A Colombian paramilitary leader, supposedly demobilised, confessed in court that the armed ultra-right group killed, in February 2000, more than 60 farmers in the town of El Salado. The farmers had their throats slit and were hung from trees while the military played music.

“While they were killing, the others leisurely played drums, guitars, and gaitas. This was during a massacre that lasted 3-4 hours,” declared the paramilitary leader, Enrique Banquez, according to parts of his confession.
In the same confession, Banquez admitted his to his own participation in the massacre of 27 people in the town of Chengue, also in the Caribbean costal region. He made the confession in order to receive a reduction of his sentence.

El Salado today is deserted. Its 1300 residents have fled or were killed. According to human rights reports, the paramilitary death squad turned the village basketball court into a killing field and executed anyone they suspected of supporting the left wing guerrillas (FARC). For 3 days people were tortured and women raped.

Witness reports also say that the paramilitaries played football with heads they had decapitated whilst drinking liquor they ransacked from local shops.

“To them, it was like a big party,” said one of a dozen survivors who described the scene in interviews. “They drank and danced and cheered as they butchered us like hogs.”

Government police and soldiers did not help, instead they blocked the road to the village, preventing neighbouring villages or human rights observers from entering the town.

The US government committed US$1.3 billion to aid the Colombian military in their so called ‘war on drugs’.

The mainstream media has come out in a big way against the high number of FARC kidnappings. But it has failed to be at all critical of the current regime in Colombia which locks up and ‘disappears’ trade union and political leaders.

The basketball court where a portion of the masacre occured.