Members of the Cimarrona Guard face the statue of Benkos Biohó in San Basilio de Palenque.
Article written and researched by Sam Arrieta, Maria Camila Castaño & Sofia Hernandez.
“The Cimarrona Guard is part of our blood as Palenqueros. We understand that our way of living has to endure from one generation to another, and that’s why we won’t let it die.”
-Ricardo Hernández Navarro, president of the Cimarrona Guard of San Basilio de Palenque.
The Cimarrona Guard is an Afro-Colombian community self-protection initiative that seeks to maintain the peace and protect their territory autonomously in the face of threats from external interests. The members of the Guard face the constant challenge of interacting with different types of armed actors, always aiming to solve issues through dialogue and the peaceful resolution of conflicts.
San Basilio de Palenque is known as the first free town in the Americas because it was established by escaped slaves led by Benkos Biohó in 1691. Since then it has continued to be a symbol of African and latterly Afro-Colombian resistance and identity. The children and adolescents of San Basilio de Palenque, located close to the colonial port city of Cartagena in the north of Colombia, are raised with the conviction clinging to their bones that dialogue should prevail over force or repression. For this reason, an authority was established in which force and harassment would take a back seat, after the bloody and courageous fight that allowed Palenque’s freedom from the Spanish yoke. Thus was born, as a valuable ancestral treasure, the Cimarrona Guard.
Three centuries after their independence, the village appears to have changed very little. The glaring absence of the government is evident. People do not have recycling or wastewater treatment systems and they drink potentially contaminated water from an old well. Electricity did not arrive until 1971, only then due to the intervention of the world boxing champion Antonio “Kid Pambélé” Cervantes. This despite the town being but a 45 minute drive from the bustling tourist city of Cartagena.
A palenque was, during colonialism, a village composed of freed and/or runaway slaves; San Basilio de Palenque is the only one that has survived to the present day, with its cultural identity remaining intact. For this reason, UNESCO inscribed the cultural space of San Basilio de Palenque on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008. As well as passing down ancestral practices, such as percussion, dance, story-telling and other customs such as the intricate braiding of hair, which is said to have helped communicate escape routes during the colonization era, and also traditional practices for the cultivation of food sources. The town also possesses linguistic autonomy in the form of Palenquero which is their traditional language. The Cimarrona Guards play a fundamental role in maintaining and promoting the language today, as is reflected in the many projects and missions that the guard carries out in their territory, such as teaching the children and young people of Palenque in their traditional language at school, without excluding the teaching of Spanish from the school curriculum. The Palenquero language had been stigmatized for a long time, inside and outside of Palenque, and it has been used as an instrument of cultural resistance for the black community settled there against racism and ethnic discrimination. Until a few years ago, children were forbidden to use the Palenquero language at school; they could only learn it at home and it was considered a “poorly spoken Spanish”. Palenquero is the only Creole language with a Spanish lexical base that has survived in the Caribbean, and because of this, it is recognized as a linguistic treasure. The basis of this language is made up of the various African languages spoken by the ancestors of the founders of San Basilio de Palenque in addition to aspects of Spanish. In addition to their linguistic autonomy, the village has also maintained a certain political autonomy, which prevents the police from freely entering their territory, allowing the residents to create their own community self-protection initiative.
As addressed in the previous paragraph, the history of this community dates back to the colonization era. The Palenque community, after gaining freedom, faced a wave of constant violence in the country, historically and upto recent times. During the armed conflict in Colombia (ongoing since the 1960s) many illegal groups and paramilitaries, at different times, have threatened this community, in order to gain more power not only from the land they live on, but also by forcing them to do things for illegal benefits. Government also plays an important role. Throughout Colombia, there appears to be a deliberate silence from the government regarding the atrocities faced by traditionally isolated and marginalized communities and, even though they have tried establishing dialogues and recognizing their rights, there is still many things to do that have not been addressed or well executed, such as how to actually deal with the illegal actors that are threatening the community and the Guard itself.
“We don’t want to have any relations with governmental military forces, illegal groups or the police. Here, we enforce Palenque law, not national law,”
-Jesús Palomino, an anthropologist from Palenque.
The Community of San Basilio de Palenque has developed a very detailed organization related to its functioning and structure. These are fundamental when it comes to survival and preservation, and the Cimarrona Guard represents this structure precisely. Being aware of the historical events that have formed this guard, it is also evident that the organization contributes by raising their voices towards situations of injustice, like the threats they have faced from illegal groups who want them to leave San Basilio de Palenque, or cease their community work and work for them, in order to take control of the area.
Within the community, social organization is based on family networks and age groups called “ma kuagro,” forming ties between members via a system of rights and duties. Everyone participates in community life, and its protection, in one way or another. There are also external actors, like Afro-Colombian associations and collectives, that contribute to the labor of the guard and assists in their training, thus impacting the recreation of projects like this one in different parts of the country, following the same organization and values.
Afro-Colombian communities are located throughout Colombia and many face similar challenges such as state neglect, the presence of illegal armed structures, and the interests of those involved in legal and illegal mineral extraction in their territories. Many of these disparate communities have looked towards San Basilio de Palenque and their Cimarrona Guards for guidance. Caracas Armando is a member of “Proceso de Comunidades Negras” (PCN), a Colombian political project which works for ethnical minorities and Afro-Colombian people to be included in the construction of Colombia and their policies, and is also a member of “Asociación de Consejos Comunitarios del Norte del Cauca” (Aconc), a Colombian ethnic organization that helps with organizational process of Afro-Colombian communities and its councils organizations. Caracas (2015) explained how the Cimarrona Guard of Palenque inspired the creation of the Guard in the north of Cauca, a department located in the southwestern part of Colombia, far from the northern coast of the country where Palenque is found. He also described its formation and the similarities between both Guards, both operating at a department level. In 2015 there were approximately 840 organisms that were divided in order to take care of the communities’ protection, and in each smaller community there are councils in which one person serves as a representative. Those representatives communicate everything that is currently happening in their community and will act on behalf of their community’s interests. However, like the challenges and dangers faced by Palenque during the 80s and 90s, the Cimarrona Guards and the communities they represent and protect face threats and violence in departments such as Cauca, Norte del Cauca and Choco due to the ongoing conflict which ravages across much of rural Colombia.
The existence of the Cimarrona Guard has been successfully inherited thanks to education, which has become an important issue for the organization. Through education, the guard has achieved awareness of the reality their community is facing with discrimination, not just from the rest of the country but also from the government, and the need to preserve their endangered culture through teaching younger generations. This approach represents an effective way to keep ancestral traditions alive. The children who grew up with their parents’ instilled respect for the Cimarrona Guard live in a different world today. Some, as the elder ones admit, seem infatuated with the impulses of youth. However, in the midst of all the changes of modernity, those who are part of the guard are not willing to let their authority and invaluable tradition die overnight. Unfortunately, given the worrying security situation throughout many parts of Colombia, the Cimarrona guards continue to be needed as an effective form of community defense, in addition to their cultural significance.
“Today, although the kids are different, their parents continue to instill in them respect for us as authorities and that is what we fight for every day.”
-Ricardo Hernández Navarro, president of the Cimarrona Guard of San Basilio de Palenque.
Everything outlined in this article gives an indication of the immense importance that these communities’ youth and their leaders hold in our society. State presence in big cities and state absence in rural areas has left multiple power vacuums around the country and the Cimarrona Guard was established to fill this power vacuum. This state absence, in addition to the presence of illegal groups, means that these communities must look after their own interests. Another important factor is of course the issue of land, and how best to utilize it in places like Palenque, Cauca and elsewhere in Colombia. Local community interests are often contrary to those pursued by the national government and a number of multinationals intent on extraction and exploitation of valuable resources. These are some of the biggest reasons they are still fighting for autonomous power, reconciliation and peace. The Guard also stands for freedom and preservation of their land and people, having been a shield for the communities living in those areas as well as for the environment.
To close this article, we would like to encourage more awareness and interest on behalf of readers regarding organizations like the Cimarrona Guard which seek recognition of their rights and identity as well as reconciliation for the historical abuse they have suffered. This should be their only struggle and we should be outraged that organizations and indeed communities such as the ones outlined in this text continue to have to defend themselves against violence and the economic interests of third parties. A focus on such groups will lead to more and more cases that can be analyzed and much more information to explore that will lead Colombians, and foreigners, to have a much clearer perspective of the situation faced by these communities who represent our past, present and future.
Slain social leaders Erminson Rivera, Martin Bayona, Jose Obdulio Sanchez & Eduardo Vanegas
Article written by Leslye Amador, Alejandra Barrios & Estefania Venegas
The armed conflict has not only killed people, but also the hopes and dreams of entire communities throughout Colombia. This is the case of many municipalities located in the south of Bolívar, where violence perpetuated by illegal actors has been a constant struggle. According to Indepaz (2021), the groups that have the strongest presence in the zone are Frente 37 of the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) dissidents, the ELN (Ejército de Liberación Nacional) and the AGC (Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia). Even though the Peace Agreement has tried to mitigate the effects of the conflict and bring closure to the victims, during recent years there has been an increase in threats to social leaders (people who advocate for social causes on a regional or local level) in these vulnerable areas, with threats and violence mainly perpetrated by the groups previously mentioned. The legacy of the conflict dynamics that first emerged during the 1990s during the paramilitary occupation continue to affect the communities living in the south of Bolívar. The dispute over power between paramilitary, guerrillas and state forces have provoked a clash that has turned the south of Bolívar into a battlefield. According to Rutas del conflicto (n. d.), the issue in some of these municipalities is not state abandonment, since public force is mostly present. The problem is that the strategies by which they are supposed to protect citizens and their properties are not effective, especially because much land and resources are concentrated in the hands of armed actors. Despite the implementation of the PDETs, a government program created as part of the peace agreement to promote the social and economic development of the areas that have been most affected by the armed conflict, violence remains an everyday feature. Among those targeted are social leaders, who have been systematically attacked by armed actors for standing in the way of their interests. This text will explore the cases of three social leaders who were victims of this situation.
As mentioned by Indepaz (2021), from the signing of the Peace Agreement in 2016 until March 2022, 1327 people who exercised social leadership or human rights defense have been murdered in Colombia. Among the areas that have been most affected by this, there is the south of Bolívar. According to Verdad Abierta (2016), during the 1950s, some municipalities were taken over by antioqueños, cesarenses and santandereanos (people who come from the departments of Antioquia, Cesar and Santander, respectively), attracted by the booming business of timber harvesting. Their closeness to the río Magdalena and the Serranía of San Lucas also caught the attention of illegal groups dedicated to the cultivation of coca, the commercialization of cocaine, and gold exploitation. The FARC guerrillas entered the territory in 1983, followed by the AUC paramilitaries in 1998. According to the Comisión de la Verdad, these groups brought an extractive business model to these territories supported by the cultivation of illicit crops and illegal mining, causing forced displacement and land grabbing. Many of these issues are still to be resolved, and this is why the role of social leaders and activists is so important in these regions.
This situation was not a primary concern for the government during the last decades of the 20th century, so these illegal practices have continued to have a presence in municipal towns such as Morales, located in the south of Bolívar. Among those who fought for a better future for their communities, there was Martín Bayona, the president of the Junta de Acción Comunal of La Cuchilla, a vereda, or small rural community, in Morales. According to the Alcaldía de Barranquilla, the Juntas de Acción Comunal are civic, social and community organizations that aim to achieve integral and sustainable development through participatory democracy. In this sense, Martín’s activities were essential for the development of his community. He was also involved in the local institute of sports and recreation. Additionally, he was a member of the PDET implemented in the area. As stated before, the PDETs (Development Programmes with a Territorial Focus) are a planning and management instrument that is intended to stabilize and transform the areas that were most affected by violence, poverty, illicit economies, and weak institutions. Nevertheless, they have not been fully implemented and that is why these problems continue to affect territories like Morales. Unfortunately, Martín’s initiative to promote La Cuchilla’s development was brutally ended on September 22nd, 2021, when unidentified armed men arrived at his farm and shot him twice. The few clues indicate that they were probably acting on behalf of the ELN or the Frente 37 of the FARC dissidents, which are the groups who have the most presence in La Cuchilla. What happened to Martín is one example of the failure of the strategies that the government has attempted to stop the violence. As stated before, extreme militarization of these peripheral areas is not enough, since the role of public forces must be accompanied by the improvement of infrastructure, education, and mitigation of poverty, which could be achieved by guaranteeing the full establishment of PDETs, along with other strategies. One of the inhabitants of Morales perfectly summarizes the situation: “Here the only State investment has been to the military. And not only weapons produce war, but also poverty and abandonment” (Verdad Abierta, 2016). Sadly, Martin Bayona has not been the only victim of armed groups in the war-torn municipalities of Bolívar.
