The AUC: An appendage of Colombian fascism The historic interconnections between land, the

supported the MAS by way of force or profits derived from transactions connected to the narcotic industry and protection rents (Livingstone, 2003: 221). By the 1990s, the MAS and the ACCU were individually providing intelligence information to state forces while conducting operations against suspected guerrilla supporters. Through their mutual relations with the Colombian military, the ACCU and MAS forces soon began coordinating “major counterinsurgency against the guerrillas” (Richani, 2000: 38–9). This relationship continued into the mid-1990s until the principal architect of the ACCU, Fidel Castaño, was murdered in 1994 and his younger brother assumed leadership of the paramilitary organization. This caused things to change concerning the two paramilitary forces. Unlike his brother Fidel, noted for relishing the spoils of power, Carlos moved away from a pure desire to establish himself as a wealthy capitalist or right-wing populist and specifically concentrated his activities toward eliminating the FARC-EP (Rojas, 2005: 227; Dudley, 2004: 144–51). For the next few years, he worked tirelessly to unify the two regionally based paramilitary forces into one distinct national organization (Livingstone, 2003: 220; see also Leech, 2002a: 23; Richani, 2000: 39). With the ACCU and MAS already having a working history, coupled with their co-aligned ideology and economic interests, a successful consolidation of the two took place in the late 1990s. In April 1997, Carlos Castaño succeeded in expanding operations from a regionalized level to a national scale, and announced the AUC to be a national paramilitary association (Pearce, 2007: 263n.11; Leech, 2002a: 23).26

THE AUC: AN APPENDAGE OF COLOMBIAN FASCISM

The AUC is the most recognized paramilitary organization in Colombian history.27 Known for its ruthlessness, the organization initiated itself by carrying out the greatest array of violent massacres in Colombia’s recent memory (Richani, 2002a: 93–132). Between 1997 and 2000, it allegedly conducted over 1,145 massacres (International Crisis Group, 2003a: 33). As if making a concession, Carlos Castaño agreed that after 1999, the AUC would only involve itself in massacres of no more than three persons at any one time (Holmes, 2003: 91). Yet the AUC cannot be thought of as an independent reactionary armed force simply supporting Colombia’s far right. Rather, the AUC is a segment of a complicated and important history, a past which holds relevance in the context of today’s civil war throughout the countryside and, in many respects, explains why the violence continues to rage. Organizationally, the AUC can be thought of as an umbrella organization linking tens of thousands of armed combatants from various paramilitary groups under one principal leadership comprised of “a joint operational staff, and regional and local field units” (Kruijt and Koonings, 2004: 29; see also Livingstone, 2003: 219–20). The founding Carlos Castaño acted as leader of the AUC from 1997 to 2001/02, at which time his second in command and militant hardliner Salvatore Mancuso became the paramilitary’s commander

(Simons, 2004: 178; Crandall, 2005b: 178; Livingstone, 2003: 219).28 Frictions have long existed within the AUC. The paramilitary organization cannot be seen as a consolidated army, similar to a conventional nation state; rather it is an amalgam of autonomous groups with a shared anti-guerrilla pro-capitalist ideological mission. In comparison with the insurgency, the AUC “are far more loosely organized and much less disciplined than the FARC. Unlike the guerrillas, they have their own turf wars, often fighting between themselves for control of drug networks” (O’Shaughnessy and Branford, 2005: 41). Some have considered the AUC to be the “largest and most notorious force in the history of Latin American paramilitaries” (Kruijt and Koonings, 2004: 27). It is, however, important to not simplify the AUC as a simple pseudomercenary force. Such a characterization fails to display the reality of why and how this paramilitary organization became the most perverse fascistic presence to sweep across the continent of contemporary South America. While the AUC did “espouse a conservative ideology,” a closer examination of its coercive methodologies reveals far more than mere support for the continuity of the existing order (Kruijt and Koonings, 2004: 29). Researcher Robin Kirk (2003: 144) and anthropologist Michael Taussig (2004a: 11) have both compared Castaño’s ideology and the AUC’s practices with the Third Reich. “With the MAS, things rarely went further than a bullet in the head and the utilitarian slit in the belly, to ensure that the body sinks in water,” yet such actions are conservative in relation to the AUC (Kirk, 2003: 144). Castaño’s paramilitary:

mutilated bodies with chain saws. They chained people to burning vehicles. They decapitated and rolled heads like soccer balls. They killed dozens at one time, including women and children. They buried people alive or hung them on meat hooks, carving them. They threw their dozens of victims like damp and flyblown trash to the side of the road. Rarely were their victims uniformed guerrillas .… Castaño’s victims were civilians accused of supporting the guerrillas by supplying them with food, medical supplies, and transportation. The Germans have a word for what Castaño did – Schrecklichkeit, meaning frightfulness. It was applied in their invasion of Belgium and France, to circumvent the civilian resistance that did not threaten but could delay troops. German soldiers burned homes, shot whole families, and pillaged and raped. It was not homicidal mania, but deliberate, part of the plan.

(Kirk, 2003: 144)

The disturbing depictions of such offenses shed a light on how the AUC is in ideology and practice an organization with fascist intentions far beyond conservatism. Under the pretence that fascism is a system through which political and economic interests become fully unhindered, it is recognized that the AUC are an acute representation in present-day Latin America. Colombia’s dominant class have long utilized “social fascism and political fascism (networks of paid informants, suppression of rights) … to maintain a pattern of