Antioquia department swarms with former paramilitaries who have formed criminal gangs - known in Spanish as bandas criminales - that traffic drugs and extort businesses. The bacrim often work in cahoots with local politicians, and when journalists dig into issues like government corruption, they sometimes receive threats.
The following is a CPJ Blog post by John Otis, CPJ Andes Consultant:
Next to the mayor’s office in the northern Colombian town of Caucasia sits a monument to government dysfunction: a half-built public library with broken windows, a water-stained floor, and rusting reinforcement rods protruding from concrete pillars.
According to news reports, construction mysteriously ground to a halt after the town government spent about a million dollars on the project. But when local journalist Rober Nieto recently tried to investigate, a town official warned him to back off.
Read the full story on CPJ’s website.