In that sense, the following cases also show the complexity and variety of actors which intervene in the social dynamics of the region. To have a better understanding of the situation in the south of Bolivar, Pueblito Mejia is a key point for our analysis. It is a corregimiento (a rural community larger than a vereda, but not large enough to classify as a municipality) that is located in the surroundings of Barranco Loba and was once the home of Eduardo Vanegas, one of the social leaders that we will focus on. According to El Tiempo (2010), the presence of illegal groups goes back to the late ’90s. In that sense, the “paras” (paramilitary groups) arrived at the territory and recruited around 1,500 civilians from the zone to work exploiting gold mines. This developed as the main funding source of these groups, with these groups consequently establishing a regime of terror in which nobody dared to seek assistance from the government. The miners were extorted by illegal groups in order to secure the area’s control. In recent years, the situation has not gotten any better because in 2021 the alarms of fear, violence and uncertainty rang once more. Because of that, the mayor of Barranco Loba made a public statement calling out for help from local and national authorities demanding that there must be permanent security in the territory for the sake of its inhabitants. According to the Human Rights Council (2021) the “OHCHR observed an increase in the number of massacres and human rights violations against human rights defenders, primarily in municipalities with high levels of multidimensional poverty, where illicit economies that fuel endemic violence flourish.”. In the case of Pueblito Mejia, there were multiple actors that benefited from illegal mining who were interested in the area especially because of the easy access to coca plantations and gold mines.
On that account, Eduardo Vanegas was truly a light of hope for his community until his projects were terminated by gunshots. He was president of the Junta de Acción Comunal Minera of Pueblito Mejía. Also, he stood out as head of the Desarrollo Comunitario Municipal (Municipal Community Development) and had interests in developing a mining-business project, in the so-called ‘Mina La Gloria’, in his corregimiento, which due to the active presence of armed groups was declared by the State as a Special Reserve Area in 2012. Before his death, he had filed a complaint regarding threats received to the Ombudsman’s Office, however, they did not pay attention to it. After his passing, the institutional body issued an alert for the municipalities of Altos de Rosario, Barrancos de Loba, Norosí and Tiquisio in Bolívar, due to the constant instigations of irregular armed groups against members of the Juntas de Acción Comunal, mining organizations, and victims of the armed conflict. Eduardo was not only a social leader, but had also been a victim of the armed conflict. Hence, he knew plenty about the interests of the groups who had an active presence in the zone. Unfortunately, he was murdered on March 5th, 2022, and it remains uncertain as to who pulled the trigger. As with all acts of violence towards social leaders, the consequences of his murder are extensive; silencing not only his voice but that of the population he represented.
Taking into consideration the reports by Indepaz in 2021, the prospect for 2022 is not very hopeful either. According to the organization, in the first quarter of 2022, 60 social leaders and human rights defenders were assassinated throughout Colombia. In addition to those already mentioned (Martin Bayona and Eduardo Vanegas), the case of Erminson Rivera Henao stands out: he was the president of the Junta de Acción Communal in La Esperanza, a rural area of the municipality of Cantagallo. As previously stated, the growing activity of armed groups in the south of Bolívar and the lack of effective state presence in that territory has led to a situation where social leaders are risking their lives when carrying out their work. A relevant example of this is Rivera, who was taken from his home in the early hours of a Monday morning and later, was killed near the area, along with José Obdulio Sánchez, his brother in law and another social leader who supported him and his work. They were both killed on April 25th. In fact, according to the early warning 25/20 of the Ombudsman’s Office in the south of Bolívar, there are atomized groups that are difficult to categorize and confront because of the alliances that are constantly made, so it is arduous to recognize if they were both killed by one specific armed group. In relation to this, the mayor of Cantagallo stated: “That sector of the rural area is going to be reinforced with Army troops. It is a site of difficult access”, which explains the current role of the government and how it only focuses on short-term measures that do not solve the problem itself. This shows how the solutions to the conflict proposed by the government have been focused on sending more military troops, but they do not tackle the structural social factors which contribute to it. This means that the armed conflict is not over; there is still a latent, and very real, threat against social leaders and human rights defenders.
To conclude, there are multiple factors which have deepened the crisis amongst the population living in these vulnerable areas. Thus, it demands even more attention to our social leaders’ causes, given the fact that they have been disproportionally affected for many years. We suggest that the population stops normalizing violence as we have done for many decades. In order to find a solution and bring total peace to every territory, it is mandatory to spread awareness and demand that the government guarantees human rights, justice and reparation to the victims. For our country to achieve this, the state presence must be aimed at bringing the rule of law to the entirety of the territory, and to guarantee justice and equality for every citizen. Reiterating what has been said before, the conflict is not a military matter alone, so the approach should not be purely related to the use of force. Hence, the importance of broadening the government’s institutional offer in the peripheries, providing communities with access to political participation, and quality education, among other urgent needs. The strategies must not be reactive, but preventive. Only in this way will the systemic violence faced by social leaders who stand up for their people be addressed correctly.
Cultural leaders Luchín Bustamente & Hety Perez were both murdered on the island of San Andrés in 2022.
Article written by Nayua Martinez, Jasser Iglesias & Jesus Jurado
When it comes to promoting Colombia to the rest of the world, both the government and the citizens of Colombia tend to place a spotlight on San Andres Island. Located in the Caribbean Sea, San Andres is well known for the beauty of its beaches, capable of making a tourist fall in love at first sight, and it is also well known for the coral reefs of its sea, which are both a home for biodiversity and guardians of the coast (Muñoz, 2020). The island is also famous for its rhythms, its culture and the attractiveness of its lifestyle. There is no doubt that San Andres is one of the most marketed places in Colombia given its natural beauty. However, the island also has another face, one that goes beyond tourism, and the one that day-to-day the residents of the island have to face. When it comes to its social needs, the island has been consistently forgotten and overlooked by the State. The centralized nature of Colombian politics has affected distant regions in the country, and one of them is San Andres. While the government’s focus is on the country’s main cities, the island is of distant importance, and many of the solutions for its needs have been postponed or poorly addressed. An example of this is the poor attention that has been given to the territory after the passage of Hurricane Iota in 2020, which caused severe structural damage to the island’s infrastructure. After the hurricane, the former President Iván Duque established a reconstruction plan for Providencia, a sister island of San Andres that was badly affected by the hurricane. It was a plan that was supposed to be completed in 100 days (Presidencia de la Republica de Colombia, 2021). However, according to the fiscal control entity, as of May 2022, the work did not exceed 9% of progress demanded (El Heraldo, 2022). Moreover, the lack of attention from the government is seen in other problems that persist for years without any solution, such as the lack of drinking water, the precarious health system, the low-quality education, the high price of utilities, and the shortage of employment for the native community, or raizales (Chaves, 2018). In addition to this, and as in other parts of the country where the State is not fully present, in San Andres criminal elements are also increasingly prevalent.
Unfortunately, San Andres attracts criminals as it attracts tourists. Drug trafficking is one of the reasons why 8 out of 10 people in San Andres think the island is unsafe and have a high sense of insecurity (Román & Maza, 2020). Although the island has not witnessed the conventional armed confrontation in the same way as the rest of the country, it has suffered the consequences of the internal conflict. It has been disputed by drug traffickers given its strategic location and its maritime borders with Costa Rica, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama, and the Dominican Republic (Castillo, 2020). San Andres was also influenced by the power of the biggest illegal armed groups, even if they were not physically present and had no actual armed structures there. These groups have left a legacy to this day, especially among young people who have tried to replicate such illegal actions and gain power and wealth: “The legacy of the war, especially the one based on drug trafficking, is seen in the young people who form gangs or support crimes against their own people” says a raizal leader (Pardo, 2022). Such a legacy of war and drug trafficking could have been avoided with more State presence on the island; with a State that would have taken advantage of the geopolitical potential of the island to obtain greater profit from fishing activities, commercial exchange and tourism. However, the opposite has happened. The state has been absent and as a consequence of that, it has been the criminal groups who have seized the enormous potential of the island. The potential that could have been exploited legally has instead been exploited by drug traffickers and other criminal groups. That has not only cost tranquility on the island, but also the lives of two social leaders.
Increasing illegal activities and illicit money on the island has led to concern about security which, in turn, has been reflected by violence towards community activists. The story of Luis Carlos Bustamante Fernandez, or ‘Luchín’, portrays such a problem. Luchín was a cultural manager and activist for the LGBTQ+ community, as well as a representative of the island in the Central Committee of Artists for Colombia and the National Dance Council (Redacción Colombia, 2022). He was a well-liked figure on the island because of the work he was doing in terms of cultural development. It is well known that the island is characterized by its cultural wealth. The number of visitors to the island is an opportunity for singers and dancers to show their art and achieve their dreams. This is what Luchín fought for. Sadly, according to what was reported in Resumen Latinoamericano (2022), on March 17th, 2022, Luchín’s body was found with signs of torture towards south of the island near the area of Morgan’s Cave. A suspect in the crime was arrested and was named as Mario David Donado McGowan; he accepted the charges for the crime and was captured in mid-March. Despite the capture of the alleged perpetrator, the murder of Luchín was a tragedy for the people of the island, and the islanders had more reason for grief over the killing of another figure of huge importance for the island community not long after the killing of Luchín.
Fabian Pérez, better known as Hety, was one of the ambassadors of Raizal culture and the Creole dialect. Through music, he emphasized artistic expression and excelled as a cultural ambassador. Together with his partner Jambo, they traveled through distinct stages accompanied by the music of the ethnic peoples of the region, turning him into the “King of Creole” (Infobae, 2022). As producer Benny Bazz argued: “they were more than a sound or a style, they [were] the representation of their people, they [were] the voice of a small island called San Andrés, with mixed roots and African heritage” (Infobae, 2022). Unfortunately, Hety was shot dead at his house on Sunday May 13th, 2022. Hety was reportedly killed by accident; the target of the attack was Hillbor Pusey, a friend of Hety, who was with him at the time the events occurred. Pusey’s family had reportedly had previous problems with those responsible for the crime. However, Hety was not part of that conflict, neither was he involved in drug trafficking. The conflict was brought to him that day. The violent dynamics caused by illegality –in what used to be a peaceful place– was what ended the life of Hety and silenced such a vital cultural ambassador for the island. In response to Hety’s murder, a large group of islanders blocked the Rojas Pinilla airport demanding that the authorities clarify the facts, capture those responsible and make reparations. Moreover, various artists and colleagues have expressed anger and regret over his death (Semana, 2022). One was the dancehall singer Jiggy Drama who shared through social media the message, “Rest in Power King” (Infobae, 2022). Civilians and other artists’ responses like these show how valued cultural representatives and activists like Hety and Luchín are, especially for overlooked communities like Raizales who suffer from not having their voice heard.
Unfortunately, the killing of figures such as Luchín and Hety happens far too frequently throughout Colombia. According to Indepaz (2022), in this year 135 social leaders have been killed in Colombia. Since 2016, when the peace deal was signed between the government and the FARC guerrillas, there have been more than 1,300 such leaders killed. Of these, most lived, and were murdered, in far flung parts of the country, and the departments that have historically suffered State abandonment, such as Arauca, Cauca or Nariño. The Colombian public has grown accustomed to hearing the grim news: “Six afro descendants leaders murdered, 2 LGBTQ+ leaders threatened, 3 cultural leaders massacred”. These crimes are covered at a national media level. However, there is often a lack of context or information in the reporting, meaning the importance, or even the humanity, of victims is not communicated. This reporting means victims are seen as if they were only numbers or statistics, but behind these figures are the very human tales of people; people who had dreams, families and communities that trusted in them to carry their dream of escaping the regrettable situation, which they have gone through all their lives. The State must take action on the matter, as this cannot continue to be normalized in Colombia; these are lives. Living must not be a nightmare for people who only want a better life for themselves and their communities.
Without any doubts, the situation regarding the assassination of social leaders in Colombia is becoming more and more sensitive and is becoming the daily bread for many of these people who, for raising their voices and defending their people and/or their ideals, are being threatened and murdered. The cases of Luis Carlos Bustamante Fernández and Fabian Pérez are just two of the many cases of murders of social leaders that are reported daily by the country’s most important media outlets. Luchin and Hety were two important people for their community, however they were not the only ones. In Colombia, every day we see Luchins and Hetys murdered for raising their voice. They leave a legacy, of course; nevertheless, it is not a secret that a whole community suffers. They see how their protector will no longer be there, and the nightmare will start again. For this reason, the government must not only remember San Andres or other overlooked territories when they have a specific interest; instead, they must give its inhabitants the necessary guarantees to continue overcoming the legacy of war. It is important to guarantee that they do not have to fear, so that they do not see anarchy as a way out, but quite the contrary. The lives of these people should be protected while exercising and fighting for their rights.
The battle for full recognition of LGBTQ+ rights remains an uphill struggle in Colombia. The work of organisations such as Caribe Afirmativo, and the establishment of LGBTQ+ community centres in marginalized areas of the country show the progress being made.
Article researched and written by Valerie Meléndez, Samuel Pardo & María del Pilar Villacob
Colombia is a land of contrasts. Although, more often than not, it presents itself as a culturally and politically diverse society working towards openness and acceptance, it is impossible to ignore those instances in which, as a community, we have failed those in disadvantaged conditions. Colombia is well known for being a country that sadly overlooks those who are willing to raise their voices for others in need, those who put their lives on the line for the greater good, and simply sweeps certain matters under the rug for the sake of appearances.
