Mayor Alejandro Eder points it out without fear or hesitation: “There is a terrorist threat against Colombian citizens and, especially, for those of us who live in Cali and Jamundí.” Its premise is not exaggerated, since according to intelligence reports, the FARC dissidents, through the Jaime Martínez front, want to deploy their criminal actions to the capital of the Valley to subdue the people of Cali and generate a greater sense of instability in the region. .
The Cali Ombudsman’s Office has documented several complaints that indicate possible cells of this criminal structure in several communes of the city. There, they seek to recruit adolescents and young people, and also to gain criminal control of micro-trafficking, as well as the expansion of their extortion networks on a large scale. “The Military Forces and the Police have recognized that there are urban dissidents in Cali.
The dissidents are endangering and threatening certain people because they want to cause anxiety, they want to create situations that allow them to distract the attention of the authorities,” Gerardo Mendoza Castrillón, the ombudsman, told SEMANA.
According to the official, what Iván Mordisco’s dissidents want with these urban cells is to position themselves in the big cities to “achieve ownership and control of the territory.”
One of the most worrying events in Cali is taking place in the Potrero Grande neighborhood and Commune 16, where several social leaders have been threatened by these criminal groups. The plan is a carbon copy of what has been happening in other regions: they enter with small groups, threaten and kill those people who have community leadership; then, they generate a feeling of fear among the population and, finally, taking advantage of the chaos, present themselves as the owners of the territory.
“We have threats to leaders in Potrero Grande and Commune 16. These threats involve four councilors of the U Party. These urban cells can reach anywhere, but they have been countered by the authorities (…) We cannot see the dissidents as a guerrilla army, because they do not go into combat like the FARC did at the time. What they do is act with the element of surprise,” adds the ombudsman.
Faced with this, Mayor Alejandro Eder, in an interview with the media TuBarco, said: “For me it is not acceptable that terrorist groups do their thing without any consequences and, on top of that, a military value is given to the recruitment of minors and It has been fired because they understand it as their anti-aircraft defense. To protect Cali against terrorism we need more forcefulness from the national government against these criminal and terrorist structures of the FARC dissidents.”
Representative Mendoza adds to this reading that not only Cali is threatened, but the entire southwestern part of the country. “The dissidents need to generate surprise actions to dissuade the operations that are affecting them today due to illegal financing. “It is no secret to anyone that the fuel of war is drug trafficking and illegal mining.”
“They are here”
“A lot of strange people have arrived here and they are taking away the naked ones. They are offering them two million pesos to go to Cauca or to Jamundí above. What we know is that there they receive training with the commitment that they will then return to the neighborhood to control it, because, according to those people, their goal is to control all this,” says a leader from Potrero Grande.
He adds that the threats have come because, “seeing this situation, many people have raised their hands and tried to prevent the boys from leaving. They (dissidents) don’t like that, so they started threatening people.
“Do you want to know how they are getting into the neighborhood? Simple: the gangs are being given weapons and support, so they take sides, and the kids, feeling supported by long weapons and grenades, open the door for them. One only hears that many things are going to change because the orders now come from the mountains,” said another neighborhood leader from El Retiro. In Llano Verde the situation is different, say leaders from that area.
The neighborhood, which is located on the southeastern side of the capital of Valle, connects with the El Hormiguero district and with the north of Cauca, through an unpaved road that surrounds the Cauca River.
“We are in the middle of a corridor that is a direct line to Puerto Tejada and the whole area where the guerrillas are present, so a lot of the drugs arrive through there and we also believe that many of these guerrillas enter the city through there. They (the dissidents) already work with the offices (that’s what they call the criminal gangs) in this area. The boys work for the dissidents.”
The catches
He specified that in recent months 18 members of the dissidents have been captured in Cali. “The members of these terrorist groups who have been captured in the last six months have had relationships with criminal groups that allow them to carry out actions in Cali.
What must be recognized is that due to the capabilities of the Public Force, Police and Military Forces, several attacks have been prevented, such as the one identified in a taxi a couple of weeks ago, but we have not had information about permanent cells in the city,” he reiterated.
However, he stressed: “What the dissidents in Cali and Jamundí have demonstrated is that they act in a terrorist manner against the public force and against citizens. We regret the recent death resulting from the attack in Jamundí and, therefore, what the mayor has asked for is forcefulness both in the investigation and in countering these groups. We have to say that we have all the capabilities and all the intention to prevent, mitigate, identify and prosecute all those who are related to these groups or with any impact on the city.”
