gunmen are already doing what they can to squeeze the
zone. Merchants have jacked up prices because truckers hauling food and
other supplies into the despeje are forced to make payoffs at paramilitary
roadblocks.

"They charge anywhere from $10 to $75 per ton of cargo," says a
veterinarian. Although many analysts expect the rebel zone to remain in
place until Pastrana leaves office next August, some speculate that the
next president will cancel the experiment because of mounting evidence of
FARC crimes.

It will be a crucial decision, because abolishing the zone would likely
deal a death blow to the peace talks.

What's more, it may be extremely difficult for the Colombian army to expel
the rebels from the region or to regain control of anything beyond its
principal towns.

Colombian army officers say the FARC has built a network of trenches and
concrete bunkers in the despeje and maintains 5,000 troops and large caches
of weapons in the zone.

"We can't give up this zone just like that," Briceno, the FARC's field
general, told midlevel commanders in a speech. "We will sell it back to the
enemy at a very high price."

At the village of Pinalito, a rebel named Dagoberto sits in a nearly empty
tavern, drinking a bottle of raspberry juice with a pair of armed female
guerrillas and listening to revolutionary anthems on the FARC's radio
station, the Voice of the Resistance.

In the long run, he tells me, it doesn't matter if the government extends
the life of the rebel-held zone.

The FARC's ambitions, he says, go far beyond lording over a small patch of
Colombia.

"We want everything," he says with a smile.

With that, Dagoberto climbs into a four-wheel-drive Toyota pickup, starts
the engine and disappears into the jungle.