Nine alleged members of the Popular Revolutionary Anti-Terrorist Army of Colombia (ERPAC) were arrested during an operation conducted by Colombian police on Saturday, December 14. According to Colombia’s Ministry of Defense, those arrested are accused of “forcibly displacing property owners” in the municipalities of Puerto López and Puerto Gaitán, located in Colombia’s central department of Meta. Colombian news outlet El Espectador claimed that two of the detainees were public officials. The ERPAC has reportedly seized over 26.7 sqkm² (~6,598 acres) of land to facilitate the smuggling of narcotics across Meta.
[CLASH]
The arrests were the result of the execution of ten search warrants by local police units, themselves the product of an eight-month-long joint investigation into the ERPAC by Colombian national and local police. During this time, investigators gathered evidence and complaints from locals regarding the group before working with the Attorney General’s Office to secure the arrest warrants. [1] [2]
Source: Colombian Ministry of Defense
The ERPAC is a successor group to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a right-wing paramilitary organization which officially disbanded in 2006 following negotiations with President Álvaro Uribe’s government. [3] Despite its origins in right-wing paramilitarism, the group has long established that its true interests lay in profit rather than fighting armed leftist groups such as the National Liberation Army (ELN) and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
In the early 2000s, the Centauros Bloc—the AUC faction that would later form the ERPAC—frequently clashed with other right-wing paramilitaries for control of land vital for the transmission of narcotics. Although the Centauros were successful in seizing land from their competitors, their leader, Jose Miguel Arroyave, was soon assassinated by rival factions within the bloc. Following his murder, his assassins, led by Pedro “Cuchillo” Oliverio Guerrero and Manuel “Pirata” de Jesus Piraban, formed two new blocs under the new ERPAC banner that would eventually ally with the FARC in order to profit further from the smuggling of narcotics, despite earlier agreeing to disarm and disband. The pair were at one point, two of Colombia’s most wanted drug traffickers, in addition to maintaining other criminal operations, including robbing trucks, extortion, and cattle rustling.
Since its inception, the ERPAC has suffered several leadership losses. In December 2010, Cuchillo died while attempting to flee a police raid on his home, while his second-in-command was arrested in the same operation. [4] These losses, alongside internal conflict, have decimated the ERPAC’s capabilities, rendering them a minor power in Colombia in comparison to other armed groups, such as the ELN, the Estado Mayor Central (FARC-EMC)—a splinter faction of the now largely disarmed FARC—and the Gaitanist Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AGC), also known as the Clan del Golfo.
Sources
Ministerio de Defensa Nacional (@mindefensa), “Contundente golpe a la criminalidad en Meta: @PoliciaColombiacapturó a nueve presuntos integrantes del grupo delincuencial organizado denominado ‘Renacer ERPAC’, señalados de desplazar forzadamente a propietarios de fincas en jurisdicción de los municipios de Puerto López y Puerto Gaitán.Este importante resultado de @PoliciaMetase registró tras la ejecución de diez diligencias judiciales de allanamiento en inmuebles ubicados en cada municipalidad.Serían más de 2.670 hectáreas que habrían sido adjudicadas bajo posesión a este grupo delincuencial desde los cuales se estaría facilitando las rutas para el tráfico de narcóticos en esta región del departamento.”, X, December 14, 2024, post
“Policía capturó a nueve miembros de Erpac-Renacer, grupo neoparamilitar en el Meta”, El Espectador, December 14, 2024, https://www.elespectador.com/judicial/policia-capturo-a-nueve-miembros-de-erpac-renacer-grupo-neoparamilitar-en-el-meta/
“Former paramilitary commander testifies to peace court about state role in massacres and abuses”, Justice for Colombia, May 18, 2023, https://justiceforcolombia.org/news/former-paramilitary-commander-testifies-to-peace-court-about-state-role-in-massacres-and-abuses/
“ERPAC”, InSight Crime, March 10, 2017, https://insightcrime.org/colombia-organized-crime-news/erpac/