Colombia-Apartado-Massacre
1-24-1994
^Massacre in Colombia Brings Blood, Fear, and Questions AP Photos NY110,NY15
^By ANDREW SELSKY
^Associated Press Writer
APARTADO, Colombia (AP) _ Felix Rodriguez stood trembling outside the morgue.
"Why did they kill my son?" he asked a reporter.
The 17-year-old youth was one of least 33 people gunned down as they danced and drank in the street early Sunday.
It was the worst massacre in five years in a country where 200 people died the past 12 months in political violence in this region of northern Colombia.
Hours later the victims lay piled atop each other in the small morgue of this steamy, banana-growing town. Family members, moaning and crying, waited outside.
The shack-lined, rutted dirt road where people were partying hours before was a scene of blood stains buzzed by flies, overturned chairs, empty bottles of booze and terrified residents.
No one claimed responsibility for the massacre. Government officials blamed leftist rebels. But several other massacres in Colombia initially blamed on rebels turned out to have been committed by army troops or right-wing death squads.
President Cesar Gaviria held an emergency security council meeting, then clamped a dusk-to-dawn curfew, prohibited the sale of alcohol and the carrying of weapons in Apartado, 300 miles northwest of Bogota.
Gaviria promised to send more soldiers and issued a $625,000 reward for information leading to the arrests of guerrilla leaders.
The prosecutor general's office said it was investigating.
Survivors denied government reports the street party had followed a rally at the same site for the Hope, Peace and Freedom party - known by its Spanish initials EPL - which was formed by former guerrillas.
Rebels have been attacking EPL members, considering them traitors because they abandoned the armed struggle and because they created a party that rivals the Communist and Patriotic Union parties, which the rebels back.
The survivors said the rally was held at a school a half-mile away and that their festivities had nothing to do with politics - that it was a fund-raiser to send a local woman's five children to school.
However, the neighborhood - a squatter shantytown known as "The Invasion" - is firmly in the EPL camp, with EPL campaign posters plastered on most homes. Municipal and congressional elections are scheduled for March 13.
A local businessman, who like most residents spoke on condition of anonymity, said the town is divided.
"Followers of the EPL don't go into neighborhoods where followers of other political parties live, and vice versa. To do so would be dangerous," he said.
About 500 people were dancing in the street and drinking when about 15 gunmen surrounded them and opened fire with automatic weapons, witnesses said.
None of the survivors interviewed saw the killers in the stampede caused by the gunfire, or were too scared to say so.
Octavio Esquivel, 28, whose house fronts the site of the massacre, said he remained inside throughout the shooting. When he emerged, a dead man was laying in front of his home and other bodies were strewn on the street.
"I couldn't even count them, I was so scared," he said.
Officials at the morgue put the death toll at 33, but authorities in Bogota said 35 were killed.
Gen. Ramon Gil, acting defense minister, told reporters the killers were members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
Sunday's massacre was the worst since November 1988, when 43 people were slain by a right-wing death squad in the western Colombian town of Segovia.
^Massacre in Colombia Brings Blood, Fear, and Questions AP Photos NY110,NY15
^By ANDREW SELSKY
^Associated Press Writer
APARTADO, Colombia (AP) _ Felix Rodriguez stood trembling outside the morgue.
"Why did they kill my son?" he asked a reporter.
The 17-year-old youth was one of least 33 people gunned down as they danced and drank in the street early Sunday.
It was the worst massacre in five years in a country where 200 people died the past 12 months in political violence in this region of northern Colombia.
Hours later the victims lay piled atop each other in the small morgue of this steamy, banana-growing town. Family members, moaning and crying, waited outside.
The shack-lined, rutted dirt road where people were partying hours before was a scene of blood stains buzzed by flies, overturned chairs, empty bottles of booze and terrified residents.
No one claimed responsibility for the massacre. Government officials blamed leftist rebels. But several other massacres in Colombia initially blamed on rebels turned out to have been committed by army troops or right-wing death squads.
President Cesar Gaviria held an emergency security council meeting, then clamped a dusk-to-dawn curfew, prohibited the sale of alcohol and the carrying of weapons in Apartado, 300 miles northwest of Bogota.
Gaviria promised to send more soldiers and issued a $625,000 reward for information leading to the arrests of guerrilla leaders.
The prosecutor general's office said it was investigating.
Survivors denied government reports the street party had followed a rally at the same site for the Hope, Peace and Freedom party - known by its Spanish initials EPL - which was formed by former guerrillas.
Rebels have been attacking EPL members, considering them traitors because they abandoned the armed struggle and because they created a party that rivals the Communist and Patriotic Union parties, which the rebels back.
The survivors said the rally was held at a school a half-mile away and that their festivities had nothing to do with politics - that it was a fund-raiser to send a local woman's five children to school.
However, the neighborhood - a squatter shantytown known as "The Invasion" - is firmly in the EPL camp, with EPL campaign posters plastered on most homes. Municipal and congressional elections are scheduled for March 13.
A local businessman, who like most residents spoke on condition of anonymity, said the town is divided.
"Followers of the EPL don't go into neighborhoods where followers of other political parties live, and vice versa. To do so would be dangerous," he said.
About 500 people were dancing in the street and drinking when about 15 gunmen surrounded them and opened fire with automatic weapons, witnesses said.
None of the survivors interviewed saw the killers in the stampede caused by the gunfire, or were too scared to say so.
Octavio Esquivel, 28, whose house fronts the site of the massacre, said he remained inside throughout the shooting. When he emerged, a dead man was laying in front of his home and other bodies were strewn on the street.
"I couldn't even count them, I was so scared," he said.
Officials at the morgue put the death toll at 33, but authorities in Bogota said 35 were killed.
Gen. Ramon Gil, acting defense minister, told reporters the killers were members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
Sunday's massacre was the worst since November 1988, when 43 people were slain by a right-wing death squad in the western Colombian town of Segovia.
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