ABSTRACT
Also useful were Luis Alberto Restrepo’s article in Berquist el al. Violence in Colombia, FICA’s El libro negro de la represión, 1958-1980, Grabe’s Razones de vida, Lara’s Siembra vientos y recogeras tempestades, and Leal’s El oficio de la guerra. The training of Latin American military officers in the United States came from Black et al. Garrison Guatemala and Leal’s Estado y política en Colombia. Numbers for Communist support throughout the hemisphere came from Smith’s Talons of the Eagle. The figures on government spending on the Colombian military came from Dávila’s “Ejército regular.” There are several accounts of the first paramilitary meetings. I drew mostly from Smith’s Tras los pasos. See also Kirk’s More Terrible than Death. The violence in the Middle Magdalena Valley region was well documented at the time. I drew from Amnesty International reports as well U.S. embassy cables and Proyecto Nunca Más reports. For the number of deaths the military attributed to the paramilitaries, I drew from Colonel Orlando Zafra Galvis, “Conceptos sobre la inteligencia en la guerra subversiva,” in Revista de las Fuerzas Armadas, No. 122, January-March 1987.
