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Armed only with their courage, ordinary citizens stand up to brute force and terror

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That same night, the FARC encountered civil resistance in three other towns. In Coconuco, located some 20 minutes from Puracé, the guerrillas attempted to make the people forget the lesson they had offered on Dec. 23, when the inhabitants continued praying their Christmas novena prayers as the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (National Army of Liberation) attacked. To bolster their courage, the citizens lit candles and sang hymns.

This time the FARC managed to destroy the police station and the church, and they sacked the Banco Agrario before the people of Coconuco once again united to resist. Led by the pastor, they came out into the street armed with white sheets, which they waved as a sign of peace. In this way, for the second time, they prevented the guerrillas from demolishing the central part of the town.

In Berruecos, north of Pasto, guerrillas attacked the police station at 4 p.m. Amid the gunfire, townspeople came out into the street to ask that the attack be stopped. This allowed some of policemen to take cover and others to hide in the upper part of the church.

Three hours later, in Belén de los Andaquíes, three hours from Florencia, 100 guerrillas from FARC’s Front 61 attacked 14 policemen in their station. When the shooting stopped, at about 9 p.m., the townspeople came out of their houses and formed a cordon around the police station, holding white sheets and Colombian flags, as they sang the national anthem. Another crowd congregated in the park and shouted anti-war slogans. Faced with such a demonstration of citizen power and fearing that a [AC-47] “Phantom” [Colombian military surveillance] plane would arrive, the guerrillas fled.

All these are heroic examples of towns that rose up in valor to prevent armed perpetrators from using violence in their name. This phenomenon started in Caldono this past Nov. 12, when members of the Paeces Indian tribe showed exceptional courage: Carrying torches and with the music of Mercedes Sosa, Ricardo Arjona, and José Luis Perales, they prevented Front 8 and the Jacobo Arenas Column of the FARC from attacking the town by forming human cordons.

However, these demonstrations also highlight the tragic state of neglect in which hundreds of small towns find themselves. This seemed to be demonstrated with the official reactions in the wake of resistance by the residents of Bolivar one week after the resistance in Caldono. Most of Bolivar’s 28,000 residents faced off against more than 300 FARC guerrillas. Men, women, and children surrounded the subversives and let the air out of the tires of their vehicles. Eighteen policemen managed to escape, and six more were protected by the townspeople.

The commander of the District 2 police force, Col. José Edgar Herrera Betancourt, announced that he would not only reinforce police presence in the town, but would return to 12 other towns in the south of the district lacking protection. He anticipated the arrival of a mobile anti-guerrilla squadron for the Cauca district and promised 3 billion pesos for construction of new police stations in “recognition of the civil valor and community support that is building peace,” as reported in the media.

But many wonder whether police protection should be a prize rather than a constitutional obligation of the state. In the case of Caldono, this was the third attack in less than two years, during which the state failed to devise measures to protect it. In Bolivar, it was the third in less than six months.