History of Valledupar

branch of the UP; the FARC. Palmera became a guerrilla leader; as a banker, he knew who in the city and region were wealthy. He began kidnapping (and sometimes killing) prominent political leaders, journalists and rich land owners (including members of his own family), using the ransoms to finance his organization. He took the alias Simón Trinidad.

During this period, general crime rose and, on October 15, 1994, the national bank El Banco de la Republica (Bank of the Republic) was robbed. The amount stolen: COP$ 24,075 millions of pesos of non emitted bills (some US$ 11 million) and came to be known as the "El Robo del Siglo" (The bank heist of the century).

To counter FARC and ELN's abuses, and after approximately fifteen years of as fixiating Valledupar's society and supporting negligence by the Colombian military, some prominent leaders of Valledupar, landowners and those victims of these organizations decided to become part or promote, self-defense forces that later on affiliated with the AUC and assigned another "Vallenatean" as leader Rodrigo Tovar Pupo a.k.a. Jorge 40.

The self-defense forces adopted methods like the guerrilla, including illegal drug trafficking to finance their operations. They used terrorism tactics that also affected innocent people, such as selective and random kidnappings, and combinations of racketeering and selective assassinations – the trademark of Death Squads. The AUC helped take back the region from guerrillas, but Valledupar residents had to deal with similar uncertainty in having an illegal and terrorist organization controlling the city.

The AUC northern block demobilized March 10, 2006. It is still uncertain if