Hernán Giraldo Serna, the paramilitary who, from the rape of girls, spawned an army that still terrorizes the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta

On January 25, at 6:25 p.m. in the afternoon, Hernán Giraldo Serna, one of the most bloody and feared paramilitaries in the country, arrived deported to Colombia from the United States, where he remained behind bars for twelve years on drug trafficking charges. The announcement was made by Migration Colombia.

Now, the former paramilitary must serve a sentence for the crimes he committed against the civilian population, when he was part of the AUC.

Giraldo, 72, was known as 'El Patrón', 'El Tigre' or 'El señor de la Sierra', and all the inhabitants of the Sierra Nevada were afraid of him for being the commander of the AUC's 'Resistencia Tayrona' Bloc and his well-known torture techniques.

With his arrival in the country, fear aroused among the victims and inhabitants of the Sierra Nevada, as violence could escalate in this region of Colombia.

This war criminal is famous for territorial control and for having used sexual abuse of underage girls as a method of fear within armed conflict.

Norma Vera Salazar, a human rights defender who has thoroughly investigated the dynamics of paramilitarism, especially the structure of Serna, spoke with Infobae Colombia about how he, through rape and fathered children, was able to continue to handle the threads of the territory, despite paying a sentence in the States United.

The return of Hernán Giraldo signifies widespread fear, since many of his children and members of his family structure were part of the twelve structures that after demobilization continued to work as 'neoparamilitarians'.

This means that, if previously targeted assassinations of social leaders were committed, at this time before the arrival of Giraldo there is quite a bit of silence and fear that violence will become widespread.

Hernán Giraldo Serna confessed to 35 cases of sexual violence in children under 14 years of age, of those 35 cases are part of the compiled sentence against Resistencia Tayrona, but the investigation found 201 victims, which means that many cannot have access to the truth, restorative justice, because the Justice and Peace Prosecutor's Office failed the duty of due diligence because its investigation process did not go beyond the crimes that Giraldo Serna confessed at his hearing.

We are left alone with the truth of the paramilitaries. It is true that it was not completely verified and has not allowed victims of crimes of sexual violence to have no access to any kind of justice.

In interviews with 200 women and 500 people, we found that they all had common characteristics: they were white, thick-built, voluptuous and with wide hips. Through research in which we were able to trace the conditions of gender-based violence that motivated Serna's instinct and pedophile. In dialogues with his lieutenants and people from the region, we discovered that he was proud that he liked caderones, because according to the macho culture the “more caderones the more skills to reproduce”.

In addition, it is painful to recognize, that the nickname 'El Taladro' was given to him by Giraldo himself because he granted himself, due to territorial control, the right of pernada, he controlled not only the territory, but the virginity of the women of the region.

Giraldo, more than a patient of this type, is a sociopath, because not only did he choose girls with specific phenotypic characteristics as a target for their sexual illness as a pedophile, there was also a characteristic associated with the use of women's bodies to maintain control of the territory.

It was not only to satisfy their pedophilia, but to have healthy children who could preserve their lineage, politics, operation and structure of war. Giraldo was extradited, but he never left the territory, his family has paramilitary structures alive.

Read: Hernán Giraldo Serna, the greatest child molester of paramilitarism, arrived in the country

I think this is a tactic that he, 20 years later, defined, because he believed himself to be the owner and lord of the territory. He even had the ability to tell who was moving after the Santa Marta toll.

When Giraldo was extradited, he was over 60 years old, and according to what we investigated, he already had women and their children distributed in various parts of the territory and we believe that he knew that his lineage could build the strength of metaphor, build the concept of the 'Patron' and “El Drillo” and today you see that in territory people yearn for “arrival” of the Pattern because the Master does put order.”

I have been insisting that in the territory of Santa Marta the paramilitarism of the Sierra Nevada is not going to be armed, because it never left.

For now, Giraldo was transferred to the La Paz penitentiary in Itagüí, Antioquia and, according to the Ministry of Justice, the National Penitentiary and Prison Institute (INPEC), which must guarantee the security measures of this man who from a distance terrorizes an entire region of Colombia.

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