Conservative as ever, Colombia is also a place where people constantly try to fit into society’s standards in order to be accepted and to avoid discrimination. Traditional values, such as Christian and Catholic values, are strongly connected to the Colombian perspective of society’s construction and morality. In a seemingly hostile environment like this, it can be difficult for minorities to achieve equality and to fight for their rights. This is the case of the LGBTQ+ community, which in spite of the fairly recent growth and acceptance of certain communities in principal cities around the country, members are still constantly being harassed and assaulted in more secluded areas and other cities with much less tolerance. In these instances, their human rights are being infringed and stepped on as if they did not exist. Many of these individuals raise their voices and risk their lives to make a change for their people, becoming the leaders of countless LGBTQ+ generations whose problems have been constantly erased and minimised.
In Colombia, LGBTQ+ leaders have stated on multiple occasions that the system works against them. Although the Constitution is clear when saying the LGBTQ+ community has the right to an education, a job, a family, access to healthcare and all the things a non-queer person gets, this is being contradicted on a daily basis. According to different trans activists that contributed to “Transcending Barriers: Rights and full citizenship for people with transgender life experience”, an event created to support and give trans people a space to raise their voices, members of the LGBTQ+ community are being deprived of their rights because their needs are often the lowest priority in the institutions they attend. In the words of an Afro-Colombian trans activist, they get excluded from spaces that are supposed to be inclusive, claiming that the labour market for transgender people in many spaces is scarce. Moreover, if the person gets into the laboral market, their identity tends to be restricted and disrespected, making it a negative and dehumanising experience. Another example of this, is the discrimination by teachers towards LGBTQ+ students. In 2015, 37% of LGBTQ+ students reported that they had been insulted by their teachers with homophobic and/or transphobic comments, which makes their school lives difficult and provokes a lack of motivation for getting an education in these students (Sentiido & Colombia Diversa, 2016, cited in Choi, 2020); the majority of these cases end up in favour of the teachers, who get the support of the schools and conservative parents who consider queer youth as a threat for their children’s education.
Being culturally diverse is a quality possessed by Colombia , “a country of contrasts, an assorted cultural landscape that hides a thousand-year-old tradition of diverse peoples”, according to Brand Colombia’s website. Indigenous communities, one of Colombia’s main sources of diversity, with almost two million people and representing 4,4% of Colombia’s population, find themselves often marginalised and displaced from their traditional set of values and beliefs. Therefore, it is possible to see people that are being doubly marginalised when they are simultaneously part of the LGBTQ+ community and an ethnic community such as indigenous communities. Indigenous groups in the Amazon region have established one village that holds no punishments for LGBTQ+ members if they follow certain conditions such as not living under the same roof or not kissing in public, in order to be as cautious as possible. One can say that in this instance, the LGBTQ+ members find at least tolerance, if not acceptance. Yet this example is an exception and this represents a small sample of progress in terms of endorsement. An article from France 24, describes the village that receives gay men in the Amazon: “In recent decades, the community’s leaders said they have halted cruel anti-gay punishments and offered a measure of refuge, but with caveats for about 20 gay residents like Sangama, Saul Olarte and Nilson Silva.” This village called Nazareth is one of the few safe places where indigenous queer men can be themselves, yet still with some reservations because of the novelty that this represents for some Indigenous communities. And just as social leaders have become a target of hate and violence in Colombia, so have LGBTQ+ members. Both of these cases show how indigenous communities are opening their ideological horizons to gender and sexual diversity and providing help to them while feeling empathy as a fellow minority and acknowledging queer indigenous’ people’s double struggle.
The picture in other indigenous communities elsewhere in Colombia is complex. For example, according to David Rodriguez, a gay person belonging to the Wayuu community in northern Colombia “for indigenous people the homosexual or LGBTQ+ person generally does not exist. He is considered an aberration”. A Wayuu leader also had his word speaking about homosexuality in La Guajira, stating that “the belief locally is that homosexuality is a kind of punishment or curse. A demon is thought to live in a gay man and “must be driven out,” says the Wayuu leader from Riohacha (Vassigh, 2022). Such comments demonstrate that there is a lot of work to be done in order to create cultural bridges between the Indigenous community and the LGBTQ+ community who, little by little, are crossing paths more often than what they used to.
Although the Colombian Constitution declares life as the most important and valuable right to exist, the reality does not always match this. Social leaders and members of the LGBTQ+ community suffer from constant death threats, and even lose their lives in the fight for their freedom in an oppressive society. According to a report from the human rights Ombudsman’s office, at least 63 LGBTQ+ people were murdered in 2020. 17 transgender women, 12 gay men, and 6 lesbian women were among the victims . As a minority, their lives are already at risk of being victims of hate crimes and assault, and being social leaders just adds another number to this dangerous equation, as can be seen in the case of Christina Cantillo. Christina was a fearless trans woman and activist in Santa Marta who taught teenagers about sexual and reproductive rights. A month prior to her murder, she had already started receiving death threats, and had tried to seek out help with the UNP (National Unity Protection) but to no avail. Regional NGOs, such as Caribe Afirmativo, were also reached out to in order to find protection for Christina, but it was already too late; Christina was shot dead near her home in Santa Marta on December 7th 2021. Crimes against the members of the community are characterised by impunity granted for the perpetrators, with the Colombian justice system seemingly favouring those who are aligned to the system rather than the many marginalised communities which often find themselves as victims. However, there is still hope out there.
There are organisations which are aware of the struggles that LGBTQ+ people experience in Colombia as a minority, and they put all of their efforts into creating a safe space for all of these people whose place in the world has been put on trial. An example of an NGO dedicated to the protection of these communities is Caribe Afirmativo, “an organisation working in the Caribbean part of Colombia and currently monitoring the level of violence against Trans women”. They have established safe houses around towns in Colombia’s Caribbean region, and their investigation work has also been used in news reports and in the media. Other organizations such as Colombia Diversa fight for the recognition of these rights, and then there’s others like Sentiido, an NGO that since 2013 has been confronting misinformation around gender and sexual diversity.
It is very clear that acceptance for the LGBTQ+ community in Colombia will not come as easy as one may wish. There is still a lot of unjustified hate inside of the hearts of many within society, and misinformation in the media. Yet if there’s something to learn about this situation, it’s that there’s always going to be someone willing to speak up for everyone, someone watching everyone’s back. There is work from hundreds of organisations that work with thousands of leaders in Colombia. Leaders who prefer to put their lives on the line, than conform to a system which constantly snuffs out the fire of their fight. At the end of the day, the LGBTQ+ community needs, like other minorities, the awareness and protection of diversified narratives that put them in the spotlight, at least enough to bring them vindication over the rights that they share with common individuals, because that’s what they are, part of Us, part of Colombia.
References
1. Guevara-Rosas, E. (2019). The struggles of being Transgender and
Afro-descendant in Colombia – Race and Equality. Race & Equality.
11. Choi, S. K., Divsalar, S., Flórez-Donado, J., Kittle, K., Lin, A., Meyer, I. H., & Torres-Salazar, P. (2020). Stress, Health, and Well-Being of LGBT People in Colombia.
Members if the Wiwa indigenous community. Inset: the black line of the Sierra Nevada
Article researched and written by Angeline Daino, Ronald Rocchi & Leidy Tirado.
Our planet is suffering. Nature and the world that saw us grow are being destroyed by ourselves, the so-called children of nature. Each year we see how our actions result in drastic climate changes, which have already had observable impacts on the environment in terms of extreme weather patterns, and threaten much worse such as the loss of sea ice, rapid sea-level rise, and heatwaves. Ecosystems and species have also been affected in many ways, for example, warming has forced many species to migrate from their homes or the mixture of fresh and saltwater has negatively shaped the food chain. However, there is, perhaps not a solution, but a much more beneficial and productive perspective in which this situation can be addressed; the indigenous perspective.
We know that indigenous communities are intwined with their culture, more specifically to the environment. Their relationship with nature, which they name as mother earth, is maternal, as children who serve and care for their mother. Their deity if you like. Based on the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Indigenous people have strong links to their territories, and they tend to live surrounded by natural resources, and ecosystems. They all have a strong connection to the place where they are living, and this is beautiful and special because they were the first people in these lands. It is therefore so sad that they are not as valued as they should be, especially when their knowledge could be of vital use to all of us. Every part of our planet is sacred to them, so they treat and protect it as such. The way indigenous people see the world could be the key to combating climate change. Learning from them and allowing them to have a voice within this context would be the beginning of a different path, and probably a more successful one.
Now, focusing specifically on Colombia, it can be said that it is a territory full of biodiversity. Indigenous communities live throughout Colombia, but the biggest indigenous populations are found in the departments of La Guajira, Cauca, and Nariño, and in those areas, there is so much diversity and different kinds of biomes. Colombia, like the rest of the world, faces a lot of challenges that involve the environment, including for example deforestation and emissions of greenhouse gases, and although we all are affected by these problems, the indigenous communities are even more affected because their way of living revolves around the environment. Indigenous peoples are the key; they play a fundamental role in the fight against climate change, but they are not being heard. In Colombia, the government does not offer these communities the rights, protections, or guarantees necessary to safely carry out their work as environmental defenders. They are being killed at the most extreme end or simply being ignored. It is time to change this. It is time to give them a voice. Furthermore, it is time to make the government listen to our indigenous brothers and sisters, and it is time to care more.
The situation for indigenous communities has been mixed in recent times. In Colombia, during the past years, the government has created strategies where the indigenous people are involved, in order to contribute and respect their culture and their territory. This is pertinent because according to a 2017 report by Minambiente and Ideam (Institute for hydrology, meteorology, and environmental studies), 53.4% of Colombia’s natural forests are in ethnic territories; of this figure, 46% is found in indigenous reservations and 7.3% in collective territories of Afro-Colombian communities. That’s why indigenous groups are so important and need to be cared for by the government. In some respects, as mentioned above, this is happening and this sounds promising, but in Colombia, it is more difficult than it seems because the authorities and the state do not always have territorial control over those territories and do not, therefore, help indigenous people a great deal in the protection of their lands and rights. And in fact, indigenous people face a lot of threats to their rights. The rights they have to their culture, their lives, and their way of life, are threatened because they want to protect the environment.
The dangers faced by indigenous communities in Colombia are both historic and current. The numbers show that the armed conflict left 5011 indigenous victims between 1958 and 2019. 2300 people were murdered throughout selective murders, 736 of whom were indigenous leaders and authorities. Also, there were 659 enforced disappearances and 742 massacres. The violence increased in 2002 due to the breaking of “Diálogos de Paz” (failed peace talks with the FARC guerrilla) in El Caguan and decreased in 2012 with the beginning of the Havana peace talks which led to the successful demobilization of the FARC (Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica). However, since the FARC guerrillas handed over their weapons and vacated regions which had long been under their control, the security situation for indigenous communities has worsened. Indepaz reported that 269 indigenous leaders were killed from 2016 until June 2020, many of them being killed for objecting to the presence of illicit economies or the private interests of international companies in their territory. Indigenous communities have long been persecuted by guerrilla groups, paramilitaries, unknown armed groups, and agents of the State. Indigenous communities have their base on the land, and for them, their territory represents the beginning of life. Therefore, their territory is not just a piece of land, but the axis of their culture. Taking their home away is taking their culture away. In this respect, indigenous communities have participated in different movements protesting for their rights. A recent example of that was the national strike which began on April 28, 2021, against the tax and health reform. In accordance with Global Voices, indigenous communities, in addition to the previously mentioned issues, protested against the use of glyphosate, a substance that the current government favors for the eradication of illicit crops and one that has potentially hazardous effects on public health and the environment. Indigenous communities have established unarmed indigenous guards, some of their members, in order to protect the community due to the lack of state assistance, or even the empathy of many Colombians. The challenges and dangers they face are staggering, but so is the potential of their knowledge and experience.
As mentioned above, indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities occupy much of the areas that harbor Colombia’s precious biodiversity. According to IWGIA (A International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs), almost a third of the national territory is categorized as indigenous reserves, and most of them have to face serious environmental conflicts and land grabbing due to extractive activities in the zone as was previously mentioned. To highlight this situation, it is useful to explore the case of the Wiwa, an indigenous community that lives in Colombia’s Sierra Nevada Mountain range where there are two national parks, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and Tayrona National Park. This area is the home to four different indigenous communities.
This territory has been historically affected by different problems such as colonization, illicit crop plantations (marijuana and coca), and encroaching farmland. These issues, which remain pertinent in many ways, have affected a lot of the Wiwa community because they considered these places sacred, and they decided to move from there due to the presence of dangerous actors involved. In an article by Mongabay (2016), Edinson Videl Daza, a member of the Wiwa community and a spokesman for the environment mentioned that as they are part of, and live in, the Sierra, they have the responsibility for conservation and maintaining the equilibrium between man and nature as the interlocutors. They see the earth as their mother. Their father, the sea. The rivers and streams are living beings. The animals are their younger brothers. All of this illustrates how deep their connection with nature is and how they feel they must do everything they can to protect it.
