Sunday, 17 March, 2002,

In the Colombian city of Cali, Archbishop Isaias Duarte Cancino has been shot dead by suspected members of the AUC right wing paramilitary death squads, a branch of Colombia's narco-military establishment.

Two men came and opened fire and hit him three or four times, maybe even six times according to official reports.

The 63-year-old priest, who was an open critic against the role of drug money in Colombia's political system and drug barons who own Colombia's best land protected by the AUC, was gunned down on Saturday evening, outside the church where he had just conducted a marriage ceremony.

New York Times Colombian writer, Juan "sellout" Forero, also known as the "mascot of death" by independent and alternative media, has once again taken the opportunity to blame the FARC, an insurgency whose legitimacy has been well documented by knowledgeable observers.

The BBC and other corporate media which serves US political opinion has also jumped on the propaganda bandwagon of the world's most powerful and deceptive bourgeois newspaper.

Monsignor Duarte was rushed to hospital, after he was shot a number of times as he left the Buen Pastor Church and got into his car.

Doctors pronounced him dead on arrival.

"Two guys came and opened fire and hit him three or four times, maybe even six times", said his driver, Edilberto Ceballos.

The BBC Colombia correspondent says that the archbishop had never been one to dodge controversy, and the list of suspects in his killing is long.

He had spoken out against drugs barons, accusing several candidates in the country's meaningless congressional bourgeois elections of being financed and backed by traffickers.

The archbishop's private secretary has said that Monsignor Duarte had often asked for police protection, most recently on the day he was shot, but his requests were denied. The police force like the paramilitaries often share intelligence with the military to hunt down and kill "suspected leftists and guerilla sympathizers".

US imperialism adds another chapter to its dark history in its "backyard". A history for the Latin American masses best described by Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, as "a history of trauma".

The corporate media continues to trumpet the fraudulent "narcoterrorist" hypothesis, a well known fact by professional Latin Americanists and others who pay attention.

"I don't care. In the end they
will beat you. Sooner or later
they will see you for what you
are, and then they will tear
you to pieces..."

'Nineteen Eighty Four'
G. Orwell

I don’t know who is telling the truth. Romero was murdered by the right-wing death squads in El Salvador but Archbishop Isaias Duarte Cancino seems to have more of a history critiquing the left than the right. Also, from these articles it looks like he made more enemies with the ELN than the FARC (he excommunicated the entire organization in 1999 see: http://www.dailycatholic.org/issue/archives/1999Aug/144aug3,vol.10,no.144txt/aug3dc2.htm and http://www.zenit.org/english/archive/9908/ZE990801.html)

Can you name any professional Latin Americanists who disagree with the FARC hypothesis and/or provide urls to sources?

Most of the mainstream pieces I've read are fairly balanced. They say it could have been someone on the left or the right. From my reading of the press, The Guardian (UK) is leaning more towards the FARC hypothesis than the BBC.

www.columbiatimes.com
World News
DAVID ADAMS, LATIN AMERICA CORRESPONDENT

ONLY days after denouncing the influence of drug money on Colombia’s national elections, the Archbishop of Cali was shot dead on the steps of a church as he was leaving a mass wedding. Mgr Isaías Duarte Cancino, 69, known to parishioners as “the peace bishop” for his courageous stand against political violence and drug-money corruption, was one of the country’s most respected champions of peace and social justice.

The Pope condemned the killing and said that Mgr Duarte Cancino had paid a high price for his opposition to violence. The archbishop’s death stunned Colombian church leaders, politicians and laypeople, who paid homage to his long career spent in some of the country’s poorest and most violent communities. “This is disgusting, the dirtiest ignominy. This country has no future,” John Maro Rodríguez, the Mayor of Cali, said. Mgr Alberto Giraldo, a spokesman for the Colombian Roman Catholic Church, said: “One is left speechless, knowing what his commitment to the country was and the fondness and appreciation we had for him.”

Shortly after 8.30pm on Saturday, Mgr Duarte Cancino was leaving the Church of the Good Shepherd in the Aguablanca suburb of Cali, Colombia’s second-largest city, where he had blessed the marriages of 104 couples. Witnesses said that he was about to get into his car when he was approached by two men who opened fire before escaping on a motorbike. The archbishop was hit by at least five bullets in the head, neck and chest. A priest was wounded in the arm.

