Puerto Leguizamo

Local Zones of Peace: General Survey and Map

                                                      Puerto  Leguizamo

Official Title:

Departamento: Putumayo

Region: Lower Putumayo.

Population: Town of PL had population of c8,000 in 1999

Location: SW of Colombia, c350 miles south of Bogota & on border with Ecuador

Ethnic mix:

IDP population: .

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 Mayor’s office:

Governor’s office:

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 Functional committees.

Valued goods produced in region: Region was a center of coca production in late 1990’s and focus of Colombian Govrnments “push to the south” as part of Plan Colombia from 2000 onwards.

Local armed actors in the region:

 Armed forces: 24^th Brigade based in Putumayo, which was formally denied US military assistance because of human rights violations. River based marine brigade [US trained] also present in municipio. 

  Paramilitaries: There are reports of members of Carlos Castano’s ACCU arriving in PL from their northern bases as early as January 1998 and carrying out massacres in neighbouring Puerto Asis   

  Guerrillas: Region under control of FARC up to end of 1990s.                                               

Arrangements with L.A.A.s

Significant events: June 2001, during absence of anti-narcotics battalion, Farc units over-ran PL military base, killing 30 soldiers and taking others prisoner. FARC lost an almost equal number of killed but the attack was billed as the Government’s heaviest loss in a battle since the start of Plan Colombia.

Further comments: Puerto Leguizamo is one of the centres in which the US military & DynCorp carry out counter drug & counter insurgency training for the Colombian military. Municipio is a short flight from a US air base in the Ecuadorian town of Manta, from which surveillance flights are carried out over the whole of southern Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and much of Peru.

Contact details.

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