Los Rastrojos is one of Colombia’s most feared criminal gangs and their top leader was recently arrested as he held a “Mafioso summit” at his farm, authorities said.

The man’s name is José Leonardo Hortúa Blandón, but he’s better known as Mascotas or Pets. Police also arrested the gang’s number-two man Picante or Hot, as in spicy. He had assumed the leadership position after his predecessor Pinky, sometimes spelled Pinkhy, had been arrested.

Colombia’s criminals and guerrillas are fond of absurd monikers. Among some of the most memorable are Gordolindo (Fat beauty), Vasodeleche (Glass of Milk) and Mierda Seca (Dry Excrement). Dry Excrement, a member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, earned his name due to his chronic halitosis, according to Semana Magazine.

The excellent periodical has a list of some of the more ridiculous monikers here.

Just got back from a fascinating trip to Toribío, Colombia, where I was writing this story.

In short, we got to see the the town’s Indigenous Guard tear apart an army base and chase away FARC roadblocks without a single drop of blood. That may seem unremarkable, but this is Colombia, where even casual confrontations seem to generate a body count.

Quite frankly, I didn’t know too much about the Indigenous Guard before I arrived in the beleaguered village, but the more I learned the more impressed I am. The guard was formed 11 years ago by the indigenous Nasa as an all-volunteer force that controls and patrols the territory.

They’re easy to recognize because they wear green and red bandanas and carry tasseled sticks. The sticks, they claim, are only used defensively, but they’ve managed to pull off some impressive feats with them.

In 2004, when Toribío Mayor Arquimedes Vitonas was kidnapped, some 400 members of the Indigenous Guard marched two days into the jungle to retrieve him from the FARC. Again, it was a bloodless operation and they had him back within 20 days; this in a country where hostages often spend years in the jungle and government rescue operations often include casualties.

The Indigenous Guard want both the army and the FARC to clear the area so they can exercise control.But it's unclear how this is going to shake out. It would be political suicide for President Santos to concede any ground, and the FARC aren't going to retreat from one of their historic strongholds.

Above: A solider gathers his belongings after villagers from Toribio, led by the Indigenous Guard, marched almost three hours uphill to dismantle the base.

Below: The regional head of the Indigenous Guard Luis Alberto Mensa, with his staff and green and red bandana. 

Don Antonio unscrewed a vitamin bottle and dumped a few chunks of coca base – a precursor to cocaine – in his hand. In this part of Colombia, along the Guayabero River that divides Meta and Guaviare, coca base, or mercancia, is as good as cash.  A gram is worth 2,000 pesos and might buy you a Coca-Cola.

I just got back from a trip to the region with the International Committee of the Red Cross. Despite the decades-long war on drugs and routine fumigation flights in the area, locals said about 90 percent of the population depends on the shrub to make a living. Those who have tried to make the switch to legal crops say the costs of trying to get their yucca or corn harvests to the nearest town, where they might find buyers, make it unfeasible.

Coca base, on the other hand, is easy to transport and buyers will often visit the remote villages for pickup. It makes sense financially, but the farmers find themselves hounded by the law and caught between the crossfire of the military and the FARC guerrillas that roam the area.

While I was on the trip, and disconnected from the outside world, there were two interesting developments in regional drug policy. The small nation of Uruguay legalized marijuana and announced that the government would become a grower and seller. (Before you book your ticket, the new law also prohibits the sale to foreigners.)

Also, Colombia’s Constitutional Court upheld a Supreme Court ruling making it illegal to imprison people for carrying up to 22 grams of marijuana and one gram of cocaine. Civil rights groups said the move would help steer people toward rehab and take pressure off of overcrowded prisons. The Attorney General, however, said he would fight the ruling. 

Along the Guayabero River, Don Antonio will still be buying his Cokes with coca.  

The 13 Colombian guerrilla commanders who were killed in a bombing earlier this week had gathered  in the community of El Silencio to receive literacy courses, a rebel defector told El Tiempo newspaper.

Monday’s bombing raid killed 38 members of Colombia’s Armed Revolutionary Forces, or FARC, including six commanders, three sub-commanders and four group leaders. The government has hailed the raid as the most devastating blow to the FARC's command structure in the five-decade history of the rebel band.

In a hospital-room interview, FARC member “Gilberto Castro” told the newspaper that the commanders had gathered in the village to take an eight-month reading comprehension course.

