Colombia’s right-wing vice president Marta Lucía Ramírez recently complained that “Colombia should not be making international headlines on account of a bunch of criminals and hitmen.” She was responding to recent revelations that of the twenty-eight assassins directly involved in the murder of Haitian president Jovenel Moïse, twenty-six were Colombians — a product of the country’s thriving industry of state-sponsored mercenary killers.

Colombia’s army is trained by the best of the United States Armed Forces and is often contracted out to protect the private property of multinational corporations, conduct counterinsurgency missions, and carry out high-value-target operations. These comparative advantages give Colombians a leading edge when it comes to the international mercenary market.

As with the killing of the Haitian president, many Colombian mercenaries — sometimes called “paramilitaries,” “private military,” or “security contractors” — are retired members of Colombia’s armed forces and have often been trained in the United States, battle-tested in difficult combat environments like jungles to fight rebels, and previously been members of right-wing paramilitary death squads. Not only are they highly trained in assassination techniques and practiced in rugged terrains, they are also typically much cheaper than their mercenary competitors in other countries.