PUERTO BETANIA, Colombia (AP) -- Colombian rebels control about
                  40 percent of the countryside, and in most places allow people to elect their
                  mayors and town councils.

                  But the elected officials have no illusions. They ultimately answer to "the
                  boys" or "the country police" or "the tough guys," as the guerrillas are
                  known.

                  In this southern region, which is being vacated by the army before
                  November 7 as a prelude to peace talks, the country's largest rebel band,
                  the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, has held sway for years.

                  Punishment swift and sure

                  A rebel-imposed nighttime curfew on road travel and a drinking limit of four
                  beers a person is widely heeded. Violators of the insurgents' civil code either
                  accept their punishments, leave or die.

                  For three months until September, the FARC banned fishing in the Caguan
                  River and its tributaries, because stocks were depleted.

                  A man caught disobeying was bound in his net and left for hours on the
                  riverbank, praying the water wouldn't rise and drown him, said Javier
                  Salcedo, a mechanic in Puerto Betania.

                  "Here someone gets killed in the street, and everyone knows it was done by
                  the guerrillas. But nobody can say that," said a councilman in San Vicente,
                  the region's largest town 12 miles upriver from Puerto Betania.

                  He and two fellow council members, who spoke only on condition they not
                  be quoted by name, offered a primer on guerrilla justice: Get rowdy drunk in
                  public and you carry 50 sacks of construction material to public works sites.
                  Curse someone's mother and it's 150 sacks. Punch someone and it's 500.

                  No voting in Puerto Betania

                  The last time a Colombian soldier set foot in Puerto Betania was four years
                  ago during presidential elections, said Salcedo, the mechanic. The rebels
                  have prohibited voting in the three-square block village in the last three
                  national and regional elections, he said.

                  In areas where they are mostly in control, the guerrillas sometimes kidnap
                  elected officials, either for punishment or persuasion.

                  In May, a congressman kidnapped by the FARC nearly two years earlier
                  died with three rebels when their boat capsized in the Caguan. The rebels
                  had vowed not to release him before authorities finished a highway project
                  from which the rebels alleged he had been embezzling.

                     Copyright 1998   The Associated Press.