Direct elite participation in civil wars remains unexplored terrain. It should be analytically telling, because it involves taking major risks and costs. Here, we consider the direct participation of one rural elite—big cattle ranchers—in the Colombian paramilitary saga. We claim that it was massive, locally specific, regulated by institutions, and riddled by permanent collective action issues. We focus on two important forms of direct participation: ranchers as leaders of paramilitary groups, and ranchers as promoters and beneficiaries of coercive land dispossession. This does not cover the full spectrum of potential elite participation in war, but it is a key starting point to sort out the ways in which extreme inequality is associated with political violence from above.