The Wiwa work with NGOs in the fight against pollution because these organizations know that the indigenous communities are the right people for this task. They don’t see the land they live on as a simple territory; they think it is home and the place they must protect because it gives them everything. Eduardo Ariza, from the American NGO The Nature Conservancy (TNC) explains: “The indigenous communities have a vision, all their culture is about conservation. The strategy is to recover their traditional territory, which they believe is marked by the ‘black line’ [an invisible line that marks the outer reaches of the Sierra where there are sacred areas important to the communities]. While it’s not feasible that they will recover all this territory, they are moving in that direction, with the support of certain government offices and other NGOs.” This “black line” has been violated for years by different groups that believe they can appropriate the indigenous territories because they are considered “stronger”; groups such as (now defunct) AUC paramilitaries, the (now defunct) FARC, the ELN and various other structures which emerged following the break-up of the AUC.
These groups not only lead to the displacement of communities, but they also kill and spread terror, so we can see how this has caused a massive violation of indigenous rights. But these criminal groups are not the only interests that threaten the community. Large enterprises which want to exploit natural resources in these zones tend to see the interests of the indigenous communities as an obstacle to their own interests, which are often shared by politicians at the local and national level in terms of establishing profit-making as being pre-eminent over the interests of local communities and the defense of nature. These contrasting views have led to some drastic actions on behalf of these multinational companies and drastic consequences for local and indigenous communities. For example, the US coal company Drummond has been accused of funding right-wing paramilitaries during the 90s, groups which were responsible for fierce violence and the forced displacement of many rural communities at that time. In the nearby department of La Guajira, home to Colombia’s most populous indigenous group, the Wayúu, the Swiss-based coal multinational Cerrejón has been accused of diverting water sources and causing the displacement of many communities.
In the end, we must acknowledge the stark difference between indigenous people and the global economic order in terms of how to understand the world in which we live. Indigenous people have the role of guardians of nature, and they believe so deeply that all of their needs as a community are ruled by the belief that the health of their environment, be it the Sierra Nevada, or anywhere else, affects the whole world. Whereas too many of us see nature as something we are going to have benefits from if we exploit it, and we don’t see the limits of our actions.
So how about if we start to become more conscious of the fact that the place in which we are living is not ours, and we cannot do what we want. We must care and care a lot because Colombia is beautiful, but all the resources we have are not there forever. How different would Colombia be if we started to care more?
As in war zones throughout the world, children have been disproportionately affected by the conflict in Colombia.
Article researched and written by Marieth Arzuza & Valentina San Juan.
No one can deny that Colombia’s long-running armed conflict is the primary source of human rights violations in the country. Indeed, it has been more than 40 years in which the Colombian civil population has dealt with the consequences of its broken social fabric. Such an armed conflict has condemned a country to economic, political and social underdevelopment. A scenario in which the opportunities of more than 13 generations of Colombians have been frustrated by the war. However, such underdevelopment cannot be generalized, but the impact on the most vulnerable population communities in the country should be emphasized: rural areas and children. Although the reconstruction of the social fabric began through different projects following the 2016 Peace Agreement between the FARC and the Santos government, rural communities continue to face a longstanding form of violence: state abandonment. Furthermore, according to Wald (2014):
“The armed conflict, for the most part, has been of a rural nature; and, secondly, rural education has been a subject that has been very much neglected by education research and needs to be thought about even more when we see that today rural areas themselves continue to experience new forms of conflict, what some have called the new conflictivities.”
The importance of these new conflictivities falls not only on current generations of Colombians, but also on future ones. This, in the long term, condemns society to the same vicious circles of violence in the country. According to Wald (2014), “rural education has been abandoned by the State, the policies it has put in place for rural education have remained in words because the type of rurality of the country is unknown”. In this sense, it is easy to imagine the consequences of State abandonment in the territories. However, it is “difficult to imagine the impact that the game of war has had on the children and adolescents who participate in it” (Chávez, Falla and Romero, 2008). It is for this reason that this article discusses the importance of recognizing rural education as a necessary tool to end the cycles of violence in areas of armed conflict in Colombia. The text wants to demonstrate that rural education is such an important tool since it takes away from the hands of violent groups, many boys, and girls who may otherwise grow up with the logic of violence in their social, family, and even school environments.
As we mentioned at the beginning of this article, the dynamics of war within the same territory have the particularity of affecting all the social spheres of a state, trampling over endless human rights. In Colombia, “education has been subjected to the logic of armed conflict, putting the lives of students and teachers in danger” (Jaramillo, 2012).
This can be evidenced in that, in Colombia, the Observatory of Memory and Conflict of the CNMH reported that between 1958 and 2018 throughout the country, 1,579 teachers have been direct victims of the armed conflict, and 1,063 (67.3%) have suffered selective assassinations. Furthermore, 201 (12.7%) teachers suffered kidnappings, and 200 (12.6%), disappearances (Martinez, 2022).
The right to education of thousands of Colombian children and young people is being impeded by the violent acts perpetrated by irregular armed actors and their clashes with state forces. Besides, as Jaramillo (2012) states, “in the seven departments where the law and order situation is most critical, 66 per cent of young people do not have access to secondary education”. More specifically, “in the municipality of Uribe (Meta), for example, the coverage rate in basic secondary education is 2%; in Cartagena del Chairá (Caquetá) it is 14%, and in Puerto Asís (Putumayo) it is less than 6%” (Min Educación, n.d). Clearly, as the figures reflect, the absence of state control in the different Colombian rural territories has frustrated the possibility of studying for thousands of children and young people. This lack of opportunities is a contributing factor in the recruitment of young people by armed groups who step into the power vacuum in these isolated and long marginalized rural areas.
Moreover, the most serious aspect of this phenomenon is the consequences of a child not being able to access basic education. Perhaps one of the most serious issues that this article is seeking to address is the linking of these children to the armed groups in their territories. According to Romero & Chávez (2008), three forms of recruitment can be seen: voluntary, forced and by birth. According to the Procuraduría General de la Nación and the ICBF: “The concept of “voluntaries” in recruitment must always and in all cases be understood as the combination of external factors that force children and adolescents to make decisions that principle are vitiated (PGN and ICBF, 2004).”
Indeed, this type of voluntary connection is facilitated mainly by personal reasons, which, although they are not the direct responsibility of the State, the context of the political, social and economic system in which children and adolescents live has strongly motivated them to join an armed group. Within this situation enters the will to change their financial situation (escape poverty), the ideological alignments with the armed groups, or even the search for revenge (Romero & Chávez, 2008).
The second type of recruitment is forced recruitment. There are children and young people who participate in the hostilities of the conflict due to physical and psychological coercion. Some were handed over by their mother or father against their will, and felt pressured and threatened by one or another armed group. Others joined because in some parts of the country each family had to provide a member of the armed group in the area of influence. One such case is the story of Sebastian. He was five years old and one day the armed actors told him he could not go back home. They took him to the jungle, where they gathered him with other children and taught them not to feel pain, not to feel emotions, not to play. The guns were not plastic, on the contrary, since he was a child he used real bullets (Semana, 2021). According to a special report by Semana (2021), war does not recognize gender. Girls are also recruited, but in this case the situation can be worse, as they are not only used for war, but also they are sometimes victims of sexual crimes. Maria was not taken to the jungle by force, nor was she taken from her parents. She was used as a bargaining chip. She was 14 years old, had left home at the age of 12 and was working with a merchant, a clothing salesman. Not only that, but she helped him with his work, but seeing as he did not have enough money to take care of her welfare, he handed her over to the guerrilla. These types of cases demonstrate the lack of opportunities that young people face throughout many parts of Colombia.
And finally, there is recruitment from birth: There are boys and girls who were literally born into the guerrilla as children of combatants. They are minors who do not know another way of life and are considered property of it (Romero & Chávez, 2008). Indeed, children born in guerrilla camps did not know any other reality than war in all spheres of their lives. This not only condemned them to the violation of their human rights from birth, but even some of these children were the product of the violation of their mothers’ human rights, that is, through sexual violence. As a consequence of this cruel reality where the war took freedom and childhoods from thousands of Colombian children, today we have a broken social fabric full of adults marked from childhood by the ravages of the armed conflict. Affecting them not only socially, politically and economically, but also psychologically.
According to Jaramillo (2012), the Human Development Report produced by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) estimated that in the year 2000 there were approximately 6,000 children associated with armed groups in Colombia. And despite the fact that this figure has been reduced over the years, and even more after the signing of the 2016 Peace Agreement, this does not indicate for any reason that this problem is close to being resolved or that the State itself is making an effort to solve it. This can be evidenced by the complaint filed by former councillor Hollman Morris that four minors were allegedly killed in an army operation against dissidents members of the FARC guerrillas, and this sparked controversy over bombardments on camps that housed under-age recruits., several of whom were killed in the attack. However, the defense secretary mentioned that they were “young people recruited and turned into war machines” , as such removing them from their role as victims and justifying that they had to be sacrificed as well (El Espectador, 2021). Such acts and comments give an impression that just because these young people were in the ranks of the dissident group, as seen above, often through little choice of their own, they automatically forfeit their rights as Colombians. In addition, there is the curse that these victims will carry for life, even after they have been released from these armed groups. According to Sánchez et al. (2021), the children who survived the armed conflict in Colombia’s Atlantic Department suffer from a variety of mental health issues, including emotional and behavioral issues. Furthermore, contextual factors such as family functioning and perceived social support were linked to these issues. These types of mental health challenges are an important public health issue since they not only affect the life of the child in the short and long term, but also that of their family and community. As peace studies indicate, war can leave an emotional footprint on children that persists throughout their lives, with indirect effects on subsequent generations (Chapple et al., 2005; Fremont, 2004; Kadir et al., 2019).
Furthermore, many of these victims continue to be persecuted even after leaving these armed groups, leading to their deaths. According to La Vanguardia (2021) since the signing of the peace agreement in September 2016, almost 250 ex-combatants have been killed. Many of these victims were participants in programs like the Havana agreement, where they complete reintegration, social work or rural productive projects for these victims. “We are lamenting, crying and demanding answers for the death of our comrades,” said Tulio Murillo Ávila, one of the FARC reinsertion leaders in Meta. One such example is the case of Albeiro, who was killed on a small cocoa plantation he was managing with other ex-combatants. The killer was a member of a FARC splinter group that had refused to lay down its arms. These testimonies show that these victims have not really been freed from their chains of pain and persecution (La Vanguardia, 2021).
In conclusion, we know that state abandonment results in a vicious circle of political rural violence, marginalizing the same territories which have historically been impacted by the conflict. Similarly, among the new conflictivities provided by armed violence are the lack of political, economic and social opportunities. Nevertheless, if there are ways of tackling the lack of development opportunities, supporting a competent educational system that can deal with the dynamics of violence in the territories is one of them. Above all, the creation an educational system that can prevent militancy, whether voluntary, forced or by birth, of thousands of Colombian children. Finally, it is clear that the establishment of a Peace Agreement with the rest of the Colombian armed groups is key to intervening with public policies that transform these marginalized territories. However, peace should never be understood as the absence of a conflict, but rather a process involving political will which must go hand in hand with projects that eradicate the violent dynamics of these communities and the country in general. In this sense, the strengthening of the educational system in rural areas, in addition to being a way to build peace and reduce the levels of violence, inequality and marginalization, represents the effective fulfillment of the human rights of thousands of Colombians.
Martinez, J (2022) Docencia rural en Colombia: educar para la paz en medio del conflicto armado, Universidad Iberoamericana de México. https://doi.org/10.29043/liminar.v20i1.901
Sánchez-Villegas, M., Reyes-Ruiz, L., Taylor, L., Pérez-Ruíz, N., & Carmona-Alvarado, F. (2021). Mental health problems, family functioning and social support among children survivors of Colombia’s armed conflict. Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research, 13(1), 61-72.
Wald, N. (2014). Impact of Education Programs in Colombian Conflict Areas: Children Attend School More Frequently, But Performance Has Barely Improved. DIW Economic Bulletin, 4(12), 18-22. https://ideas.repec.org/a/diw/diwdeb/2014-12-4.html
Aura Esther Garcia, LGBTQ+ activists, the midwives of Chocó & Francia Marquez.
Originally published: Oct 27, 2022
9 min read
Article researched and written by Nicolas Convers, Valeria Mier & Maria Alejandra Plata.
Although human rights are inalienable; indivisible; interdependent and interrelated, in Colombia, there are many public violations yet very little reporting about this. This is the reason why social leaders must be appreciated, as they exist to defend people who believe that they do not have a voice. For example, there are indigenous and Afro-Colombian leaders, environmental defenders, union leaders, women’s rights activists, and LGBTQ+ leaders, among other areas of activism (Corredor, 2018). It’s important to emphasize that this is not an easy job. They are in constant danger and face many challenges for the work they do. Women specifically, have an even more complicated job being a leader because there is a conception that a good leader must necessarily be a man, but over time women have begun to develop a more important role in leading communities. In the specific case of Colombia, thanks to the armed conflict, both women social leaders and the community they represent are seriously affected by violence, mainly sexual violence, with the aim of frightening them, silencing them and being able to control the territory. This has always represented an obstacle and a problem that needs urgent attention. This article seeks to eliminate any misconceptions about the role of women in the leadership of minority groups, as well as to praise the achievements, acknowledge the challenges, and celebrate the changes accomplished by female leaders, despite being perceived as less capable of leading their own community.
