Long before Pablo Escobar, Colombia was fractured by deep-seated inequality and the legacy of La Violencia. The state’s inability to control rural lawlessness during the 1950s left a power vacuum that the Colombian Communist Party (PCC) effectively filled by organizing peasant self-defense groups. Alarmed by the prospect of a communist foothold in the Americas, the Eisenhower administration dispatched a CIA-led survey team in 1959 to stabilize the region. Their central recommendation was the creation of state-backed civilian detachments, trained by the military to conduct counterintelligence and anti-guerrilla operations.
The Cold War Origins of Colombia’s Paramilitary Violence
The brutal rise of Colombian paramilitary groups is widely misattributed to the cocaine cartels of the 1980s. In reality, these death squads were the product of a Cold War-era strategy, meticulously architected by U.S. advisors in the late 1950s to suppress communist influence by arming irregular civilian militias.
This doctrine was solidified in 1962 by General William P. Yarborough, whose recommendations mirrored the flawed strategies Washington was simultaneously deploying in Vietnam. These protocols were codified into law under Decree 3398 in 1965 and later made permanent by Law 48 in 1968. By legitimizing these irregular units, the Colombian state effectively outsourced its security, creating a shadow apparatus that evolved into the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). These groups ultimately became the primary engines of violence in the country, responsible for 45% of all conflict-related homicides between 1985 and 2018.
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