On April 10, 2023, at 11:30 a.m., four men arrived at Maydany Salcedo’s house. “I’m with the target and awaiting instructions,” was a phrase repeated several times by one of the men on the phone with his boss, paralyzing Salcedo with fear. The man stood at the door of her house, while the three others walked around inside, weapons in their hands. The men forced Salcedo to prepare food for them while they talked, prolonging her nightmare. The men presented themselves as members of Border Command (Comandos de Frontera), a residual organized armed group (GAOR) that emerged following the peace process in Colombia. It is made up of former guerillas and paramilitaries seeking control of drug trafficking, extortion and illegal mining in the southwestern part of Colombia, a territory which was controlled by the former Southern Bloc of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). “We hope you’ll stop what you’ve been doing–we know how many times your dog goes out to pee, we’ll finish off the smallest things in your life: your dog and two grandchildren,” they threatened her. She begged not to be killed in front of the children, but they did not intend to kill her. The men warned Salcedo that she could not return to Piamonte, a municipality located in the Bota Caucana region, which borders the departments of Caquetá and Putumayo in southwestern Colombia. These are the same territories in which the Border Command sowed terror in October 2023, imposing stops and roadblocks and besieging…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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