The OECD encourages gender equality as a key facilitator of inclusive growth and national well-being (OECD, 2016). In particular, the equal participation of women and men in decision-making positions in public institutions is inherent in their perception as being legitimate, representative, and trustworthy. Inclusion must take into account intersecting factors such as gender, identity, race, age, socio-economic background, and minority status, among others. Political empowerment is also essential for democratic governance; this relates to citizens’ legal rights to vote, express their opinions, run for elected office and exercise these rights without facing discrimination.
However, in Colombia, there have always been challenges for women in general. This is particularly true for Afro-descendant and indigenous women. According to the Inter-American Commission Of Human Rights, they have been victims of multiple forms of discrimination on the basis of their race, ethnic background, and their condition as women, a situation aggravated by the armed conflict. They face two layers of discrimination since they are born: firstly, as members of their racial and ethnic group, and secondly, their sex. It is important to note that Colombian women have lobbied for legislation, advocated for human rights, and also promoted a public discourse in favor of peace, mediated or mitigated the conflict in their communities, mobilized their members, and repaired community relationships broken by the war.
A great example of an Afro-Colombian social leader is Francia Marquez, who today is the vice-president of Colombia, without having previously held political office. Francia is on the list of the 100 most influential and inspiring women in the world and among her first acts as an influential social leader was to convene 80 women for a 10 day march to the capital of Colombia in protest against illegal mining in their territory. Francia won a Goldman Environmental Prize for this act and for making herself heard. Among her most recognized and important postures are the protection of the environment, the economic equality of women, the decriminalization of abortion (which today in Colombia is a reality) and the lack of state presence in long marginalized regions of the country. As vice-president, she aims to tackle these issues through the creation of the Ministry for Equality. She is perhaps the most well known social leader in Colombia given her status and achievements, but there are many notable female leaders throughout the country, and they often face difficult circumstances.
In Colombia’s rural society, permeated by the armed conflict, there are men and women who organize themselves to prevent human rights violations. These are social leaders, people who for years have built relationships of trust with the communities, suffering a high risk of being victimized by criminal structures. With the signing of the Peace Accord at the end of 2016, defenders had the hope of being able to carry out their leadership publicly without running the dangers of the past. However, this illusion is being minimized by the extermination to which they are being subjected. And, although this is not a new phenomenon, it has become more visible in the media and academic circles in recent times. It is worth remembering that, within the framework of the armed conflict, specific violence has been directed against women and sectors belonging to the LGBTQ+ population. The best example of this phenomenon is sexual violence, which signifies a power relationship between the perpetrator and the victim. Women, then, have fewer opportunities to represent their communities, as their transcendence in the public sphere is still limited. And, when they do, they are at risk of femicides, threats, rape, and displacement, which discourages the emergence of new women leaders. Of the total number of defenders assassinated since the signing of the Peace Accords, more than 300 according to Indepaz (20% of the total) have been against women leaders. Two such leaders were Aura Esther Garcia and Maria del Pilar Hurtado. Aura Esther Garcia, who according to the newspaper El Tiempo was ambushed and murdered when she was returning with her husband to the indigenous community of Arronshy, of which she was a traditional authority, had campaigned against corruption in the region which has seen funds allocated for student’s food resources being embezzled in a department where as many as 5,000 children have died of nutritional issues in the past 14 years. And on the other hand, we have Maria Del Pilar Hurtado, who was murdered in Tierralta in the south of Cordoba in 2019. One of the most complex problems in southern Córdoba is access to land and housing, which led this woman to participate in the illegal construction of homes on land belonging to the local political elite, for which she was threatened and later murdered. Three years later, the case remains unsolved in terms of establishing those ultimately responsible. This case received nationwide attention due to the viralisation of a video showing her young son crying and wailing angrily following his mother’s murder. Most cases however, pass with very little comment or analysis.
Women in Colombia, including female activists, also face severe threats in terms of challenges to their health. Problems include the poor access to it; problems which create the need for outstanding women who perform minor miracles to compensate for the situation we have. Women in Colombia suffer many reproductive health risks due to major obstacles in accessing minimum health services. With this we can evidence the power vacuum that exists within several territories in Colombia and how communities are affected by it.
In the specific case of women in the jungles of northwestern Colombia, access to a health system is almost impossible and because of this, every time a woman is about to give birth, it represents a great risk to which they, unfortunately, have to subject themselves. According to Mantilla (2020), one of the most common misconceptions about the recent armed confrontation in Colombia is the idea that the demobilization of the FARC created a power vacuum in the peripheries that is being occupied by other armed groups. The truth is that when it comes to the politics of crime, “vacuum” is an inoperative concept, thanks to the fact that there is a power, just not the state. Fortunately, there are midwives in this region who cross the jungle to attend to these women. Midwives without any recognized knowledge of medicine are in charge of reducing the risk to which women are subjected. This is very common in the department of Chocó where the women are used to giving birth at home, without a doctor but with the help of these midwives who give their all to make this moment easier. This knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation, from woman to woman. Some of these important midwives in this community are Pacha, Keyla and Manuela; these amazing women have helped many women at the time of childbirth. Pacha, for example, is the most experienced, and she makes medicine from the properties that the jungle provides and this knowledge is transmitted to the other women. And on the other hand, there is the leader and activist Manuela, who is a nurse that founded an organization to help the midwives of the jungle and involve them a little more with medicine in order to increase their knowledge from a scientific perspective. The incredible efforts by these amazing women demonstrate the length that community members will go to in order to make up for the lack of state support they can count on. Their work is even more impressive given that such noble work is often rewarded with threats, violence and human rights infringements by the informal powers that be who hold sway in the region.
The Colombian conflict has been huge in terms of violations of human rights. Communities like the LGBTQ+ and women have suffered discrimination throughout the years of conflict. According to Gutierrez (2018), for decades, many women’s, feminist and LGBTQ+ organizations have pressed for a peaceful resolution to the armed conflict. They were influential in the creation of a ‘gender subcommission’ at the peace negotiation table (as part of the peace process between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrillas), which was responsible for incorporating a gender approach in all of the chapters of the peace agreement because the guerrillas wanted to recognize their own responsibility in the violations faced by women.
Throughout decades of conflict, women and members of the LGBTQ+ community have suffered various types of violence at the hands of guerrilla groups, paramilitaries and members of the public forces including sexual violence, forced recruitment and murder.
The consequences of the Colombian conflict for the LGBTQ+ community are explained by Cheverry (2016) who says that these types of sexual discrimination generate fear and unconscious attitudes that limit the freedom of women and affect LGBTQ+ people, as evidenced through panic attacks, and a constant awareness about how they express their sexuality. According to information from Caribe Afirmativo (2021), members of this community continue to face threats and harassment: “They told us that they did not want to see areperas or marimachos (derogatory terms used to refer to members of the LGBTQ+ community) here in the department of Arauca, that we had to leave because if we didn’t, they would kill us. It was not only me who was threatened at that time; it was several of our colleagues, several of our companions’. To survive they have to follow certain strategies like demonstrating social control in front of armed groups, hiding their sexuality, or being forced to move to another location. The Colombian government didn’t do anything to resolve this issue at that time and even now in the countryside of the country, many people continue to be harassed because of their sexual orientation.
Nowadays Colombia needs to focus more than ever on new ways of facing the conflict in the countryside. We have a peace agreement with the FARC, but we still have to resolve a lot of problems. Social leaders need a better representation because of the mass of people that they represent. Also, the government has to give them security and support in order to continue the labor in their communities. Many LGBTQ+ and female social leaders are truly representing a community marginalized by their own country, unprotected, and without several resources such as medical support in many parts of the country, or even proper food and water. We need to be more supportive of this cause because of the risks that social leaders face, facing the constant danger and the challenges of their line of work in a place that has been forgotten, marginalized, and discriminated against by the government and armed groups.
These social leaders want to improve and save their communities and also make Colombia a better place to live for everyone, not only the inhabitants of that region or even the LGBTQ+ community. These leaders are working to make Colombia a place for everyone; a place where you can live in peace and respect for what you are and for what you want to be, bringing some freedom and peace to a country full of violence and in the shadow of conflict.
References
González,J and bueno-Hansen, P,(2021) The Promise and Perils of Mainstreaming Intersectionality in the Colombian Peace Process, “International Journal of Transitional Justice”. Volume 15, Issue 3, November 2021, Pages 553–575
Gutierrez, A. (2018).”Las lideresas asesinadas tienen nombre”. Redacción Pares
Wurtz H. (2012). Indigenous Women of Latin America: Unintended Pregnancy, Unsafe Abortion, and Reproductive Health Outcomes. Pimatisiwin, 10(3), 271–282.
Maya, L (2016). “LA OTRA CARA DE LA EXCLUSIÓN: LAS VÍCTIMAS LGBT DEL CONFLICTO ARMADO COLOMBIANO”. Universidad del Rosario. Bogota.
Wilton’s widow Saida Garcia and teenage daughter Sheilis on the bridge over the river Don Diego (Magdalena).
On the third anniversary of the murder of Sierra de Nevada National Park ranger Wilton Orrego, La Libertad Sublime would like to share this text detailing information about his life and death. The piece is a translation of an article which was originally published in Spanish by El Tiempo on August 29th 2021.
The case of Wilton Orrego, park ranger in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, is a cruel reflection of the violence suffered by the defenders of nature, and the population in general, in a paradise of biodiversity where paramilitaries sustain their own monarchy. It is also an example of the irreparable pain caused by the death of a loved one.
“You’re not going to die. You’re not going to leave me alone!” – pleaded Saida to her husband Wilton, who was bleeding heavily. He squeezed her hand trying to calm her, and then let go to ask her, pointing with his fingers, to push his tongue inside the bloody mess that was his mouth. A tongue that hung out, like a snake, from the hole which the bullet had pierced in his face an hour beforehand. Another shot had skimmed the back of his head, without causing injury, according to the report by Medicina Legal.
“We’ve got so many dreams, so many objectives, a daughter for whom we have to fight” he responded, talking as if he had a gag between his teeth; a voice which struggled through the rampant red river that was draining his life.
“Do you feel bad?” asked Saida.
“Very bad” Wilton responded as he lifted up his head.
“He looked at me. He looked at his father. He smiled and he closed his eyes. And I felt as if I died with him”, added Saida Garcia with a wounded soul as she recalls the night of January 14th, 2019, when they killed her husband: Wilton Fauder Orrego León. He was 38 years old and had been a park ranger of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta national park since May 2016. In the end, it was a calm death, as befitting Wilton: a tranquil and conciliatory man. He had seemed to Saida like a grandfather who would always bring calm to a situation.
Saida and Wilton had met one another on July 13th, 2002. She recalls the date because from the moment they saw each other, they were in love. He had arrived in the area a couple of months previously to work as a labourer on a plantain farm. She had studied to work as a secretary. Seven months later, they married at a notary in Santa Marta, with the religious ceremony taking place in the Cuadrangular evangelical church, where they congregated weekly. They moved into the home of Saida’s family. They struggled for money but had love in abundance. Not long after, they had a daughter, Sheilis Milena. The couple started to earn a living selling minutes for phone calls, and after they set up a small shop selling flip-flops and swimming shorts as well as a butcher’s shop.
They were both campesinos – poor like nearly all campesinos in Colombia – and they had both been displaced from their lands due to the armed conflict; two among the nearly 8 million displaced according to government statistics.
Wilton had been born in Mingueo, near Dibulla in the department of La Guajira, and the paramilitaries had forced him from his plot of land. Saida and her family were forced to flee their home in San Juan Nepomuceno, in the department of Bolivar, due to clashes between the paramilitaries and guerrilla forces.
They came together in Don Diego, a small town to the east of Santa Marta, situated by the river of the same name: a paradise between the sea and the jungle, located on the Troncal del Caribe, the major route linking Riohacha to Santa Marta. It is a stretch of land which is increasingly popular and attractive for tourism, and one of the most beautiful, biodiverse and visited regions in Colombia.
In 2019, before the pandemic, the country received 4,352,086 visitors, of which 2.8 million were foreigners, according to the ministry of commerce, industry and tourism. Santa Marta hosted 400,000 of these visitors, demonstrating the growth and potential of the tourism industry; yet it is far from being a victimless industry.
Despite the economic potential of the region, one of the principal sources of financing for the illegal armed groups, and for local criminal structures, is related to what has been called oro verde; the green gold of the tourism business. In Buritaca and Bahia Concha (popular beach spots in the region), to take just two examples, a percentage of the fees paid by tourists to enter the sites ends up in the coffers of the Pachencas (one of the principal illegal organisations operating in the region), according to the early warning 045 emitted by the Ombudsman’s Office in May 2018.
It is a destination known nationally and internationally as a sanctuary of nature with golden sands, turquoise waters, two national parks (Tayrona and the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta), and a major archaeological site: Teyuna, the lost city of the Tayrona civilization, which is reached by a two day trek and is considered as the Colombian Machu Picchu.
This touristic portfolio has been extending along the Troncal del Caribe route with an unceasing development of hotels and hostels, from budget to high end, which has surged following the booming success of Palomino. Palomino is a nearby town towards Dibulla in La Guajira – a town of unpaved roads and lacking drinking water – which in the last 15 years has become the principal hippie and backpacker attraction in the region. It is situated about a 20 minute drive from the home of Wilton and Saida, in a region where for decades now, nothing is permitted without the approval of paramilitaries connected to the clan of Hernan Giraldo, a group known in recent years as the Pachencas or the Autodefensas Conquistadores de la Sierra Nevada.
A clan.
An empire.
A monarchy.
A parallel and immovable government.
The Pachencas, or the Autodefensas Conquistadores de la Sierra Nevada as they identify themselves, are a legacy of the now extinct Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) paramilitaries, who handed in their arms in 2006. Hernan Giraldo, known locally as El Patrón (the boss), was extradited to the U.S. like the other paramilitary bosses for their involvement in drug trafficking. Although he was returned to Colombia on January 25th 2021 having served 12 years, his future is uncertain seeing as he was convicted (in absentia) in 2019 for hundreds of crimes: homicides, forced disappearances, torture and kidnapping. The proceedings included 706 criminal acts of various description, including the sexual abuse of dozens of girls and young ladies in the Sierra Nevada. For this reason, it is unsurprising that there are scores of adolescents and adults who carry his bloodline if not his name.
In these fertile lands, shared with six ethnic groups, campesino communities, settlers from other parts of the country and those displaced by the violence, many people have celebrated Giraldo’s return to Colombia, even if he remains behind bars. Even though he was extradited, Giraldo was never totally absent as here, his eldest sons have continued to perpetuate his perverse legacy of coca, fear and death.
It was one of his men, it would emerge, who killed Wilton. A heavy by the name of Planchita. There are various researchers and academics who have repeatedly denounced, at the cost of receiving death threats, all of the damage which paramilitary violence has wrought on the region. One of those is John Myers, who studied Political Science and International Environmentalism in the U.S. John came to Colombia for the first time in 2001 to see and explore the birds of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Since then, he has become increasingly informed of what occurs in the region.
“The Sierra Nevada was the first place in the world where they realised you could export high quality marijuana to the U.S. in the 60s, during la marimbera bonanza. The proximity to Venezuela has also been a factor. And as such, all of this incredibly diverse region became a storehouse, logistical centre and a site for the production of drugs” stated the researcher. Myers added that the paramilitaries emerged following this period, and that they have continued to impose order and extort money, even after the demobilisation of AUC forces in 2006.
Luis Fernando Trejos, professor at the Universidad del Norte (Barranquilla), insists that all of this violence needs to be referred to as post-AUC acts, seeing as it is clear that they have never relinquished, nor even considered to do so, their power and influence. He also recommends that such a robust and powerful organisation must be challenged by the government if they wish to avoid further bloodshed.
Before donning the blue shirt worn by the staff of Parques Nacionales, and committing to the struggle for the preservation of natural resources, Wilton had been doing the opposite: he was part of an association of lumberjacks who cut down the forest for its wood. Mature ceibas and fig trees almost 40 metres in height wound up converted into rooms, beds and dining tables. Wilton also participated, alongside the community of Don Diego, in the invasion of plots of unused land, which had previously been used for banana plantations. There he built his house, right by the roadside. He did the same on another plot to build a house for his parents.
But Wilton and Saida were natural leaders. This is why he was hired by Parques Nacionales: they knew his capacities and knew that his situation was the same as that of his community in relation to the eternal issue of the settlers and their demands for land. This is a problem that has long since spiralled out of the control of the Colombian state and a problem for which there is an absence of solid data. These are people who feel that they have little choice but to invade protected areas with little interest beyond building a basic home and tilling a portion of land. Nevertheless, there are of course many instances where whole forests are cleared in order to make way for an industry which causes severe issues of contamination: cattle farming.
All of these settlers, big and small, face the same obstacle in their pursuit of territory, Parques Nacionales; no one can live within a protected area. They are not allowed to live there, nor construct there, nor grow plantain, corn nor yucca. And even less to erect hotels or hostels or any infrastructure related to tourism. Yet nobody pays attention to this and nobody does anything when these laws are violated. The incentives which have been offered, in exchange for not encroaching on the protected areas, have always been insufficient.
“We are victims of the guerrillas, of the paramilitaries, of the Parques Nacionales and of the Victims Unit”, states an indignant Amilcar Orrego, Wilton’s father.
The hiring of Wilton was not universally well received within the entity. It was not deemed coherent that a logger and an illegal settler of the Sierra, like the majority of the village’s men, was now invited to care for the forests and to follow the instructions of Parques Nacionales.
Events then occurred which generated even more pressure. Six months before Wilton was murdered, in July of 2018, six families were removed from homes they had built without permission on land in the Sierra Nevada. State institutions removed these families from the little possessions they had without offering an alternative solution. Months later, in November, unknown agents burned down the local Parques Nacionales branch: it was assumed to have been an act of retaliation for the removal. “They have to kill one of those sons of…from Parques so they’ll stop poking their nose in” was the refrain heard in those parts.
Tito Rodriguez was the head of the Parque Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, and as such, he was Wilton’s boss. He had been in that line of work for 20 years. Two months after the arson attack, he was the target of death threats. Three days before the attack on Wilton, Tito received word that they were planning to kill him. This same information was shared with his colleagues. The police assigned a bodyguard, as well as providing a panic button and cell phone so that Tito could contact them at the slightest sign of danger. Later, the National Protection Unit would assign him a bulletproof truck, two more guards and a bulletproof vest. Yet only months later, this entity would notify him, via resolution 0FI9-00420888, that despite acknowledging that he was indeed at risk, that they could no longer offer him this protection. They left him the vest, the phone and the panic button. Toto knew he must flee if he wished to stay alive.
He travelled to the United States with his wife and his two sons, aged 9 and 10, as well as Nala, the street dog they had adopted. Their objective was to get to Canada. After arriving in Miami on the 12th of November 2019, Tito and his family made a pilgrimage through the US in order to reach the border with Canada, where they were met by the sister of his wife. He carried with him the documents needed to request political asylum in that country, where he and his family would need to start over from scratch. Far from home, making ends meet in a strange land, and deprived of so much; including the simple act of communication seeing as at 50 years old, he was barely able to pass a few words in French. But at the very least, he is alive.
On the day they killed Wilton, the 14th of January 2019, Saida felt a sense of anguish. Intuition perhaps. After having chatted to his wife, Wilton decided to do some work on the site where his mother-in-law had a restaurant by the side of the road on the opposite side of the river Don Diego. They live exactly on the opposite side of that river of emerald colored water, where tourists float towards the sea in tubes while watching howler monkeys and various species of exotic birds which inhabit the verdant zone between the mountains and the sea.
Wilton started the work on his mother-in law Cenaida’s restauarant. In doing so, he made his best effort to avoid negatively impacting the site. He used guadua (similar to bamboo) and other materials of organic origin. Wilton knew well that it was prohibited to carry out any type of construction work within the protected areas of the Parques Nacionales Naturales; the entity founded in 1960 and charged (with a precarious budget it must be said) with the protection of Colombia’s natural “lungs”, 14 million hectares (more than 11% of the national territory) situated across 59 natural parks throughout the country not to mention the challenges and dangers presented by the six decades of civil conflict across Colombia. Scientists, biologists, guides and unarmed campesinos, such as Wilton, must defend our national patrimony in the midst of bullets fired by illegal organizations and the mafias of the drug trade.
At 7.15 on the night of January 14 2019, Wilton returned to his house on the other side of the river. He was exhausted and the following day had an early commitment in the evangelist church he attended with Saida. Saida and their daughter remained in the craft shop she ran selling mochilas made by women from the Arhuaca, Kogui and Wayúu communities; three of the ethnic groups present in the region. Wilton said his goodbyes with a smile on his face.
The piercing noise of the two bullets reverberated around the road. “My daughter asked me were they bullets” and I told her she would have to ask her father, said Saida, and her voice, hoarse and sweet at the same time, started to tremble. “My brother Harold called me and said they had someone injured there”. Harold picked her up on a motorbike and within seconds they were at the house where they encountered Wilton laying on the ground.
“What happened? Did you see who it was? Did you argue with someone?” Saida asked frantically. She then saw the gaping hole in his mouth, the result of the bullet which had pierced his cheek on the right hand side. Wilton tried to talk, but they could not understand anything. They got him up, covering his face with a cloth. A neighbour who owned an old pick up truck offered to bring them to the small clinic in the nearby township of Guachaca. Wilton walked towards the truck as if he had not just received the blast of two bullets and got into the truck without assistance, but not before waving goodbye to his daughter and raising a thumb to assure her that everything was ok. He was accompanied by Saida and her father, Amílcar. Within 15 minutes they arrived at the clinic in Guachaca; a sad reflection of the health system in the country, it had next to nothing. All they could offer was that the situation looked bad and that they should go to an emergency ward in a hospital, the caveat being that they would have to wait more than two hours for an ambulance to arrive from Santa Marta.
“More than two hours? But look at the bleeding!” Saida wistfully recalls saying. The nurse advised them that if they decided to go it alone, it would be their own responsibility. Saida grudgingly signed a release form and accepted an oxygen tank, the only one available in the clinic.
Leonidas Rincón, the pastor at the evangelical church where Saida and Wilton attended, picked them up in his Toyota Hilux and they set off along the Troncal del Caribe in a race against death.
Saida covered the gaping wound with her own shirt. Saida wrung the blood which soaked the shirt.
Saida hugged him and urged him to hang on, and told him how handsome he was.
Saida reminded him that he was the love of her life. That he was the love of his daughter’s life.
Using signs, Wilton asked his wife to remove the oxygen tank; all that was left was drips of water. He was almost suffocating. “Calm down. Calm down, I’m ok”, he struggled to say to his wife and her father, mangling his words as he tried to control his tongue – snake like – which was slipping out of the wound in his mouth. Wilton spat out blood, clots which resembled a chicken’s liver. And he spat out the bullet. Saida felt a light relief and told him: “My love. You spat out the bullet!”.
At 8:25 in the night, they arrived at a private clinic in Santa Marta, the closest upon arrival in the port city, only to be told that he could not be received as his insurance would not suffice for a private clinic. “But, how can you not attend him? Why do you have a hospital if not to save people ‘s lives?” Saida shouted. They returned to their race against death and headed for the Julio Mendez hospital. Wilton prayed and chanted but only the melody could be understood. Then they had their last interaction and they spoke of their undying love for their daughter and of the dreams ahead.
“Do you feel bad?”
“Very bad”
Wilton then lost consciousness.
They arrived at the hospital. They received Wilton. After a few minutes, a doctor approached Saida and told her that they couldn’t do anything. That her husband had arrived without vital signs.
Saida collapsed.
Saida filled the hospital with her howls.
Saida wailed at the universe for snatching the love of her life away.
Saida shed rivers, seas of tears.
And from that night, she has felt a blade piercing through her body and soul. A while after, in conversations with a doctor friend, she was told that access to prompt and quality healthcare would have saved Wilton’s life. That the wound to the face and the throat could have been mended. That they need not have been mortal. But Wilton’s life faded away drop by drop. He had stayed alive and conscious for an hour and twenty minutes after a paramilitary from the Pachencas entered his home and shot him. Wilton was not only shot and left to die. He was also allowed to die because of the nefarious health care in this country.
“With great sadness and massive indignation we have to give the news that a member of Parques Nacionales team was killed in the area of Perico Aguao, in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta national park. A young man, of 38 years, with a family; with a wife and a daughter of 15, who fulfilled a fundamental role for Colombia and the world which is the protection of this extraordinary natural wealth which exists in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta” – the message conveyed by Julia Miranda, the then director of Parques Nacionales Naturales, via the entity’s twitter account. She had been in charge of the entity for more than 16 years – a period during which Julia saw several of her colleagues murdered and others who had to flee the country to protect their lives – before being removed from her position in December of 2020. She was replaced in the position by Orlando Molano, ex-director of the Sports and Recreation District Institute of Bogotá.
Miranda added: “We are pained because in this area there are so many threats against the integrity of the national park, the security of the people who live there, and the safety of our functionaries”.
There are 13 martyrs of the Parques Nacionales who have been murdered in the last 30 years, according to the figures presented by the entity. Three of those cases have occurred in the Santa Marta area: Hector Vargas and Martha Hernandez, directors of the Tayrona park. The former was killed in September of 1994. He was a marine biologist and was 41 years old. They ambushed him as he was driving on the outskirts of Santa Marta. The latter was a zoologist of 44 years. She was killed on January 29th 2004, in her home in Santa Marta. She had been due to travel the next day for vacations with her husband Carlos Hernandez; a biologist who found her massacred with the impact of six bullets and who still sheds tears over Martha. Both killings were ordered by the paramilitaries – according to what has been established by investigations. Both had been encouraged to leave Tayrona by the all powerful bosses in the area where they controlled routes for drug trafficking and increasingly aspects of the tourist industry. And on January 14th, 2019, those same paramilitary forces ordered the killing of Wilton Orrego.
“We can no longer tolerate the indifference and the lack of safety guarantees for our laboral responsibilities as park rangers in Colombia” expressed a statement by the union of environmental and national park workers in response to the murder of Yamid Silva, a member of the Parque Nacional de Cocuy team, in January 2020. Yamid left a widow and three young children without a husband and father. Another case of impunity.
In the case of Wilton, there has at least been one person of interest detained: Fernando Basante Gutiérrez, alias Planchita, allegedly the person in control of the hired assassins for Los Pachencas. On his phone were found conversations regarding the plan to kill Wilton. Planchita is currently imprisoned in a jail in Boyaca on charges of delinquency, extortion and homicide, but not yet over the crime of Wilton. The investigation has not advanced.
On December 20th 2019, the recently married couple of Nathalia Jimenez and Rodrigo Monsalve, 36 and 40 years old respectively, were abducted from one of the most beautiful viewpoints in the region; a cliff overlooking a sea with tones of green and blue. They had been on their way to Palomino to enjoy a honeymoon break. Their disappearance was national news. Images were shared of the couple earlier in the day as they stopped at a toll booth in their Ford EcoSport. Nathalia was a biologist who was well known for her defense of the region and for encouraging sustainable agriculture. Rodrigo was an anthropologist, an environmentalist and also a DJ in and around Santa Marta. The day after their abduction, their bodies were discovered tied to trees, their faces covered with hoods. Both had been shot in the head, in what the police argued was a robbery gone wrong.
Ximena Cáceres, Nathalia’s mother, does not believe this version of events. She is adamant that her daughter was murdered for her work as an environmental leader in that part of the country. “She loved animals, loved the land, and she loved the campesinos. That is why they killed her” said yet another mother who faced the horrible task of burying a child. She has also stated that she wants the truth over what happened. This is the same pain felt by the mother of Wilton, who had also had to bury her younger son, Ortinso Rafael. He was only 13 when he went out with his father to collect yuca only to be bitten by a mapaná snake on December 23rd 2008. This mother who lost her only two sons is named Maria Etelvina Leon. She spoke to us on the small farm where she lives with her husband, Amílcar. There were pictures of her dead sons hanging on the wall. In the back of the house were several crates of avocados and plantains which they sell by the roadside.
“That there is some justice. My son is dead two years now and we still don’t know anything. Those who killed him are not in prison for doing so. It’s as if they killed an animal. There are so many mothers who are searching for their children and searching for the truth” wailed Maria Etelvina.
Saida and her daughter walk along the beach where the river Don Diego meets the sea; the river as wide as a motorway. Saida admits that she doesn’t want to remain as a victim. She wants to know the truth as well as seeing justice. “I have learned to step out of the ashes with more empowerment. I don’t want to leave our dreams thrown by the wayside” says Saida, a leader in her community, intelligent and a speaker of several languages; she speaks Spanish as well as the languages of the Arhuaco, Kogi and Wayúu indigenous communities. Saida shows us an area that has been replanted with the association of former loggers in Don Diego. This association is the legal guardian for the area; later we would visit the nurseries where they plant and care for various species of trees in order to continue compensating for the damage caused to eco-systems in the past; the initiative also helps to provide for those involved.
“We cannot continue crying over our dead. We need to continue fighting in honour of those who lost their lives for us” states Saida, acknowledging that despite the pain caused by her husband’s absence, she gets up each day with renewed hope.
Wilton’s widow Saida Garcia and teenage daughter Sheilis on the bridge over the river Don Diego (Magdalena).
On the third anniversary of the murder of Sierra de Nevada National Park ranger Wilton Orrego, La Libertad Sublime would like to share this text detailing information about his life and death. The piece is a translation of an article which was originally published in Spanish by El Tiempo on August 29th 2021.
The case of Wilton Orrego, park ranger in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, is a cruel reflection of the violence suffered by the defenders of nature, and the population in general, in a paradise of biodiversity where paramilitaries sustain their own monarchy. It is also an example of the irreparable pain caused by the death of a loved one.
“You’re not going to die. You’re not going to leave me alone!” – pleaded Saida to her husband Wilton, who was bleeding heavily. He squeezed her hand trying to calm her, and then let go to ask her, pointing with his fingers, to push his tongue inside the bloody mess that was his mouth. A tongue that hung out, like a snake, from the hole which the bullet had pierced in his face an hour beforehand. Another shot had skimmed the back of his head, without causing injury, according to the report by Medicina Legal.
“We’ve got so many dreams, so many objectives, a daughter for whom we have to fight” he responded, talking as if he had a gag between his teeth; a voice which struggled through the rampant red river that was draining his life.
“Do you feel bad?” asked Saida.
“Very bad” Wilton responded as he lifted up his head.
“He looked at me. He looked at his father. He smiled and he closed his eyes. And I felt as if I died with him”, added Saida Garcia with a wounded soul as she recalls the night of January 14th, 2019, when they killed her husband: Wilton Fauder Orrego León. He was 38 years old and had been a park ranger of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta national park since May 2016. In the end, it was a calm death, as befitting Wilton: a tranquil and conciliatory man. He had seemed to Saida like a grandfather who would always bring calm to a situation.
Saida and Wilton had met one another on July 13th, 2002. She recalls the date because from the moment they saw each other, they were in love. He had arrived in the area a couple of months previously to work as a labourer on a plantain farm. She had studied to work as a secretary. Seven months later, they married at a notary in Santa Marta, with the religious ceremony taking place in the Cuadrangular evangelical church, where they congregated weekly. They moved into the home of Saida’s family. They struggled for money but had love in abundance. Not long after, they had a daughter, Sheilis Milena. The couple started to earn a living selling minutes for phone calls, and after they set up a small shop selling flip-flops and swimming shorts as well as a butcher’s shop.
They were both campesinos – poor like nearly all campesinos in Colombia – and they had both been displaced from their lands due to the armed conflict; two among the nearly 8 million displaced according to government statistics.
Wilton had been born in Mingueo, near Dibulla in the department of La Guajira, and the paramilitaries had forced him from his plot of land. Saida and her family were forced to flee their home in San Juan Nepomuceno, in the department of Bolivar, due to clashes between the paramilitaries and guerrilla forces.
They came together in Don Diego, a small town to the east of Santa Marta, situated by the river of the same name: a paradise between the sea and the jungle, located on the Troncal del Caribe, the major route linking Riohacha to Santa Marta. It is a stretch of land which is increasingly popular and attractive for tourism, and one of the most beautiful, biodiverse and visited regions in Colombia.
In 2019, before the pandemic, the country received 4,352,086 visitors, of which 2.8 million were foreigners, according to the ministry of commerce, industry and tourism. Santa Marta hosted 400,000 of these visitors, demonstrating the growth and potential of the tourism industry; yet it is far from being a victimless industry.
Despite the economic potential of the region, one of the principal sources of financing for the illegal armed groups, and for local criminal structures, is related to what has been called oro verde; the green gold of the tourism business. In Buritaca and Bahia Concha (popular beach spots in the region), to take just two examples, a percentage of the fees paid by tourists to enter the sites ends up in the coffers of the Pachencas (one of the principal illegal organisations operating in the region), according to the early warning 045 emitted by the Ombudsman’s Office in May 2018.
It is a destination known nationally and internationally as a sanctuary of nature with golden sands, turquoise waters, two national parks (Tayrona and the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta), and a major archaeological site: Teyuna, the lost city of the Tayrona civilization, which is reached by a two day trek and is considered as the Colombian Machu Picchu.
This touristic portfolio has been extending along the Troncal del Caribe route with an unceasing development of hotels and hostels, from budget to high end, which has surged following the booming success of Palomino. Palomino is a nearby town towards Dibulla in La Guajira – a town of unpaved roads and lacking drinking water – which in the last 15 years has become the principal hippie and backpacker attraction in the region. It is situated about a 20 minute drive from the home of Wilton and Saida, in a region where for decades now, nothing is permitted without the approval of paramilitaries connected to the clan of Hernan Giraldo, a group known in recent years as the Pachencas or the Autodefensas Conquistadores de la Sierra Nevada.
A clan.
An empire.
A monarchy.
A parallel and immovable government.
The Pachencas, or the Autodefensas Conquistadores de la Sierra Nevada as they identify themselves, are a legacy of the now extinct Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) paramilitaries, who handed in their arms in 2006. Hernan Giraldo, known locally as El Patrón (the boss), was extradited to the U.S. like the other paramilitary bosses for their involvement in drug trafficking. Although he was returned to Colombia on January 25th 2021 having served 12 years, his future is uncertain seeing as he was convicted (in absentia) in 2019 for hundreds of crimes: homicides, forced disappearances, torture and kidnapping. The proceedings included 706 criminal acts of various description, including the sexual abuse of dozens of girls and young ladies in the Sierra Nevada. For this reason, it is unsurprising that there are scores of adolescents and adults who carry his bloodline if not his name.
In these fertile lands, shared with six ethnic groups, campesino communities, settlers from other parts of the country and those displaced by the violence, many people have celebrated Giraldo’s return to Colombia, even if he remains behind bars. Even though he was extradited, Giraldo was never totally absent as here, his eldest sons have continued to perpetuate his perverse legacy of coca, fear and death.
It was one of his men, it would emerge, who killed Wilton. A heavy by the name of Planchita. There are various researchers and academics who have repeatedly denounced, at the cost of receiving death threats, all of the damage which paramilitary violence has wrought on the region. One of those is John Myers, who studied Political Science and International Environmentalism in the U.S. John came to Colombia for the first time in 2001 to see and explore the birds of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Since then, he has become increasingly informed of what occurs in the region.
“The Sierra Nevada was the first place in the world where they realised you could export high quality marijuana to the U.S. in the 60s, during la marimbera bonanza. The proximity to Venezuela has also been a factor. And as such, all of this incredibly diverse region became a storehouse, logistical centre and a site for the production of drugs” stated the researcher. Myers added that the paramilitaries emerged following this period, and that they have continued to impose order and extort money, even after the demobilisation of AUC forces in 2006.
Luis Fernando Trejos, professor at the Universidad del Norte (Barranquilla), insists that all of this violence needs to be referred to as post-AUC acts, seeing as it is clear that they have never relinquished, nor even considered to do so, their power and influence. He also recommends that such a robust and powerful organisation must be challenged by the government if they wish to avoid further bloodshed.
Before donning the blue shirt worn by the staff of Parques Nacionales, and committing to the struggle for the preservation of natural resources, Wilton had been doing the opposite: he was part of an association of lumberjacks who cut down the forest for its wood. Mature ceibas and fig trees almost 40 metres in height wound up converted into rooms, beds and dining tables. Wilton also participated, alongside the community of Don Diego, in the invasion of plots of unused land, which had previously been used for banana plantations. There he built his house, right by the roadside. He did the same on another plot to build a house for his parents.
But Wilton and Saida were natural leaders. This is why he was hired by Parques Nacionales: they knew his capacities and knew that his situation was the same as that of his community in relation to the eternal issue of the settlers and their demands for land. This is a problem that has long since spiralled out of the control of the Colombian state and a problem for which there is an absence of solid data. These are people who feel that they have little choice but to invade protected areas with little interest beyond building a basic home and tilling a portion of land. Nevertheless, there are of course many instances where whole forests are cleared in order to make way for an industry which causes severe issues of contamination: cattle farming.
All of these settlers, big and small, face the same obstacle in their pursuit of territory, Parques Nacionales; no one can live within a protected area. They are not allowed to live there, nor construct there, nor grow plantain, corn nor yucca. And even less to erect hotels or hostels or any infrastructure related to tourism. Yet nobody pays attention to this and nobody does anything when these laws are violated. The incentives which have been offered, in exchange for not encroaching on the protected areas, have always been insufficient.
“We are victims of the guerrillas, of the paramilitaries, of the Parques Nacionales and of the Victims Unit”, states an indignant Amilcar Orrego, Wilton’s father.
The hiring of Wilton was not universally well received within the entity. It was not deemed coherent that a logger and an illegal settler of the Sierra, like the majority of the village’s men, was now invited to care for the forests and to follow the instructions of Parques Nacionales.
Events then occurred which generated even more pressure. Six months before Wilton was murdered, in July of 2018, six families were removed from homes they had built without permission on land in the Sierra Nevada. State institutions removed these families from the little possessions they had without offering an alternative solution. Months later, in November, unknown agents burned down the local Parques Nacionales branch: it was assumed to have been an act of retaliation for the removal. “They have to kill one of those sons of…from Parques so they’ll stop poking their nose in” was the refrain heard in those parts.
Tito Rodriguez was the head of the Parque Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, and as such, he was Wilton’s boss. He had been in that line of work for 20 years. Two months after the arson attack, he was the target of death threats. Three days before the attack on Wilton, Tito received word that they were planning to kill him. This same information was shared with his colleagues. The police assigned a bodyguard, as well as providing a panic button and cell phone so that Tito could contact them at the slightest sign of danger. Later, the National Protection Unit would assign him a bulletproof truck, two more guards and a bulletproof vest. Yet only months later, this entity would notify him, via resolution 0FI9-00420888, that despite acknowledging that he was indeed at risk, that they could no longer offer him this protection. They left him the vest, the phone and the panic button. Toto knew he must flee if he wished to stay alive.
He travelled to the United States with his wife and his two sons, aged 9 and 10, as well as Nala, the street dog they had adopted. Their objective was to get to Canada. After arriving in Miami on the 12th of November 2019, Tito and his family made a pilgrimage through the US in order to reach the border with Canada, where they were met by the sister of his wife. He carried with him the documents needed to request political asylum in that country, where he and his family would need to start over from scratch. Far from home, making ends meet in a strange land, and deprived of so much; including the simple act of communication seeing as at 50 years old, he was barely able to pass a few words in French. But at the very least, he is alive.
