By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

              CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- When Colombian rebels occupied Otto Ramirez's
              land, demanded protection money and killed his foreman, the Venezuelan rancher
              fled into hiding. Now, tired of rebel threats, he's taking action.

              Ramirez and dozens of his fellow ranchers have organized and armed a militia.
              Already, he says, the militiamen are patrolling parts of remote Tachira state, near the
              Colombian border.

              For the ranchers, it's a matter of defending their lives and land, a role they say the
              state is not taking.

              But for the government, it raises worries that the spillover of Colombia's conflict
              could lead to the rise of right-wing paramilitaries -- like ones in Colombia blamed
              for atrocities.

              ``Nobody here can be organizing a private army or arming 20 men with rifles,''
              President Hugo Chavez said Wednesday, warning farmers that his government
              would prosecute those creating militias.

              ``Here, the armed forces are our defense and nobody else,'' he said.

              The problem, according to the Venezuelan Ranchers Association, is that there is
              virtually no government presence along remote border regions, leaving ranchers
              there vulnerable to incursions by Colombia's leftist guerrillas.

              The rebels kidnap and bribe ranchers and even impose themselves as ``judges'' in
              disputes involving Venezuelan landowners and peasant squatters, whom the rebels
              support.

              ``The Venezuelan state is weak and (the guerrillas) are enslaving us,'' complained
              association president Jose Luis Betancourt, who opposes the formation of
              paramilitary groups. ``We can't allow the vacuum of a government presence to be
              filled by groups outside the state.''

              The Colombian newspaper El Tiempo reported this week that the right-wing United
              Self Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, is training more than 100 Venezuelan
              farmers in the western Venezuelan state of Tachira. Venezuelan officials deny
              knowledge of any paramilitary presence.

              Colombia's paramilitaries emerged from groups organized by ranchers to defend
              themselves from leftist rebels. The paramilitaries have since become a formidable
              force accused of human rights atrocities, including massacres of villagers suspected
              of supporting rebels.

              ``This is the story of Colombia's paramilitaries. Almost always, these apparent
              remedies are worse than the disease,'' says Defense Minister Jose Vicente Rangel.

              The rancher militias are the latest sign of how Colombia's 37-year-old conflict --
              involving two leftist guerrilla groups, right-wing paramilitaries and the army -- is
              affecting Venezuela.

              Colombian coca growers have moved some crops to Venezuelan soil, Venezuela
              says. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Colombian peasants have fled right-wing
              paramilitary violence into northwestern Venezuela. Venezuela is investigating reports
              that Colombia's largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia,
              is using radio broadcasts to urge Colombian workers on Venezuelan farms to rise
              up against their employers and join the revolution.

              Rangel has promised more army patrols for the ranchers in the border region --
              while claiming that criminals, not Colombian rebels, are to blame for the kidnappings
              and extortion. At least 15 ranchers were kidnapped last year, and more than 275
              since 1976, Betancourt says.

              Ramirez, 58, decided to organize a militia of 60 men after gunmen chased him and
              his family from their small estate, San Isidro, near the frontier city of Cano Lindo,
              about 400 miles west of Caracas.

              Wearing olive military garb and packing pistols, the guerrillas came at dawn on Jan.
              20. They identified themselves as members of the Popular Liberation Army, a
              faction of Colombia's leftist National Liberation Army, and demanded $14,300 as a
              ``vacuna,'' or protection tax.

              ``I knew when they arrived at my ranch why they came,'' Ramirez told The
              Associated Press. ``The same had happened to my neighbors and I knew I was
              next.''

              Ramirez told them he didn't have the money. A month later, the guerillas killed his
              foreman. Ramirez fled to the western city of San Cristobal with his family, protected
              by four bodyguards.

              ``My land is totally left alone. No one wants to work there. ... To milk my cows, I
              need to be escorted by the National Guard. Those vagrants have ruined me,''
              Ramirez said.

              ``We are tired of being held hostage,'' he told Colombia's El Tiempo newspaper.
              ``If the Venezuelan state is unable to protect us, we ourselves will do it.''