By TIM JOHNSON
Herald Staff Writer

APARTADO, Colombia -- This used to be one of the toughest cities in Colombia, a gun-slinging crossroads where the extreme political right and left clashed by day and the funeral parlors boomed at all hours.

It still is tough. But the leftist guerrillas are gone. The right-wing paramilitary forces call the shots now, and violence is more selective, if just as sinister. Lurking gunmen occasionally kill marijuana users, homosexuals and petty criminals at night, but no one dares to complain, because political tolerance here is non-existent.

This city is so far to the right that some compare it to fascist Italy before World War II.

The man who presides over Apartado is Mayor Teodoro Diaz, and on a recent day he entertained visitors in his office, sipping coffee, as his numerous bodyguards waited outside, nestling automatic weapons in their laps.

The 43-year-old mayor admits the job carries a high level of risk. Apartado may be calmer these days, but sometimes the mayor fears to step out of City Hall.

''If things are really ugly and the guerrillas are nearby, I don't leave. Or I go out with more bodyguards. There was a time when I had to use nine. Now that things are a little more quiet, I only use five,'' he said.

The way this town has swerved to the political right parallels the almost jaw-dropping political transformation of Diaz, the onetime No. 3 commander of the People's Liberation Army, a group so radical it scorned other insurgencies for taking cues from Moscow. His rebel army looked to Albania.

Back in 1986, Diaz actually met Moammar Gadhafi, and honed his skills in bomb-making in the deserts of Libya.

Then came an ideological flip. Imagine Jesse Jackson dumping the Rainbow Coalition and joining up with Pat Robertson; that's how radical the political evolution of Diaz has been.

What led to Diaz's change underscores the dynamics of one of Colombia's most violent regions. It also shows how ideology can mean little in this conflict-ridden country.

Nestled up against the nearly impenetrable Darien Gap that separates Colombia from Panama, the Uraba region (pronounced oo-rah-BAH) harbors natural resources of timber and minerals. Its fertile fields yield vast quantities of bananas, some 78 million crates a year. The region has strategic coastline on both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and guerrilla groups, arms traffickers and drug smugglers all crave to wield control.

In the 1970s and the 1980s, two leftist insurgencies battled over Uraba, Diaz's EPL and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Strained relations

Relations between the two guerrilla groups were strained. They quarreled over Marxist doctrine, relations with Cuba and other issues. Matters turned bitter in 1991, when the EPL decided it would never be able to take power through armed struggle. Most of its fighters, 1,500 men, demobilized. A last meeting between commanders of the two insurgencies in Uraba almost degenerated into a bloodbath.

''We had our rifles with the safety catches off. The lead almost started to fly. They called us stooges and traitors, and said we'd sold out,'' recalled Diaz.

The years between 1991 and 1996 plunged Uraba into one massacre after another. Many of those killed were unarmed former EPL fighters, who created a political party called Esperanza, Paz y Libertad (Hope, Peace and Liberty).

''More than 600 of the former combatants and members of Hope, Peace and Liberty were murdered by the FARC,'' said Carlos Mario Franco, a former rebel fighter who now runs a government office that provides assistance to former guerrillas.

''The FARC never accepted that a Maoist-style group would try to integrate into society,'' said Brig. Gen. Martin Orlando Carreño, head of the 17th Army Brigade based outside this city. ''The FARC wanted to exterminate them for having demobilized.''

Confluence of interests

The bitter hatred between the two groups led to an almost bizarre confluence of interests. Illegal, right-wing militia leaders moving strongly into Uraba courted former EPL combatants to help them fight the FARC guerrillas. Fearing their own assassination, some fled the region, others sought jobs with a police agency to keep them armed, and dozens simply switched sides.

''They went over to the paramilitary side in 1995. People speak of 60 to 70 men,'' said Gerardo Vega, Diaz's deputy and a former leader of the EPL's political wing.

Hardened fighters, some of the defectors had barely an elementary school education and scant ideological training. By 1996, the paramilitary armies had beaten back the FARC from Uraba and ascended as new warlords, winning sympathy from many former EPL fighters who viewed them as saviors.

''As the paramilitaries moved in, people flipped [sides] because that's where the power was,'' said a foreign diplomat.

A nightclub owner in the nearby town of Turbo, Edilberto Suarez, said the reason so many former rebels joined their onetime opponents is obvious.

''The paramilitaries pay better. They provide better cars. They eat better. They live better than the guerrillas. They pick up more women,'' he said.

A powerful drug lord who sponsored paramilitary bands, Fidel Castaño, began giving away large tracts of land to demobilized EPL combatants, ridding himself of a potential enemy, said a former political advisor to the EPL who asked to remain anonymous.

Relative calm

The withdrawal of the FARC from the region, and the total dominance exercised by the right-wing militias, brought a relative calm to Uraba.

''Commerce has come alive. There were 2,500 merchants here in December 1997. Now, there are 6,023. There's more economic activity here because there is peace,'' Gen. Carreño said. ''There were 869 murders in Uraba in '97. Last year, we had only 357 murders.''

But the cost has been high.

''No one can exist here [without paramilitary approval]. You have to collaborate with them,'' said a knowledgeable foreign resident. ''Everybody is observing everybody. Everyone mistrusts everyone else.''

Diaz said he has never had regrets about his decision to leave behind two decades of revolutionary armed struggle and enter politics. He dismissed accusations that his 1998 election to Apartado City Hall was engineered with paramilitary money and by militia supporters.

''Five thousand, one hundred and seventy people voted for me,'' he said. ''I am within the institutional, democratic parameters of the constitution. . . . No one can say of me that I am not fighting for education, for housing, for health care, well-being and development of this community.''

Different analysis

But Franco, the former EPL political leader who maintains good relations with the mayor, offers a different analysis of the kind of tacit alliances local politicians must make to survive. He said elected officials in Uraba cannot govern without the approval of local paramilitary leaders.

''Publicly, you can't disagree with them,'' he said. ''Anyone who disagrees with their actions is considered an enemy.''

The diplomat, who has watched Uraba closely, said he was disturbed by the governing style of Diaz: ''He goes around with these goons with Uzis. You think right away that he is a paramilitary, that he'd converted even though he vehemently denies it.''

Vega, the deputy mayor, said what has happened to Uraba is an object lesson on the failure of the federal government to support demobilized guerrillas and halt the slide of former armed combatants into the influence of other illegal armed groups.

''It is difficult to understand the logic of what has happened here,'' he said. ''The demobilized guerrillas are adrift.''

e-mail: timjohnson@herald.com