An indigenous leader from the southwest of Colombia has received death threats from paramilitaries, reported local media Sunday.

The leader from the Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca (ACIN), Feliciano Valencia, was alerted by indigenous authorities Saturday that a group of paramilitaries claiming to be the officially-demobilized AUC (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia) made threats against his life.

• The emergence of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) represented the largest and most violent paramilitary group in the country, funding its murderous activities by means of the immensely enlarging ongoing drug trade.
• The Colombian government enacted Decree 128 and the Justice and Peace Law to launch and subsequently monitor the demobilization process, which failed under the Uribe administration, and led to the emergence of neo-paramilitary drug gangs known as the Bacrims.

Colombia: Stop Abuses by Paramilitaries’ Successor Groups

HRW Press Release, Frebruary 3 2010. Bogota    

To understand paramilitarism and how it functions in Colombia, it is useful to look at the root meanings of the term. Crisostomo Eseverri Hualde, the author of an erudite Dictionary of Etymology of Spanish Helenisms, published in Spain in 1944, notes the significance of the Greek preposition “para,” used as a prefix in numerous Spanish language words. According to him, there are three meanings of this preposition: 1) approximation; 2) transposition; and 3) adeviation or irregularity.

On march 12,1999, THE ÍNTER-AMERICAN COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS of the Organization of the American States published its Third Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Colombia. In the fifth chapter, it states: