Social Cleansing
In his book End of Millennium, Manuel Castells states the Cali Cartel had participated in social cleansing of hundreds to thousands of "desechables" (English: discardables). The desechables included prostitutes, street children, petty thieves, homosexuals and the homeless. Along with some of the locals, the Cali Cartel formed parties self named grupos de limpieza social (English: social cleansing groups) who murdered the "desechables," often leaving them with signs on them stating: "Cali limpia, Cali linda" (English: clean Cali, beautiful Cali). The bodies of those murdered were often tossed into the Cauca River, which later became known as the River of Death. The municipality of Marsella in Risaralda eventually went broke at the cost of recovering corpses and conducting autopsies.
Read more about this topic: Cauca River
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