TO MAKE A POINT, THE REBELS ARE STRANGLING A TOWN

PUERTO ASIS, Colombia, Nov. 2 - At the San Francisco de Asis Hospital,
doctors say antibiotics are running dangerously low. Gasoline, normally
$1.50 a gallon, is being sold out of darkened doorways, for close to $5.

Adding to the problems, the town's electric grid is out of commission, and
bakeries and restaurants, even ice-cream stands, are being forced to shut down.

In the poorest neighborhoods, where laborers live from day to day, families
are starting to go hungry.

For more than a month, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC,
have blocked all roads in and out of this frontier town of 38,000, in the
heart of Colombia's largest coca-growing region. The stranglehold is meant
to browbeat the government of President Andres Pastrana into dropping its
$7.5 billion plan for eradicating the coca crop, something it says it will
never do, and at the same time to push the government into putting down the
paramilitaries battling the guerrillas in this southern province, something
the government says it is handling.

As a result, the town's food and fuel are running out, despite daily
flights arriving with supplies. The provisions that do make it to market,
residents say, are so marked up that many people cannot afford them.

"For us, the poor people, we spend only what we can make in a day, and now
everything that's coming here is out of reach," Juan Ciro, 38, a carpenter
who has been out of work, said today. "We can't even buy a kilo of rice or
a kilo of sugar. It's double what it used to be."

Now, with the rebel blockade in its fifth week, town leaders are warning
that riots or worse might break out unless the central government embarks
on talks with the guerrillas. Unless the problems are quickly solved, they
warn, the crisis could be repeated in other regions as the rebels react to
the government's ambitious program to curtail the coca trade that brings
them an estimated $500 million a year.

"I think if the situation continues like it has for 10 or 15 more days,
we're going to have an explosion," Mayor Manuel Alzate said. "This can
happen all over the country, in other departments, and it will be out of
the government's hands by that time."

In Bogota, the crisis is readily acknowledged, with Fernando Medellin, head
of the government's relief agency, Solidarity, calling the roadblocks a
"death sentence against anyone who is looking for food." Government
officials, though, tout an airlift that has brought nearly 300 tons of food
to Puerto Asis and the rest of Putumayo Province. The government has also
said it is working to help repair the power grid; it was damaged somehow
and the rebels have not let anyone in to fix it.

"What we've done, and I think we've done it well, taking into account the
difficult situation, is to guarantee basic public services," said Humberto
de la Calle, the interior minister, earlier this week. "At the minimum, the
government understands the anguish and displeasure of the inhabitants, who
have been used like canon fodder by the guerrillas."

The people of Puerto Asis take a different view, believing that Bogota has
forgotten them once again.

But even in tough times in a region long buffeted by guerrillas and
paramilitaries, Puerto Asis has never had to suffer weeks without food and
electricity. Stores may be open and the streets may still buzz with
motorcycles, but people here describe themselves as living in a town
besieged, powerless and unable to function normally.

"We're like a town in Roman times, cut off and surrounded until we're
starved out," Deyanira Perdomo said.

This week, town officials held two large meetings in the main church to
search for ideas for ending the crisis. Boiling with anger, speaker after
speaker made drastic suggestions, including shutting down the airport, as a
way to get the country's attention. Some residents hoisted signs reading,
"We are a species on the brink of extinction," and "We've been kidnapped."

"We have to do something to pressure the government, which has abandoned
us," one resident, Jaime Guerra, said. "This is not just a place filled
with narco-traffickers and guerrillas. This is a place filled with people
who work hard, who are trying to raise a family."

Rejecting most of the suggestions, Mayor Alzate and other town leaders are
pushing a milder answer: sending a caravan of cars from Puerto Asis and
other communities in Putumayo to Bogota, starting next Wednesday, to
attract attention to their plight.

"The message is for the government to intervene in the armed blockade,"
Mayor Alzate said. "We just want them to talk to the FARC about their
tactics, to tell them that they are violating all human rights conventions.

In the meantime, large groups of soldiers, bandoleers across their chests
and toting machine guns, patrol the streets day and night. Store shelves,
especially in the bodegas in outlying districts, have run out of toilet
paper, bottled water, fruits and vegetables and milk. Chicken or beef,
readily available in this rural area, is often not for sale because
merchants cannot refrigerate.

"Food here? Nothing," one merchant, Alba Quintero, said today as she stood
next to empty shelves. "As soon as the blockades came, it all ran out. To
have a decent something to eat is not possible. It's all finished."

The lack of electricity is, for some, the worst problem. Water has to be
drawn from wells because pumps are not operating, a factor believed
responsible for an increase in hepatitis and diarrhea. Many people say they
feel most cut off at night, as they sit in their darkened homes.

"There seems to be no way out, and we don't have the things we need,"
Alaida Luis said. "There's nothing. No light. We can't even see the news.
We don't even know what's going on."