COLOMBIA: Right-wing threats, forced disappearances and police on the streets are the pre-election backdrop in Bogota, writes Ana Carrigan
On the eve of elections, Bogota is deceptively calm. In the mountains above the city, heavily armed soldiers guard against any attempt by guerrillas to infiltrate the city. Six hundred elite, anti-terrorist squads and an extra 17,000 police have been deployed to patrol the streets.
Yet beneath the surface, there is fear. Amid rumours of plans to commit electoral fraud, the extreme right has gone on the offensive. This week, two protest rallies had to be cancelled for security reasons.
"People are very scared," explained one of the organisers who took the decision to call off the protests. "This city is crawling with intelligence agents and informers. The paramilitaries are everywhere, and people realise the extreme right wants to spread terror so that people will vote for security and another four years of Uribe."
On Wednesday, the campaign of the left-wing Polo also felt compelled, for security reasons, to cancel a scheduled appearance by their candidate in one of the poorest neighbourhoods in the south. Polo campaign manager Daniel Garcia Pena admitted security had become the biggest headache and most important issue of the campaign.
"We have to study every decision in relation to the risks involved," he said. "We dare not expose people to repression when they leave a meeting because we have no way of protecting them."
Meanwhile, in the Liberal campaign, after gunmen killed the sister of Cesar Gaviria - the former president and current party leader - at the end of April, their candidate, Horatio Serpa Uribe, sent his three children out of the country.
One of Serpa's closest advisers and friends, Cesar Gonzalez Munoz, admitted that no one in the campaign felt entirely safe. "I know I don't," he said. "I can't say that I feel one hundred per cent secure, and I know I won't when this is over."
This election was supposed to be a done deal for President Uribe, and very possibly it still will be. But the surge in the popularity of the left-wing candidate, Carlos Gaviria Diaz, has alarmed Mr Uribe's extreme right-wing supporters. Their agitation has been communicated in a series of threats sent to opposition and civic society organisations and individuals. The most recent, received on Wednesday, supposedly came from a "new" paramilitary group calling themselves the "armed wing" of the recently demobilised paramilitaries.
The message read, in part: "El senor presidente and his select group of collaborators know well that they have our total support. Therefore we warn you, one last time, that we are ready to fight to the death for the continuity of the presidential period of our legitimate leader. We will not permit a different result. If, on Sunday, the yellow shirts are in the majority, we will take care of dyeing them a different colour: blood red! This is our declaration of total war. All who do not accept the legitimacy of El Senor Presidente Alvaro Uribe Velez will be our next military target. Viva! The re-election of Alvaro Uribe Velez!"
One of the protest marches cancelled this week had been organised to denounce the forced disappearance of union leader Luis Antonio Arizmendi. He was a campesino who had been displaced from his land by the war almost 20 years ago. He settled in Cuidad Bolivar, a poverty-stricken satellite town of 1.6 million people in the mountains south of Bogota.
Cuidad Bolivar is about two hours from downtown Bogota by bus, and Arizmendi built his family a house and sold eggs in the market place. He educated four children, and became president of the local branch of the market workers' union and a much-loved community leader. Then he made a fatal mistake. He thought he could campaign against the re-election of President Uribe in a town completely controlled by the paramilitaries.
Today, in Cuidad Bolivar, the only election publicity pasted on the grimy walls of the slum dwellings are a few cheerful, yellow posters of the Polo, featuring the broad smile of Carlos Gaviria, and his campaign slogan: "Let's build Democracy - No more inequality." And now, the photo of Luis Antonio Arizmendi is also up there, plastered on the walls by his son, Alexander, beside the posters of the man he will never vote for.
On the afternoon of April 28th, Arizmendi left his house at about 2pm to go and see Belkys Goyeneche, the young mother of a two-year-old child, who had asked for his help filling out some official forms. Neither she nor Arizmendi were ever seen again. After their families and friends had searched all the hospitals, clinics and institutions and ended up finally in the city morgue, they understood that Arizmendi and Goyeneche had become dirty war statistics. They were the 169th and 170th victim of forced disappearance in Cuidad Bolivar since May 1st, 2005.
Long ago, in 1997, Eduardo Umana Mendoza, one of the most courageous human rights lawyers of his generation, predicted this moment with chilling accuracy.
"It is over for this country," he said. "Corruption has criminalised everyone - the politicians, the army, the courts, the church, the police. The only people left who count for something are the trade unionists, and they are being systematically destroyed.
"If you want to know what is going to happen in Colombia," he said, "look to the right. The extreme right are the only people in Colombia who know what they want, and they will get it. They are the only organised force in this country and they are on track to seize control."
Five months later, Eduardo Umana was killed as he sat at his desk in Bogota. It was a sunny morning in April and his wife and young son were waiting for him to go out for lunch.