BY FRANCES ROBLES

  TORIBIO, Colombia - When guerrillas attacked this remote mountain hamlet a few days ago, they ran into unexpected trouble from an outraged populace that refused to be bullied even as their town was being cut to pieces.

  Instead of cowering in their homes, the villagers ran into the streets to demand that the rebels safeguard the local community center and respect the lives of the local
  police force.

  In a display of civil resistance that is becoming increasingly common in some of Colombia's indigenous communities, the residents endured an attack that reduced some buildings to rubble, but they drew the line at more destruction and bloodshed.

  ''We had to contain the people. They poured out of their houses in groups of 100, 200, 300,'' said state representative Arquimedes Vitonas. ``If it wasn't for them, this whole block would be destroyed.''

  The Toribío town tale is one of bravery and resistance. It's about a place where thousands of Colombians who don't take either side in the nation's 38-year-old war rose up against men with rifles, grenades and cooking-gas cylinders used as improvised mortars.

  Beside the rubble where the Toribío police station and local bank once stood are 30 bombed houses, riddled with fresh bullet holes that mark 22 hours of heavy combat. But the community center and radio station are unscathed, and the police officers are alive.

  Toribío's story started at 1:20 p.m. on July 11 when leftist rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, bombed the police headquarters. The 14 officers inside were besieged by about 300 guerrillas.

  SPURRED TO ACT

  When fighting knocked out electricity, many of the Paez Indians who live in the town of 28,000 mistakenly believed the FARC rebels had blasted their radio station. They ran from their homes -- toward the combat. As government soldiers in military helicopters fired from above and rifles rattled below, hundreds and then thousands flocked to the street. They stood in front of the indigenous community's town center and started making demands.

  ''People lost their fear,'' explained Gustavo Santacruz, whose home was destroyed.

  The people asked guerrillas to spare their community center and radio station and even made rebels move an explosives-laden truck parked too close for their liking. The FARC complied.

  And 22 hours later, when the police officers were out of ammunition and their headquarters was blasted to bits, the community pleaded for the FARC to spare their lives.

  Again, the guerrillas complied.

  ''Those officers struggled all night defending this town -- so they could be taken out and killed or kidnapped? No, no, no, no,'' said Flor de María Alzate. ``We saw our local priest out there and the indigenous leaders out there, so we went out there, too.''

  Community leaders and a parish priest brokered the release of the 14 officers, who -- against all expectations -- survived unhurt, although a 10-year-old boy was killed by a stray bullet.

  Even the FARC commander in charge of the operation reportedly told the town: ``They're tough. They fought like men!''

  That afternoon, the FARC retreated.

  It wasn't the first time indigenous groups fended off rebel attacks. Every community has its stories of murdered and missing leaders, but now they proudly recount their successes as well.

  The people in Bolívar, also in the southern province of Cauca, rose up to prevent three FARC takeovers in December alone. Their only weapons were candles and songs. In November, they formed a human chain to keep rebels from driving away with the police squad.

  Later, in the nearby community of Caldono, residents stood in the rain to keep the subversives out.

  Indigenous leaders say that centuries of fighting Spaniards and Colombia's non-indigenous rulers left them accustomed to self-defense.

  ''They only way out is through organizing the people,'' said Vitonas, the state representative. ``Indigenous people are fighters by nature.''

  Like nearly all rural Colombians, indigenous Colombians are caught in the middle of a four-way war that includes a Marxist-led FARC and another leftist group that
  stages attacks on oil pipelines.

  In its quest to beat the rebels, a paramilitary force called the Self-Defense Forces of Colombia is blamed for nearly as many murders as the rebels. All three groups
  engage in murder, kidnapping and drug trafficking.

  Meanwhile the government's armed forces are spread thin battling hit-and-run rebel tactics, leaving scores of communities to fend for themselves. About 150
  municipalities have no police presence at all.

  'It's necessary for all of us to commit ourselves to civil resistance -- to say, in a definitive manner, `no' to the men of violence, 'yes' to peace,'' Interior Minister
  Armando Estrada said earlier this year. ``Let all Colombians say that we do not want any more war.''

  But the minister's proposal goes a step further. He wants citizens to collaborate by providing information to police and soldiers fighting rebels.

  The indigenous communities sharply oppose this idea, stressing that civil resistance works best when it comes from people who haven't taken sides. Indeed, the native communities have an equal measure of distrust for the government and the rebels.

  Armed forces chief Fernando Tapias said the wave of civil defiance shows the Andrés Pastrana's administration, which ends Aug. 7, was successful in waging a public relations campaign against guerrillas.

  ''Years ago people didn't give the armed forces credit for anything,'' Tapias said in an interview last week. ``Now we have whole towns rising up.''

  Toribío Mayor Gabriel Pavi said the town's position isn't just neutrality but autonomy -- freedom from any outside force.

  BACKING THE MAYOR

  The attack on Toribío came a day after 7,000 villagers flocked to the town square to urge Pavi to stay on the job as mayor despite a FARC ultimatum that he quit by July 15 or die.

  ''People are protecting me, and I trust them,'' Pavi said from his City Hall office. ``I have no bodyguard, because bodyguards are useless here. I have no bulletproof
  vest, because vests are useless here.

  ``The only thing that works here is the unity of the people.''