Today’s edition of the “Open Files” informs us that paramilitary votes helped elect Alvaro Uribe to two terms of office as President of Colombia. When he was Governor of Antioquía, paramilitary groups committed hundreds of massacres that forced more than 4 million people off their land. These groups then came out publicly to elect him to the presidency in 2002. As part of a phenomenon known as “parapolitics,” paramilitary death squads formed alliances with politicians – including congressmen, mayors, judges, and ambassadors who fostered Uribe’s policies and helped fraudulently re-elect him in 2006. teleSUR