Barbies and Bullets
In Colombia and around the world, right-wing paramilitaries and traffickers have adopted a populist feint to win over the communities they terrorize.
![](https://images.jacobinmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/27195204/Pop-Front.jpg)
Illustration by Pete Gamlen.
Manuel Padilla still remembers the last time he pulled an all-nighter: it was late November, 2004. That night, he spent hours unloading contraband from a boat moored in the mangroves of northwest Colombia. As a low-ranking member of a drug-trafficking paramilitary militia, Manuel had done it dozens of times before. But normally the cargo was […]