No, it's not like the days of Che Guevara, where you sat around a campfire in the jungle playing the guitar," says Carlos Castano, laughing. He is probably the most feared--and elusive--man in Colombia. "Even in the jungle, I have the Internet and mobile phones. Why, the other night I watched a Kevin Costner movie, Message in a Bottle, on satellite TV." Since 1996 Castano has seized control of hundreds of small private armies recruited by Colombia's druglords, industrialists and owners of the big cattle ranches and emerald mines. These vigilantes were little better than death squads. Castano consolidated these armies into his United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), which today is pursuing its self-appointed mission: to exterminate the country's leftist rebels who have pinned the government down in a 36-year war. Castano has learned to hit the rebels where it hurts: he goes after their drug profits.
Castano and his paramilitaries are basically a pro-government outfit, but they operate outside normal channels. And at times they are staunchly antigovernment--particularly when Colombia's leaders try to pursue peace instead of war. Castano also has ties to the region's drug dealers. But though he profits from their work, he is quick to say he hopes for a Colombia free of a narco economy.
Castano, 35, has seen a lot of Colombian jungle. It has been five years since he last set foot in a town, seven years since he took his wife and two kids to visit his favorite country, the U.S., where they toured Disney World, with the full knowledge of U.S. officials. In 1993 Castano and his late brother Fidel reportedly did antidrug authorities the great favor of helping police hunt down Pablo Escobar, leader of the powerful Medellin cartel.
Since then, Castano, who wears camouflage fatigues and moves with the predatory restlessness of a jungle cat, has been stalking the two chief rebel groups: the 16,000-strong Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the smaller but no less virulent National Liberation Army (ELN), which has 5,000 fighters. His AUC members, who look as though they were outfitted from the back pages of Soldier of Fortune magazine, number 8,000. They operate in 25% of Colombian territory, mainly in the north, along the Venezuelan border and in the central Magdalena River valley. But in the past month, AUC forces pushed deep into the southern Putumayo zone, challenging the FARC's dominance over 150,000 acres of coca plantations--which produce more than half the U.S.'s annual intake of cocaine from Colombia.
The AUC is proving more lethal against the guerrillas than the Colombian army for one simple reason: Castano's men don't fret too much over human rights. "We copy the methods of our enemy," says Castano grimly. A government ombudsman says the AUC has massacred more than 794 people this year, mostly small farmers. Castano insists that nearly all were guerrilla spies.
Obsessed with secrecy, Castano has given only a handful of press interviews and refused until recently to have his face photographed. Catching up to him involved two plane flights, a muddy drive through banana plantations and finally a speedboat ride through a thunderstorm across the Gulf of Uruba to the Darien Gap, the mountainous rain forest separating Colombia from Panama. Castano was waiting on the beach, surrounded by 30 hulking paramilitaries hidden among giant ceiba trees.