“That FARC doesn’t want its commanders to be illiterate, they want them to be people who can express themselves and write well,” he said. The course was being offered by university students, he said.

Castro said he managed to escape the bombing by throwing himself into a creek. But he suffered shrapnel wounds to his back and leg. When soldiers began searching the camp he turned himself in.

Castro said the killing of so many commanders was a blow to the organization, but he said the FARC had learned to deal with losses.

“The FARC has no lack of commanders,” he said. “If one dies they stick another one in to cover up the hole.”

Colombia's FARC guerrillas have been busted transporting explosive mattresses - well, really, explosives in mattresses.

In a statement, the police said they had recently stopped two such shipments. 

In one set of six mattresses they found 206 packages of pentolite, almost 800 meters of detonating cord, and a PKT machine gun.

In another mattress shipment, they found 177 kilos worth of explosives. This is the first time the police have detected Colombia's illegal groups making transfers inside "comfortable mattresses for sale in specialized stores." Read the full press release - with additional pictures - here. 

The seizure comes as the FARC is accused of stepping up its bombing campaign amid increased military presence along drug routes.

Tens of thousands of Colombians hit the streets today to protest the recent execution of four hostages who had been held by rebels for more than a decade. 

You can read about the march here, and you can read about the executions and one man's narrow escape here. 

Today's outpouring comes as many activists complain that the plight of the country's hostages is no longer on the national radar. That's probably a testament to how much safer Colombia has become. Take a look at the chart below to see just how grim things were in the1990s and early 2000s.

Even so, the government says there have been 146 kidnappings in the first five months of this year — that’s up 40 percent versus the same period in 2010. 

To complicate matters, the number of people still in captivity is a matter of debate.

In 2009, the department within the Ministry of Defense that tracks kidnapping cases said it had combed through more than 2,000 reports and determined that were 125 people still in captivity. Human rights groups and researchers at the time balked and accused the government of playing politics with the statistics. País Libre - a foundation dedicated to the issue - said the new administration has agreed to let it look through the reports again to come up with fresh figures. We'll keep you posted.

More details are emerging about the final days of Alfonso Cano. According to El Tiempo, the hounded FARC commander was living in a squalid shack and had a limited supply of food.

The paper said the only members of his group that had any luxuries were Conan and Pirulu, his two dogs. One of the FARC guerrillas was charged with cleaning their feet before they were put to bed with Cano. The guerrilla leader himself bathed them every 15 days.

The men were required to call the animals by name and never to refer to them as "dogs," according to the paper. 

During the Friday night firefight that ended with Cano's death, Pirulo ran away and Conan was injured.

I was in Popayan on Saturday and met some of the special forces soldiers involved in the raid. Among their ranks was Onyx (pictured above), one of the mine-sniffing dogs that helped them safely make their way to Cano's camp. 

The weary men had stayed up all night celebrating their victory. Apparently Onyx did too, because even crowds of photographers and the sounds of choppers failed to rouse him. He was the definition of dog tired.

In October, Colombia is going to elect more than 1,300 mayors, city council members and governors. These municipal elections always bring with them waves of trouble, as armed groups and criminal gangs try to muscle their way into the political action. 

According to a new report by Colombia's Electoral Mission, there is risk of fraud in 544 municiplaties and a risk of violence in 447. See the report, in Spanish, here.

Being a politician has always been a risky profession in Colombia. During the late 1980s and early 1990s four presidential candidates were killed. While things have gotten much better, risks remain.

In the run-up to October's vote, some 22 candidates and politicians have been killed. During the last municipal elections in 2007, 27 were murdered. But with two months to go before the elections some worry that mark may be surpassed. Check out a story about political violence here. 

Just got back from an interesting trip to Colombia's gold-mining region. The government here is concerned that the FARC, ELN and criminal bands might be trying to horn in on the gold boom to finance their activities. You can read that story here.

What I didn't get into is the environmental concerns that many have about the industry.

We watched miners handle mercury with their bare hands, empty chemical-laced water into open drains, and reuse empty vats of cyanide.

One of the rivers in the area has been used for dumping cyanide-sodden dirt for so long that everyone calls it La Cianurada. I was asking old timers if they knew its proper name, but nobody could recall what it might be.

The gentleman in this picture was trying to convince us that the water in the region is some of the cleanest in the country and is fit to be bottled. 

That could very well be true, but I just couldn't get past the drum that was being used as the basin.