In November, Los Paisas told the four operators who ran the town’s boat they must lock the boat down after 6 p.m., and that there would be no problems if their rules were followed. The next day, they shot one of the boat operators, slit his throat and walked out of town. Shocked residents can’t comprehend why he was murdered, but many suspect Los Paisas wanted to drive their threat home. Over the next two days, 17 families, including the other boat operators, fled. In the last three months, the town has lost a quarter of its population.
Guzmán fears El Palmar and other villages across Córdoba will soon look like Villa Carminia. Mass displacements were characteristic of the AUC’s era; Guzmán fears they are now making a comeback due to the AUC’s successor groups. In fact, displacement of individuals and families continues at high rates—government figures show Colombia has at least 3.5 million displaced people. And priests and others working with such populations in Córdoba can rattle off one case of mass displacement after another that they know of personally over the last two years—groups of 50, 90, 150, up and leaving. But many cases of mass displacements don’t show up in government statistics, so complete numbers are hard to determine.
Much of the crisis that is unfolding across the hills and flatlands of Córdoba is silent, as is the exodus of its people. Fear of being discovered again prevents many from registering themselves as displaced with the government to receive temporary aid. Many disappearances and murders are never recorded either, out of fear of reprisal from the perpetrators. After Beatriz Tirado’s 19-year-old son disappeared in June 2010 outside of El Palmar, fear gave way to despair and she marched to the camp of the local commander of Los Paisas and demanded her son back. “They said if we investigate, then they’d also kill us. So I’m staying quiet,” Tirado says.
Her son is not even a number among the statistics, but he is yet another sign of the growing control of the drug gangs. While the police documented 33 drug gangs in Colombia four years ago, there are now seven—a shift that, considering no drop in their membership numbers, points to their consolidation. Some are calling themselves “the Confederates,” and are making alliances over territory and drug routes, according to Romero. He says it’s a critical time: “We will see what is more decisive—the pressure of the armed forces or the reorganization that is happening among these groups.”
The fate of Villa Carminia is pretty much decided. Its former residents have lost their community and are now spread across Córdoba and beyond. Nineteen displaced families continue to take shelter in Montelíbano’s former abattoir, the Plaza de Sacrificio. Here, they contemplate their future from concrete pens, where cattle once awaited their slaughter.
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