Colombia’s most powerful drug trafficking group wants a seat at the political table
According to authorities and human rights defenders, the AGC has cemented its control through forced displacement and extortion, writes Samantha Schmidt
The morning’s drills began on the fog-coated side of a mountain, with two dozen rifle-armed men at the ready. “Attention,” a voice shouts, and up went a green-and-white flag emblazoned with three letters – the same letters, spray-painted on buildings and street signs across northern Colombia, that tell everyone who is in charge: AGC.
The acronym represents Colombia’s most powerful drug trafficking organisation, a force with control over a massive swath of the country and the most important routes for moving cocaine to the United States. Yet it is also an organisation with bylaws and a special crest, and in rural communities, it plays the role of both police and judiciary, resolving disputes between locals.
Now it wants a seat at the table with the government.
“The anthem,” said the man giving orders, who was dressed in army fatigues and a wide grin of bleached-white veneers. He introduced himself as Jerónimo, the political commander of the Gaitanist Self-Defense Forces of Colombia.
The group’s top hierarchy had rarely, if ever, spoken to journalists. Starting in the late 2000s, its predecessors were the subject of aggressive manhunts by Colombian authorities. Most had been killed, jailed or extradited to the United States. But as others rose through the ranks, the AGC continued tightening its grip on power, expanding to the majority of the country’s regions and boasting 9,000 members.
The AGC’s political leader decided it was time to talk. During several hours of conversation last week, Jerónimo explained that he wanted the public to understand the organisation from inside, to get an up-close look at its self-proclaimed political mission.
The move comes as the leftist government of president Gustavo Petro is pursuing an ambitious plan for “total peace”, an attempt to simultaneously dismantle multiple armed groups, and end the violence and killings that have long beset the country. More than 1 million people have died in Colombia’s decades-long conflict, according to government figures, and more than 8.4 million have been displaced from their homes.
The discussions between the Petro administration and the AGC – which the government calls the Clan del Golfo – have been fraught. Arrest warrants are pending against several of its leaders for alleged killings, forced displacement and recruitment of minors. Colombian officials have long described the group as a solely criminal structure, placing it in a different category from leftist insurgencies. Though a bilateral cease-fire was announced early this year, with the AGC hiring a lawyer to begin meeting with the government’s peace commissioner, Petro recently called it off. He accused the group of fomenting violence in a miner’s strike.
The AGC denied involvement and last week released a video statement saying it would hold the government responsible for the “problems that could be caused by the rushed decision” to resume military attacks. Jerónimo and his comrades argue they should be considered a political armed group like any other in Colombia.
No matter the government’s position, the AGC will not be easily dismissed and certainly not easily vanquished. Its influence and its money are everywhere.
In a village in northern Antioquia, an AGC banner hangs over the street, a paved road considered a rare luxury in this part of the country. Local leaders say it was paid for in part by the group, along with lights for the soccer field, jerseys for the soccer team and a new reservoir the community hopes will bolster its water supply. The AGC sponsors community parties for Mother’s Day and family events at the school, and it brings toys for all the children on Christmas Eve.
“If the government were to arrive and offer us help, glory to God, we would be with them,” one town leader said. “But the government has not arrived.”
***
Jerónimo’s story is, in many ways, the story of a Colombian conflict with no end.
He grew up in the poor rural outskirts of Apartadó, near the Gulf of Urabá. It was a town controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc, the now-demobilised leftist insurgency that waged a decades-long fight to overthrow the government.
By the time he turned 15, Jerónimo had come to believe that the only way he would be able to defend himself would be to join the guerrillas. He spent seven years fighting with the Farc until becoming disillusioned with its Marxist views. He defected and fled.
Two years later, desperate to return to his parents and two younger sisters, he confronted a different danger: A new paramilitary organisation had moved into his hometown and was going after anyone they suspected to be leftist guerrillas.
“If I returned as a civilian, I’d be killed,” he said. To avoid being pursued, he joined.
The United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia, which grew into a massive coalition of right-wing paramilitaries, would eventually negotiate a peace deal with the government. For someone like Jerónimo, however, new threats soon surfaced. He took up arms again: “The cycle never ended.”
He turned this time to the AGC, drawn to its self-described mission as “an army fighting for social vindication and dignity for our people”. Its founder was a paramilitary leader who dismissed the peace process and took over the coalition’s control of drug routes. (Its full name is a nod to Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, the political leader whose assassination in 1948 triggered decades of turmoil.) But instead of fighting in support of the government like the paramilitaries, Jerónimo said, the group confronted it head-on.
He contends the AGC’s purpose is inherently political. Each of its fronts includes a political commander who oversees local projects and advises local village councils, which Jerónimo claims are autonomous. The leadership aspires for it to someday become a national political party. “Why not?” he asked.