An amateur cameraman who was filming the church ceremony told the Cali newspaper El País: “The gunfire was tremendous. Everyone threw themselves on the ground. We did not know what was going on.” The Rev Gersain Paz, the archbishop’s press secretary, blamed the archbishop’s death in part on a lack of police security, despite an appeal for added protection made several hours before the ceremony. “The Church of the Good Shepherd saw several suspicious people at four o’clock in the afternoon. They called the police and asked for extra security,” he said, adding that none arrived. No one claimed has responsibility for the killing.

Colombian analysts said that it could have been the work of a number of different groups, including left-wing guerrillas or right-wing paramilitaries involved in the country’s conflict over drugs. Cali was notorious in the 1990s as the headquarters of one of the country’s most powerful drug cartels. After the arrest of one of its leaders, the cocaine trade fell into the hands of a number of gangs, which have fought a series of bloody turf wars.

The region around Cali has also been a stronghold of the left-wing National Liberation Army (ELN), which is engaged in peace talks with the Government. But the area has also come under the influence of the largest left-wing rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which recently began an offensive after the Government called off peace talks with it last month. Mgr Duarte Cancino excommunicated the ELN leadership after guerrillas kidnapped more than 100 members of a Cali church congregation in the middle of a service and held them for months in a mountain hideout. Last month he denounced the influence of money from drug-trafficking in national elections. His accusations prompted a government investigation.

Ordained a priest in 1963, Mgr Duarte Cancino gained national prominence in the 1980s when, as Bishop of Uraba, in the north, he spoke out against a series of massacres by guerrillas and paramilitaries. He became Archbishop of Cali in 1995. His murder will draw further attention to recent statements by the US that it will increase military aid to Colombia. The Bush Administration plans to ask Congress to loosen restrictions on military aid, which until now has been limited to counter-narcotics operations. The change would allow US military trainers, weapons and equipment to be used directly against left-wing guerrillas. Despite spending more that £900 million on a joint effort with Bogotá to intensify the eradication of coca crops, the plant used to process cocaine, the US admits that its policy has failed. Coca production there rose last year by 25 per cent.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,669158,00.html
Colombia church leader killed at wedding

Jared Kotler in Cali
Monday March 18, 2002
The Guardian

A Roman Catholic archbishop noted for his criticisms of leftwing rebels and drug traffickers was shot dead outside a church in Colombia, police said yesterday.

Archbishop Isaias Duarte Cancino, 63, had just presided over a group wedding in Cali late on Saturday when two gunmen opened fire at close range and escaped on a motorcycle.

Duarte had frequently criticised rebels for their attacks and kidnappings. Colombia's 38-year-old civil war has intensified since peace talks with the main rebel army, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc, collapsed last month.

A smaller rebel group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), had also been condemned by Duarte for conducting mass kidnappings in Cali in recent years. Although talks with Farc collapsed, the ELN is participating in peace talks with Colombian government representatives in Havana.
Duarte had recently stated publicly that money from drug traffickers was being used in the campaigns of some candidates in the March 10 congressional elections though he did not name names.

Drug traffickers have bloodied Colombia in the past. In the 1980s and 1990s, the now defunct Medellin cartel - then the world's biggest cocaine-trafficking syndicate -assassinated hundreds of people.

The Pope yesterday called Duarte a brave and generous pastor "who paid the highest price for his energetic defence of human life".

The Archbishop of Bogota, Pedro Rubiano, said he was devastated by Duarte's murder. "It is inconceivable that a good man, a man who dedicated his life to loving God and serving his brothers, has become a victim of the terrible violence which is ripping apart this country," he said.
Alvaro Uribe, who is leading the polls ahead of the presidential election on May 26, said he was saddened. "The truth is that he is irreplaceable," Mr Uribe told reporters in Cali, where he was campaigning.

The Pope named Duarte as archbishop in Cali - 185 miles south-west of the capital, Bogota - in 1995.
Carlos Castano, the leader of a rightwing paramilitary group which is opposed to Farc, said in a recent biography that he considered the archbishop "a friend". Duarte was reportedly nervous about that description, since being identified too closely with one of the warring sides can be dangerous.