That army later became the private army of the ruling elites and a proxy army for a foreign power. Fighting a guerrilla war in the trop ics for 50 years has made it the most seasoned army in this hemi sphere, and the most brutal. Lately, as documented by the BBC, this army has been renting itself out to protect multinational corporations' properties be they oil fields in Casanare or gold mines in Segovia. Colombia's list of gradu ates from the School of the Americas is the longest of any Latin American country. Colombians started training in 1947 and have continued to the present.
Paramilitaries are a creation of the Colombian state.
Clearly they repre sent an attempt to cover up the bru talities of the army which are contin ually reported by reputable human rights organizations. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the myriad of Colombian NGOs, at tremendous risks and despite the numerous killings they suffer, keep reporting atrocities such as the one in El Aro. These paramilitary groups act together with the military, but carry out irregular actions in order to blur the borders between what is civilian and what is military. It is a perverted mechanism because it resorts to secrecy and makes a mockery of democracy and its institutions. When paramilitaries are created, a state's responsibility ceases to exist.