“She put the revolver on the table”: this is how Sister Teresa, the right hand of the Castaños, intimidated

Ayineth Pérez Galán, president of the Association of Land Claimants of Land Claimants Tierra y Paz, told on the microphones of W Radio her story as a victim of forced displacement in the Urabá region. It should be noted that it occurred within the framework of the relationship between the Córdoba Livestock Fund and the paramilitaries led by the Castaños . These regrettable events became relevant to recent testimonies by the former governor of Córdoba and former manager of that fund, Benito Osorio, who linked several of the country's officials to paramilitary groups and this action.

Pérez explained that the beginning of this scourge occurred in the 1990s, since it was the moment when armed men arrived in their region, and threatened his family after a day of torture: “My family was displaced in 1995, it was an armed group that threatened my father and then threatened him and tortured him as well as my brother, after a day they forced him to leave and told him that if he returned they would not respond.” .

Las Tulapas predominated in the name of Sister Teresa Gómez Álvarez, one of the women closest to Casa Castaño and who was instrumental in the paramilitary expansion in Chocó, Cordoba and Antioquia. Sister Teresa became the woman who came to the farms to negotiate with the peasants, despite asking for forgiveness for her capture, at the time she managed a hostile and threatening attitude that intimidated the owners of the land she and the paramilitaries intended.

Regarding the aforementioned woman, Ayineth Pérez explained her criminal actions and the way she approached the victims: “Sister Teresa and others like Guido Vargas who worked with her were the people who were in charge of going to the farms to negotiate with the peasants, the displacement of the family occurred when they arrived. Sister Teresa was one of those who, when she was going to do business with the peasant, would arrive at the farmer's house and put a revolver on the table as a threat, who was going to oppose this situation”.

In his statement to the JEP, Benito Osorio spoke about an “arsonist” instinct, saying that he enjoyed watching the peasants' houses burn amid the flames. This was one of the dynamics used by armed groups to prevent victims from returning in order to recover their belongings.

Meanwhile, Pérez Galán confirmed what Osorio said at the time, noting that many of the houses and farms were incinerated: “The burning of houses was one of the methods they used to ensure that peasants, when they left their homes, did not return to them, so immediately the first thing they did was to set fire to all the houses, too, threatened the people they met. Many people who called them there come the “mocha cabezas”, in order to make the peasants afraid and leave the land alone”.

Although these lots were exposed in the middle of nowhere, on many occasions the perpetrators communicated with the victims in order to negotiate their deeds. Despite the refusal, they were obliged to sign, as happened with the mother of the president of the Association, who detailed her case, stating: “For the deed process, they sent a man to negotiate with my mother, when she went to negotiate she told my mother: “I come to negotiate with you, I come to sell my land”. and he told him that he was not going to ask him if he was going to sell, but rather, directly to negotiate the land.”

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