On March 30, Los Urabeños, Colombia’s largest right-wing paramilitary group, distributed leaflets across the north of the country calling for a “pacific strike.”

The next day, the streets of many towns and cities were virtually deserted. Businesses and schools were closed, and people stayed home for fear of violence. Their concerns were warranted. Paramilitaries staged dozens of attacks on security forces, injuring several police officers, and in the days that followed they mounted assaults in neighborhoods across the country, including Medellín, Colombia’s second-largest city.

If there was any doubt about who controls much of the nation’s territory, the “pacific strike” dispelled it: right-wing militants, not the Colombian state, have the monopoly on violence in significant swaths of the country.