Organization
According to Revista Semana, the new criminal organizations may have up to 4,000 members distributed into 22 identified groups in 200 municipalities and 22 of the 32 departments. The number of groups could also be 34, due to their capacity to hide and be black.
The upper ranks of the Aguilas Negras are made up of demobilized paramilitaries – either those who voluntarily opted out of the government peace process or those who were forcibly recruited. The lower levels of the group appear to consist of recruits dedicated to drug trafficking. The Aguilas Negras have built upon the criminal networks established by various paramilitary blocs throughout Colombia, but without adapting the same military, hierarchical structure. For now, it does not appear that the various factions of the Aguilas Negras respond to one another, or operate as a criminal federation. They are not known to control any transnational routes for the shipment of cocaine.
The group usually announces its presence in a given area by distributing pamphlets. Usually, these will announce the imposition of an evening curfew, declare their rivalry with another local gang, or threaten the community with “social cleansing” (that is, threats against drug addicts, prostitutes, or “guerrilla sympathizers” like union organizers or intellectuals). This is the same type of rhetoric once utilized by the AUC in order to impose social control within a given area.
Read more about this topic: The Black Eagles
Famous quotes containing the word organization:
“In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
“The organization controlling the material equipment of our everyday life is such that what in itself would enable us to construct it richly plunges us instead into a poverty of abundance, making alienation all the more intolerable as each convenience promises liberation and turns out to be only one more burden. We are condemned to slavery to the means of liberation.”
—Raoul Vaneigem (b. 1934)
“When a man’s partner’s killed, he’s supposed to do something about it. It doesn’t make any difference what you thought of him, he was your partner and you’re supposed to do something about it. As it happens, we’re in the detective business; well, when one of your organization gets killed, it’s, it’s bad business to let the killer get away with it. Bad all around. Bad for every detective everywhere.”
—John Huston (1906–1987)