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COPYRIGHT 2002 Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service
GIGANTE, Colombia _ The message came to eight Gigante council members through an ominous cellphone call: Guerrilla commanders summon you to their mountaintop.
Hours later, another group of the small town's council members, inspectors and mayor were beckoned too. Quit your jobs, they were told by leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Or die.
``All they have to do is kill three or four mayors and everyone would say, `Oh! They were serious!' '' said Hernan Munoz, the former clerk in Gigante, in Colombia's Huila state. ``I don't want to be that martyr. Let someone else be the martyr.''
What began last month as a small-town strategy to derail city government in southern Colombia has swept the nation. By this week, the FARC had menaced nearly 125 mayors from
throughout Colombia. Threats have now hit the mayors of Bogota, Cali and Medellin, the nation's largest cities. In Antioquia on Saturday, 23 mayors quit. In the state of Arauca, nearly 100 city officials stepped...
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