President Moscoso visits people displaced by the attack on Paya and Pucuro in Boca de Cupe. Photo courtesy of the Presidencia

On January 18 members of Colombia's AUC paramilitary group crossed into Panam and attacked the mainly-Kuna Darien villages of Paya and Pucuro. In Paya they killed Cacique Ernesto Ayala, Second Cacique Pascual Ayala and Village Commissioner Luis Enrique Martínez with bayonets, taking their bodies out into the jungle and planting land mines around them to discourage relatives from recovering the remains. In Pucuro they shot Cacique Gilberto Vásquez at point-blank range in the back of his head, leaving his body in his home. The right wing death squad also burned five houses of people whom they were seeking in or around Pucuro but who had fled or were otherwise absent, and looted both villages of food and other valuables.

Along the way the AUC took three Americans, journalist Robert Young Pelton and his traveling companions Mark Wedeven and Megan Smaker, into custody. Later AUC leader Carlos Castaño said that the Americans had been held "for their own safety" and the group handed them over to the Catholic Church in Colombia. Also allegedly taken by the AUC was the three American's Panamanian guide, Víctor Alcázar, who allegedly managed to escape.

Alcázar, who fled to Boca de Cupe suffering from bayonet wounds, has been accused by police, prosecutors and residents of Paya of being an accomplice of the invaders. He, his lawyers and his family deny that. The veteran jungle tour guide, who had many times complained that a lack of police presence in the eastern Darien hurts his business, shouted to reporters that he was a scapegoat for the National Police's failure when the police showed him off for the TV cameras. However, legislator Haydee Milanes de Lay says that Alcázar led the AUC into Paya and pointed out the people who had been marked for death.

Further complicating the question of whether the Americans were kidnapped or whether they intended to link up with the AUC were the statements that Pelton and Wedeven made after their release. "When you actually meet these people face to face, you share food with them, you understand why they're fighting, why they're in the jungle," Pelton said. "Even though we were not happy about being kidnapped or being kept away from our families and our jobs, they had a reason to do so," Pelton added. "After all, it is their country and their war." "We were not kidnapped," Wedeven said.

Panamanian prosecutors want to talk to Pelton, Wedeven and Smaker, but they are in Colombia now and may not return. Carlos Castaño has repeatedly boasted, sometimes on Colombian television, of crimes his group has committed in Panama. These include murders, thefts of aircraft and attacks on villages in Kuna Yala and the Darien, but to date Panamanian prosecutors have not charged him with any of these crimes and it seems unlikely that Castaño will face charges for his group's latest offensive into Panama.

The US Embassy here declined to comment on whether members of the AUC were being investigated by American law enforcement authorities, as has been the practice when US citizens have been kidnapped by left wing Colombian guerrillas. Under US terrorism laws, any politically motivated violence by a force of which the US government does not approve that affects American citizens is the crime of terrorism, which can be prosecuted in US courts regardless of where it took place. The AUC is on Washington's list of international terrorist groups, but works closely with the Colombian Army according to Human Rights Watch and other reputable international observers.

President Moscoso didn't protest the attack to the Colombian government, but instead called upon Bogota authorities to increase their armed forces along the border. Critics note that the AUC is the Bogota government's armed proxy in the area.

The president's handling of the affair prompted sharp criticism from many quarters. Former President Guillermo Endara, who wants his old job back, called her attitude "pusillanimous." Journalist and Partido Popular activist Milton Henríquez noted with irony Mireya's protest of the Venezuelan government's seizure of a Coca-Cola bottling plant and her failure to lodge a protest with the Colombian government over this latest attack. Legislator Enrique Garrido, himself Kuna, demanded that Panama break diplomatic relations with Colombia and bring in United Nations troops to guard the border against further paramilitary and guerrilla attacks.

The attack sent most of the residents of Paya and Pucuro fleeing to Boca de Cupe, the closest town with a police presence and telecommunications with the outside world. Because all but one of the Panamanian police helicopters are broken down, US Army Reserve and National Guard Blackhawk helicopters that are in Panama for the Nuevos Horizontes construction maneuvers in Chiriqui province were pressed into service to bring food, medicine, clothing, water purification equipment and a generator to the 600 or so internal refugees in Boca de Cupe.