SANTA ROSA, COLOMBIA — In the end, getting his picture taken with President Bush and attaining a modicum of local fame was no help to Miguel Daza. In fact, his high profile may have been the death of him.
The young farmer was killed in a roadside ambush in February near this mining and drug trafficking hub in north-central Colombia, apparently by one of a new generation of criminal gangs that have emerged in the two years since right-wing paramilitary fighters officially disbanded.
The status of the paramilitary fighters has serious ramifications for President Alvaro Uribe, a conservative U.S. ally who famously broke up the militias, which were playing a role in destabilizing the country. But he has seen his presidency challenged by revelations that many of his closest allies were tied to the right-wing gunmen.
The paramilitary groups, originally formed to defend farmers and ranchers against leftist rebels, subsequently turned to drug trafficking and other criminal activities, including extortion and mass killings, prosecutors say.
The new gangs are more dispersed and lack the hierarchical structure of their predecessors. In some areas, such as here in Bolivar state, they have formed alliances with leftist rebels to manufacture and transport drugs, a move that was once anathema to the fighters.
How the new criminal groups should be tagged and whether they are growing have become matters of debate. The Uribe government prefers the term "emerging gangs" because it conforms with its position that paramilitarism is a thing of the past.
But critics, including human rights groups and opposition figures such as Sen. Gustavo Petro, say the groups are wreaking the same havoc and committing the same crimes. The government is merely "putting a new name on the same old phenomenon," Petro said.
What is certain is that the new groups act with the same murderous efficiency when someone such as Daza threatens their grip on an area and its people.
Authorities theorize that members of the notorious Black Eagles killed Daza, 37, because he had become what the drug trafficking outlaws fear most: a rising community leader who convinced 250 poor farmers that there was a better alternative to growing coca.
A former coca grower himself, Daza was a vocal backer of the government's manual eradication of the plants and in frequent public talks described coca as a "curse that must be driven from the heart of the pueblo."