The 50-year-old Jerónimo spoke in a slow, measured manner, allowing only his alias to be used because of security concerns. A gold ring on his right hand flashed as he gestured. Talks with the government could also bring “recognition, at the international level, of who we are as an organisation,” he said. “They’ve made us out to be criminals, to be personas non gratas for the society."
Danilo Rueda, the government’s peace commissioner, said Colombia does not consider the AGC to be “political” because its goal is not to “subvert the constitutional order”. In a statement, he described the group’s influence as a type of criminal “governance” for social control and the “protection and generation of wealth”. But governance, he said, does not classify a group as a political entity.
According to allegations from Colombian authorities and human rights defenders, the AGC has cemented its control through forced displacement, extortion, killings of police officers and recruitment of minors. They say it profits from illegal mining and dominates the country’s drug distribution networks by supplying cocaine to Mexican cartels. Jerónimo claims the group only makes money by taxing the cartels that operate in its territory.
“They’re like the Amazon of the drug business in northern Colombia,” noted Elizabeth Dickinson, a senior analyst at International Crisis Group. “Do they have any incentive to actually give up anything? I think zero.”
Justice minister Néstor Osuna said the government has suggested that the AGC’s ranks collectively turn themselves into the judicial system through a proposed law that would make them an “attractive offer”, including lighter sentences.
The risk of prison time and extradition, as well as other elements, makes the government’s approach a nonstarter. AGC leaders are demanding a transitional justice system that allows them to tell authorities the truth in exchange for “guarantees”, Jerónimo explained. “If that truth is not shielded in a justice system that gives you guarantees, it will open the doors to another conflict.”
Andrés Chica, a local human rights activist in the department of Córdoba, said the group has taken advantage of the moment. He saw recruitment, extortion and threats all spike during the cease-fire period.
“They’ve had time to get oxygen, to revive, to reorganise,” Chica said. “When the government wakes up, it will be an even bigger monster than before.”
***
The AGC’s presence is not always obvious at first glance. In Colombia’s rural north, a patchwork of cattle farms and banana plantations, there are no militarised checkpoints. No armed men on the roads. But locals always know they are there.
In a small community outside Belén de Bajirá in the Chocó region, the group has stepped in for an absent government. There is a small health centre but no doctor. There is a school but no school buses. The AGC is working on finding a physician, local leaders say, along with transportation for children to ride to class.
When a resident needed urgent exams ahead of kidney surgery last year, she asked the town council for aid. It turned to the AGC, which ended up giving her about $150 to cover her tests.
Yet few people in neighbourhoods like these, where the AGC is always watching, wanted to be quoted by name. Even fewer were willing to voice any criticism. And no wonder: last year, in just the northern department of Chocó, Colombia’s ombudsman’s office reported the forced displacement of 4,380 people in 2022 due to territorial disputes involving the group. More than 7,800 families were forcibly confined to their homes.
In Apartadó, one local victims advocate recounted getting death threats for trying to help young men leave town and the group. “They pulled me out of my house with a pistol and told me to leave or else they’d kill me,” the woman said.
Another resident, Birleyda Ballesteros, recounted locking herself in her house for about two months last year after the AGC terrorised her town and more than 100 others across a significant part of the country.
In May, the group called a four-day armed retaliatory strike after its former leader was extradited to the United States on drug-smuggling charges. Then-president Iván Duque had described Dairo Antonio Úsuga – best known by his alias, Otoniel – as the “most feared drug trafficker in the world, killer of police, of soldiers, of social leaders, and recruiter of children”. In a show of force, his comrades blocked roads, burned cars, paralysed businesses and prohibited residents from leaving their homes.
Even so, Ballesteros said she believes that the AGC should be given the same chance as any other armed group to negotiate a peace deal and a plan for transitional justice.
“The government should sit down with them and listen,” she said.
***
As the men on the mountain finished their morning drills, several kept watch over the surrounding area. A small fire still burned from breakfast.
One unit leader, a 30-year-old from Antioquia, said he had joined eight years ago. He had been living with his family, working on their farm or doing odd jobs around their neighbourhood, but he struggled to make ends meet. In the armed group, he found men who “back me up 100 per cent”. He became a commander at only 24.
Another member said he had joined when he was 20, after serving in the military for two years. He was drawn to the AGC’s self-described mission of defending the population and, importantly, to the salary it offered. “It opens up a door, economically, that you can’t find elsewhere,” he said. The unit leader told him not to disclose how much he earns. Neither man provided his name.
Jerónimo expects the government will come around to the idea of a peace negotiation “or at least a dialogue”.
“But if we continue with this same rhetoric, with abandonment, persecution, then we will keep defending,” he said. “And to the extent that we can keep expanding the territory … we will go there.”
Even in territory that is an AGC stronghold, he remains vigilant. A small airplane was flying overhead, and he feared it might be military intelligence tracking their whereabouts. Jerónimo had the unit retreat.
The men took cover in a nearby wooded area, huddling between the trees as they waited to make their next move.
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