BY FRANCES ROBLES

  SAN VICENTE DEL CAGUAN, Colombia - Few Colombians feel the effects of failed efforts to achieve peace more than the 100,000 residents who live in the sleepy towns once dubbed ``the clearing zone.''

  In 1998, the Colombian government lured rebels to the negotiating table by ceding this huge chunk of jungle to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC,
  drug-running guerrillas who have been fighting the government for 38 years. But when peace talks collapsed Feb. 20, the government yanked back the
  16,000-square-mile zone, a third the size of Florida.

  Five months later the former FARC stronghold, home to five municipalities, has become a battleground, the target of repeated rebel attacks on bridges, electrical towers and water systems. Those who live here have been left without water, illumination and important bridges.

  Even more ominously, the area's towns are slowly giving way to anarchy as mayors run for cover from FARC threats.

  It has been four months, for instance, since rebels used dynamite to blow up La Quebrandona, a key bridge that linked two southern Colombian towns.

  Nobody ever came to fix it, so entrepreneurs just outside the former clearing zone fashioned their own way to cross the Guayas River: They built ferries out of canoes
  and planks of wood.

  ''Everything is so much harder now,'' said Carlos Motíz, a cabdriver who paid the $2 fare to cross from the town of Puerto Rico to San Vicente del Caguán. ``When the
  clearing zone ended, ay, ay, ay, everyone suffered.''

  RURAL AREAS

  The government's inability to satisfy the needs of the former demilitarized zone crystallizes one of Colombia's chief failures: rural development. Decades of neglect
  fueled the original insurgency, and now the government seems incapable of turning the tide.

  ''They gave away our house and gave us back very little in return,'' said Néstor Ramírez, mayor of San Vicente del Caguán, considered the capital of the clearing zone.
  ``San Vicente's big problems are now much bigger.''

  Last week, two gunmen killed 47-year-old Gloria de Ortega, shooting her 19 times. The mother of six had the misfortune of being wed to Noé Javier Ortega, one of San Vicente's chief city officials. City Hall had been closed for weeks because of rebel threats against all the nation's city governments, and FARC leaders wanted to halt plans to reopen, Ramírez said.

  So the garbage goes uncollected, the teachers go unpaid and municipal water service is stalled. Having refused FARC demands that he resign, Ramírez works out of an army base; his 13-year-old daughter has been moved to safety.

  Although much of the zone is still in the dark, San Vicente's electricity was recently restored. But it still has only 24 operating phone lines for a city of 24,000 people.
  None of the roads the government promised to build ever materialized. Nor did the 80 schools and 580 homes it also promised.

  The same night Ortega was killed, police found 440 pounds of explosives on the road from Florencia, the path the presidential motorcade was to take just hours later.
  President Andrés Pastrana had planned to visit San Vicente to inaugurate a new aqueduct.

  ''A new aqueduct?'' an incredulous Ramírez said. 'I told them, `What for? We have no water!' ''

  The San Vicente portion of Pastrana's trip was canceled, but Ramírez said it was unclear whether it was because of the bomb scare.

  ''Before, when a grenade went off in the plaza, people would go running,'' said police Officer Santiago González, one of the many armed men keeping watch outside the padlocked City Hall, guarded by a fort made of sandbags. ``Now maybe they turn their heads and just keep walking.''

  González was among the scores of soldiers and officers sent in to retake San Vicente after peace talks failed. Pastrana made a dramatic visit that late February weekend as his armed men positioned themselves in town centers. But their presence is not felt in the countryside, where guerrillas roam unabated despite handsome
  government bounties on their heads.

  Earlier this month, Pastrana announced the government's offer of $2 million rewards for the capture of any of the chief FARC commanders, now fugitives.

  ''My farm is six miles from here -- they don't protect us out there,'' rancher Ernesto Hermosa said. ``We are unprotected by the government, unprotected by the law.
  We're terrorized and don't know where to run.''

  FALLING ECONOMY

  Like many people in San Vicente, Hermosa's chief complaint is the nose dive commerce has taken. Coupled with the absence of money-spending guerrillas, many
  residents have fled and others are too afraid of bombings to go out to shop. A once-bustling ranching town now has a somber air to it -- and a 9 p.m. curfew. Business
  has come to a standstill.

  ''The guerrillas had more money than the government,'' said Ernesto Charry, a fruit vendor. ``And now we don't even have a government.''

  NEW PRESIDENT

  Bringing law and order back to southern Colombia will be a chief assignment for incoming President Alvaro Uribe, who takes office Aug. 7. Uribe was elected with a clear mandate from war-weary Colombians who want him to crack down on rebels in an effort to end the decades-old insurgency.

  Uribe, who as governor of Antioquia always opposed the clearing zone, won by a landslide in the former demilitarized region, everywhere except in San Vicente del
  Caguán.

  Colombia's vice interior minister, Nelson Rodolfo Amaya, insists that the problems plaguing places like San Vicente have nothing to do with the conflict. Those former
  rebel towns, Amaya said, have always suffered from poor services.

  ''The people in the clearing zone have the same services they had before. There are some areas where there are good public services, and some where it's precarious,''
  Amaya said. ``But it's not a question of the conflict. They've been like that for many years.''

  The people are hopeful, though resigned.

  ''The problem with San Vicente now is that there's no money and no people,'' baker Valentín Toro said. ``Where are you going to go where there isn't a war?''