BLOOD ON THE BORDER

LA PISTA, Colombia -- Every wooden shack in La Pista, a half-deserted
hamlet of overgrown, dirt streets on the Colombian bank of the Oro river,
contains a grim story.

"Over there lived Chango' Quintero," said a former neighbour. "The
paramilitaries chopped him up and threw the pieces in the river. His head
washed up by the military base on the Venezuelan side."

A neighbour, Aldemar Pinilla, a 25-year-old peasant farmer, helped collect
what was left of Mr Quintero. "We recognised him by his dental work and a
scar he had here," he said, pointing to his cheek.

After an earlier paramilitary attack on a nearby town last year, Mr Pinilla
was one of several thousand to try to flee across the Oro's fast-flowing,
brown waters into Venezuela. But many were swiftly sent back.

On August 22nd the paramilitaries returned to La Pista to deliver an
ultimatum. They shot a storeowner, Henry Hernandez, three times in the
head, and then gathered all the remaining villagers. "They warned us that,
if the next time they came they found the stores open for business, then
the same thing would happen to us," said Maria Teresa Montagu, another
storeowner.

According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), this latest
incident caused about 500 people to flee across the border.

But the refugees know that it is Venezuela's policy to repatriate them,
even though the country's new constitution guarantees asylum.

Many melted into the already large population of undocumented migrants in
the border area. Venezuela's interior minister, Luis Alfonso Davila, simply
denied the refugees had come; he accused the UNHCR of "seeking to justify
its presence in the country."

The border with Colombia has been a headache for as long as most
Venezuelans can remember.

The de facto government along much of its 2,000 kilometres (1,250 miles)
comes from Colombia's FARC guerrilla group, or the ELN, its smaller
rival. Both are now targets of the paramilitaries. The guerrillas have
promised to respect the border.

But they continue to cross it to extort and kidnap, complain Venezuelan
ranchers. Venezuela has responded to attacks on its lorry-drivers (one died
this month, when his vehicle was blown up by the ELN) by banning entry to
Colombian trucks. Smuggling of all kinds, including drugs and guns, is
rife. In the Catatumbo region of Colombia's Norte de Santander department,
near La Pista, some 23,000 hectares of coca plantations are under guerrilla
protection. Further north, coca and opium poppy are now grown in Venezuela.

For years, Venezuelan governments have sought a quiet life through tacit
agreements with the guerrillas. Since Hugo Chavez came to power in February
1999, something more has seemed to be afoot. Officially, his government
says it would like to be a neutral intermediary in the peace talks between
the guerrillas and the Colombian government of Andres Pastrana.

But Mr Chavez, who, as a paratroop commander, staged a failed military
coup, has barely concealed his dislike of what he calls Colombia's
"oligarchy". Some commentators think he would prefer the FARC in power in
Bogota to Mr Pastrana. In May, the FARC set up a clandestine political
movement named after Simon Bolivar, the Venezuelan-born independence leader
whom Mr Chavez reveres.

FARC commanders have expressed admiration for the "revolution" across the
border.

Recently, a senior ELN commander said his group was respecting its
"agreements" with the Venezuelan government, which quickly denied the
existence of any such accord.

Ruben Zamora, the FARC commander in Catatumbo region, says there has been a
"change of attitude" on the part of the Venezuelan armed forces since Mr
Chavez came to power, but he too denies the existence of any formal agreement.

Venezuela's biggest fear is of an uncontrollable influx of refugees. That
might happen if the FARC's tenuous control over Catatumbo weakens. The
area's coca plantations have attracted the paramilitaries, who, like the
FARC, rely on drug money. Since the paramilitaries began killing civilians
in the area last year in an effort to deprive the FARC of support,
thousands of refugees have crossed the border.

They have been defined by Venezuela as "displaced people in transit" and
sent back. Human-rights groups say dozens of deportees have subsequently
been killed; the FARC says the number is over 100.

The FARC seem happy to collude in Venezuela's policy.

Commander Zamora argues that any human-rights abuses are the fault of the
Colombian government or junior Venezuelan officials on the border.

That may be because the FARC fears that if the border were open, its
civilian base would disappear across it.

Fear of the refugee problem is one reason Mr Chavez has criticised Plan
Colombia, an American-backed scheme which includes stepped-up military
action against the drug plantations. Mr Pastrana's government sees this as
essential to cut the flow of drug money to the guerrillas, and to persuade
them to make peace.

The FARC, for its own reasons, denounces Plan Colombia as American
intervention in Colombia's civil wars. "If Plan Colombia is implemented, we
predict as many as 60,000 will cross the border from the Catatumbo region,"
says Commander Zamora.

An exaggeration, perhaps, but still something that Venezuela would at all
costs like to avoid.

In the first article in a short series on the regional impact of Colombia's
wars, we report from Venezuela, whose government is not unhappy with the
guerrillas.