In the town of El Plateado, a rural area of Argelia (Cauca), it has been transformed into the fortress of the FARC dissidents of the Central General Staff, who have entrenched themselves in the town and filled it with mines, in order to repel the Army’s efforts to stop the subversive takeover of the territory.
According to the authorities, the armed group has resumed and exacerbated the practices of violence and territorial control, transforming El Plateado into what General Federico Mejía, commander of the national Army in Cauca, calls “the Wall Street” of the illegal economy of dissidents.
“The Silver One is ‘the Wall Street’ of the illegal economies in Cauca; Given this scenario, they have had an area occupied for many years, until now we managed to advance to the vicinity of El Plateado, from there to there they are very well organized. They placed about 4,000 minefields in the upper parts, because they are not going to allow anyone to reach them through the upper parts. The entrances to the urban area are monitored by security cameras. The three vehicle entrances are full of remote-controlled explosives. ”he told the magazine Week General Mejía.
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El Plateado is located in a privileged location, surrounded by the mountains of the Micay canyon, which has historically facilitated its use as a trafficking route for illicit substances produced in the Colombian massif to the Pacific.
The geography of the land, Together with the extensive use of surveillance and defense technologies such as minefields and remotely controlled explosives, it has turned the area into an almost medieval fortress, where the public force finds serious difficulties in entering.
After the signing of the Peace Agreement in 2016, FARC dissidents found a refuge and a point of consolidation in El Plateado. Using tactics of intimidation and coercion on the civilian population, these groups have achieved a consolidation of their power, to the point of establishing a regime of terror where murders and massacres are perpetrated with impunity.
“In their desire to continue shielding El Plateado, what they did was set up five camps in the upper part, which was the ones we attacked; one of them is in the aqueduct, which is the one that supplies drinking water to more than 8,000 people in the town, and they try to use all these areas where it is impossible to enter because they place camps next to the schoolnext to the houses, launching platforms for parabolic firing weapons near the lots of the houses within the hamlet,” the uniformed officer told the aforementioned media.
The institutional response to this situation has been marked by caution and the difficulty of operating on the ground. The statements of General William Salamanca, director of the National Police, about the impossibility of accessing the township without security guarantees for police officers, highlights the severity of the obstacles faced.
Despite some tactical successes, such as air operations that have resulted in significant casualties for dissidents, the solution to the El Plateado problem has proven to require a more holistic approach, integrating both military and social components.
General Mejía emphasizes the need for a complex and well-founded strategy to recover El Plateado, one that is not limited to armed confrontation, but also promotes the development and social inclusion of its inhabitants. This vision implies a recognition of the multidimensionality of the conflict and the importance of addressing both its manifestations and its structural roots.
