Targeted for death, Colombian mayor stays

NEIVA, Colombia -- Mayor Cielo González's house looks like a Marine outpost in Fallujah, buttressed by stacks of sandbags to absorb any blasts. She travels with 10 gun-toting guards and recently received a gift from President Alvaro Uribe: the most heavily armored sport utility vehicle in Colombia.

"I am often very afraid or very bored," said González, a tall, athletic 38-year-old who looks a bit like British actress Elizabeth Hurley. "The guerrillas have made me a prisoner."

Early in March, González emerged unscathed from the third attempt on her life by leftist guerrillas in the 3 1/2 years since she was elected mayor of this rice-farming and cattle city in southern Colombia. Would-be assassins planted two bombs outside the radio station where she took citizen calls every Thursday morning. One was embedded in a parked sedan that drew authorities' attention: It exploded as it was being towed away, injuring five people.

The second bomb, taped to the station's water meter, was discovered the following night. It blew up as it was being transported in a police vehicle, killing four police officers who thought the device had been disarmed. One of the victims was Officer Alexander Peralta, 32, one of the mayor's bodyguards. González, a single woman whose designer shoes and chic attire seem out of place in this agricultural hub of 350,000 people, says she is a target because she supports the tough antiguerrilla policies of Uribe. She refuses to quit her job, although her life has been changed utterly.

"I can't do any of the simple things I used to do, like jog in the mornings, go to the hairdresser, parties, or the movies. Now I only rent them," said González, a lawyer who comes from a political family. "I already had stopped doing everything in my old routine, except the Thursday radio shows. And look what happened."

González is hardly alone among Colombia's locally elected officials who fear for their lives. According to a national mayors association survey , 159 of the country's 1,099 mayors live under the shadow of a death threat from the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, or from right-wing paramilitaries.

Nor is González the only member of her well-connected family to come under threat. Both her father, a former Bogotá city councilman, and brother, a Colombian senator, also have been targeted.

Politics has always been González's calling and is not something she is willing to give up. To do so would be "making way for killers," she said. "Someone has to confront the dangers, and Colombia deserves it. It's the only way to build a democracy."

After getting her law degree in Bogotá in 1991, she worked her way up the bureaucracy to appointments to two Cabinet jobs here in Huila state, as head of social services, then secretary of state. She won her first elected office, to the state Legislature, in 2000.

"Politics allows you to see your ideas materialize, to improve people's quality of life, which is the most important thing for me," González said as she led a midmorning tour of Neiva construction projects.

But her idealism has been tempered by the threats to her life. As her bodyguards drove her through Neiva's sun-baked streets, she was visibly nervous in traffic and at stoplights, her eyes scanning cars and crowds for possible threats.

"I can't get out and just talk to people because you never know who might be there waiting," González said, her expression tense. "I've lost the closeness to the people. The security creates a fence around you."

The FARC has declared six mayors in Huila, including González, and their city councils to be "military objectives." In short, they are marked for death for their insistence on staying on the job.

Despite the danger, González stays in office, out of stubbornness, commitment, and ambition. She admits to having plans to run for Huila governor in 2011 and wants to cut the ribbon and take credit for a host of public works projects nearing completion.

"I'm not leaving before I turn the projects over to the people," she said.