On the day they killed Wilton, the 14th of January 2019, Saida felt a sense of anguish. Intuition perhaps. After having chatted to his wife, Wilton decided to do some work on the site where his mother-in-law had a restaurant by the side of the road on the opposite side of the river Don Diego. They live exactly on the opposite side of that river of emerald colored water, where tourists float towards the sea in tubes while watching howler monkeys and various species of exotic birds which inhabit the verdant zone between the mountains and the sea.
Wilton started the work on his mother-in law Cenaida’s restauarant. In doing so, he made his best effort to avoid negatively impacting the site. He used guadua (similar to bamboo) and other materials of organic origin. Wilton knew well that it was prohibited to carry out any type of construction work within the protected areas of the Parques Nacionales Naturales; the entity founded in 1960 and charged (with a precarious budget it must be said) with the protection of Colombia’s natural “lungs”, 14 million hectares (more than 11% of the national territory) situated across 59 natural parks throughout the country not to mention the challenges and dangers presented by the six decades of civil conflict across Colombia. Scientists, biologists, guides and unarmed campesinos, such as Wilton, must defend our national patrimony in the midst of bullets fired by illegal organizations and the mafias of the drug trade.
At 7.15 on the night of January 14 2019, Wilton returned to his house on the other side of the river. He was exhausted and the following day had an early commitment in the evangelist church he attended with Saida. Saida and their daughter remained in the craft shop she ran selling mochilas made by women from the Arhuaca, Kogui and Wayúu communities; three of the ethnic groups present in the region. Wilton said his goodbyes with a smile on his face.
The piercing noise of the two bullets reverberated around the road. “My daughter asked me were they bullets” and I told her she would have to ask her father, said Saida, and her voice, hoarse and sweet at the same time, started to tremble. “My brother Harold called me and said they had someone injured there”. Harold picked her up on a motorbike and within seconds they were at the house where they encountered Wilton laying on the ground.
“What happened? Did you see who it was? Did you argue with someone?” Saida asked frantically. She then saw the gaping hole in his mouth, the result of the bullet which had pierced his cheek on the right hand side. Wilton tried to talk, but they could not understand anything. They got him up, covering his face with a cloth. A neighbour who owned an old pick up truck offered to bring them to the small clinic in the nearby township of Guachaca. Wilton walked towards the truck as if he had not just received the blast of two bullets and got into the truck without assistance, but not before waving goodbye to his daughter and raising a thumb to assure her that everything was ok. He was accompanied by Saida and her father, Amílcar. Within 15 minutes they arrived at the clinic in Guachaca; a sad reflection of the health system in the country, it had next to nothing. All they could offer was that the situation looked bad and that they should go to an emergency ward in a hospital, the caveat being that they would have to wait more than two hours for an ambulance to arrive from Santa Marta.
“More than two hours? But look at the bleeding!” Saida wistfully recalls saying. The nurse advised them that if they decided to go it alone, it would be their own responsibility. Saida grudgingly signed a release form and accepted an oxygen tank, the only one available in the clinic.
Leonidas Rincón, the pastor at the evangelical church where Saida and Wilton attended, picked them up in his Toyota Hilux and they set off along the Troncal del Caribe in a race against death.
Saida covered the gaping wound with her own shirt. Saida wrung the blood which soaked the shirt.
Saida hugged him and urged him to hang on, and told him how handsome he was.
Saida reminded him that he was the love of her life. That he was the love of his daughter’s life.
Using signs, Wilton asked his wife to remove the oxygen tank; all that was left was drips of water. He was almost suffocating. “Calm down. Calm down, I’m ok”, he struggled to say to his wife and her father, mangling his words as he tried to control his tongue – snake like – which was slipping out of the wound in his mouth. Wilton spat out blood, clots which resembled a chicken’s liver. And he spat out the bullet. Saida felt a light relief and told him: “My love. You spat out the bullet!”.
At 8:25 in the night, they arrived at a private clinic in Santa Marta, the closest upon arrival in the port city, only to be told that he could not be received as his insurance would not suffice for a private clinic. “But, how can you not attend him? Why do you have a hospital if not to save people ‘s lives?” Saida shouted. They returned to their race against death and headed for the Julio Mendez hospital. Wilton prayed and chanted but only the melody could be understood. Then they had their last interaction and they spoke of their undying love for their daughter and of the dreams ahead.
“Do you feel bad?”
“Very bad”
Wilton then lost consciousness.
They arrived at the hospital. They received Wilton. After a few minutes, a doctor approached Saida and told her that they couldn’t do anything. That her husband had arrived without vital signs.
Saida collapsed.
Saida filled the hospital with her howls.
Saida wailed at the universe for snatching the love of her life away.
Saida shed rivers, seas of tears.
And from that night, she has felt a blade piercing through her body and soul. A while after, in conversations with a doctor friend, she was told that access to prompt and quality healthcare would have saved Wilton’s life. That the wound to the face and the throat could have been mended. That they need not have been mortal. But Wilton’s life faded away drop by drop. He had stayed alive and conscious for an hour and twenty minutes after a paramilitary from the Pachencas entered his home and shot him. Wilton was not only shot and left to die. He was also allowed to die because of the nefarious health care in this country.
“With great sadness and massive indignation we have to give the news that a member of Parques Nacionales team was killed in the area of Perico Aguao, in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta national park. A young man, of 38 years, with a family; with a wife and a daughter of 15, who fulfilled a fundamental role for Colombia and the world which is the protection of this extraordinary natural wealth which exists in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta” – the message conveyed by Julia Miranda, the then director of Parques Nacionales Naturales, via the entity’s twitter account. She had been in charge of the entity for more than 16 years – a period during which Julia saw several of her colleagues murdered and others who had to flee the country to protect their lives – before being removed from her position in December of 2020. She was replaced in the position by Orlando Molano, ex-director of the Sports and Recreation District Institute of Bogotá.
Miranda added: “We are pained because in this area there are so many threats against the integrity of the national park, the security of the people who live there, and the safety of our functionaries”.
There are 13 martyrs of the Parques Nacionales who have been murdered in the last 30 years, according to the figures presented by the entity. Three of those cases have occurred in the Santa Marta area: Hector Vargas and Martha Hernandez, directors of the Tayrona park. The former was killed in September of 1994. He was a marine biologist and was 41 years old. They ambushed him as he was driving on the outskirts of Santa Marta. The latter was a zoologist of 44 years. She was killed on January 29th 2004, in her home in Santa Marta. She had been due to travel the next day for vacations with her husband Carlos Hernandez; a biologist who found her massacred with the impact of six bullets and who still sheds tears over Martha. Both killings were ordered by the paramilitaries – according to what has been established by investigations. Both had been encouraged to leave Tayrona by the all powerful bosses in the area where they controlled routes for drug trafficking and increasingly aspects of the tourist industry. And on January 14th, 2019, those same paramilitary forces ordered the killing of Wilton Orrego.
“We can no longer tolerate the indifference and the lack of safety guarantees for our laboral responsibilities as park rangers in Colombia” expressed a statement by the union of environmental and national park workers in response to the murder of Yamid Silva, a member of the Parque Nacional de Cocuy team, in January 2020. Yamid left a widow and three young children without a husband and father. Another case of impunity.
In the case of Wilton, there has at least been one person of interest detained: Fernando Basante Gutiérrez, alias Planchita, allegedly the person in control of the hired assassins for Los Pachencas. On his phone were found conversations regarding the plan to kill Wilton. Planchita is currently imprisoned in a jail in Boyaca on charges of delinquency, extortion and homicide, but not yet over the crime of Wilton. The investigation has not advanced.
On December 20th 2019, the recently married couple of Nathalia Jimenez and Rodrigo Monsalve, 36 and 40 years old respectively, were abducted from one of the most beautiful viewpoints in the region; a cliff overlooking a sea with tones of green and blue. They had been on their way to Palomino to enjoy a honeymoon break. Their disappearance was national news. Images were shared of the couple earlier in the day as they stopped at a toll booth in their Ford EcoSport. Nathalia was a biologist who was well known for her defense of the region and for encouraging sustainable agriculture. Rodrigo was an anthropologist, an environmentalist and also a DJ in and around Santa Marta. The day after their abduction, their bodies were discovered tied to trees, their faces covered with hoods. Both had been shot in the head, in what the police argued was a robbery gone wrong.
Ximena Cáceres, Nathalia’s mother, does not believe this version of events. She is adamant that her daughter was murdered for her work as an environmental leader in that part of the country. “She loved animals, loved the land, and she loved the campesinos. That is why they killed her” said yet another mother who faced the horrible task of burying a child. She has also stated that she wants the truth over what happened. This is the same pain felt by the mother of Wilton, who had also had to bury her younger son, Ortinso Rafael. He was only 13 when he went out with his father to collect yuca only to be bitten by a mapaná snake on December 23rd 2008. This mother who lost her only two sons is named Maria Etelvina Leon. She spoke to us on the small farm where she lives with her husband, Amílcar. There were pictures of her dead sons hanging on the wall. In the back of the house were several crates of avocados and plantains which they sell by the roadside.
“That there is some justice. My son is dead two years now and we still don’t know anything. Those who killed him are not in prison for doing so. It’s as if they killed an animal. There are so many mothers who are searching for their children and searching for the truth” wailed Maria Etelvina.
Saida and her daughter walk along the beach where the river Don Diego meets the sea; the river as wide as a motorway. Saida admits that she doesn’t want to remain as a victim. She wants to know the truth as well as seeing justice. “I have learned to step out of the ashes with more empowerment. I don’t want to leave our dreams thrown by the wayside” says Saida, a leader in her community, intelligent and a speaker of several languages; she speaks Spanish as well as the languages of the Arhuaco, Kogi and Wayúu indigenous communities. Saida shows us an area that has been replanted with the association of former loggers in Don Diego. This association is the legal guardian for the area; later we would visit the nurseries where they plant and care for various species of trees in order to continue compensating for the damage caused to eco-systems in the past; the initiative also helps to provide for those involved.
“We cannot continue crying over our dead. We need to continue fighting in honour of those who lost their lives for us” states Saida, acknowledging that despite the pain caused by her husband’s absence, she gets up each day with renewed hope.
Community and political activist Francisco Giacometto was brutally murdered in Santa Marta in April 2021.
The role of social leaders in a country such as Colombia is a vitally important one. A social leader according to the RAE is “a person who leads or directs a political party, social group or other collectivity” (s. f.). Nonetheless, that definition does not fulfill all the characteristics of the work that a social leader does or their importance for their communities in Colombia. A more accurate approximation reads: “A social leader is a person who defends the rights of the collective and develops an action for the common good recognized in his or her community, organization, or territory. Every social leader is considered a defender of human rights” (Editorial La República S.A.S., 2021). Taking that into account, it can be said that social leaders are people who are in positions of responsibility, and who fight for the rights of their communities or groups. This concept of perception is broadly used in Colombia since social leaders are the ones that help their communities and act or have a presence where there is an absence of the State.
Francisco Giacometto is one of the multitudes of social leaders that have been assassinated in Colombia following the signing of the peace agreement. In this essay, Francisco’s case will be explored as well as the context of violence in the department of Magdalena in addition to the objective of highlighting the importance of social leaders in Colombia.
On April 18, 2021, the inhabitants of downtown Santa Marta alerted the local authorities because the house of Francisco Giacometto was emitting a strange stench, and they had not seen him leaving it since days before. So, the police decided to enter the house and found the terrible scene of Giacometto’s beheaded body lying on the floor. Apparently, the activist had been tortured and mortal wounds had been inflicted on his neck. It was suspected that the murder had been carried out several days earlier as the body was decomposing at the time of discovery. This news caused great commotion in the city and the governor of Magdalena made a statement offering a reward of 30 million pesos (7.915 US dollars) for information that would help to clarify and find the person responsible for the crime. Through investigative work carried out by the National Police, Diego Jesús Umbría Estilda, alias ‘Flaco’, was identified in Santa Marta (Magdalena), as the possible perpetrator of the crime of the political activist. The authorities relied on a series of security camera videos to identify this person. From there, they began their search for him until they were able to apprehend him (El Tiempo, 2021). The 8th Municipal Criminal Court ordered him to be placed in prison in relation to the crime. However, Umbria Estilda, from Venezuela, did not accept these charges. On one hand, it seems like a closed case. On the other hand, it was not possible to obtain more information about the real motives of this person to murder Francisco or if he was the material actor of a plan carried out by other people. In cases of violence towards social leaders and activists in Colombia, it is not uncommon to see charges brought against the person supposedly responsible for carrying out the crimes, yet not so common to see who has ordered the killings. On occasion, these judicial conclusions raise more questions than answers. For example, in December 2019, biologists Natalia Jimenez and Rodrigo Monsalve were brutally murdered as they took off from Santa Marta to celebrate their honeymoon in the beach town of Palomino. Within days, the case was seemingly solved when three men, also hailing from Venezuela, were charged for the murder of the couple in a robbery gone wrong (El Tiempo, 2019); yet the fact that the couple showed signs of torture does not seem to align with this official explanation, nor does the speed with which the investigations were concluded. For this reason, it is essential to know more about the life and work of Francisco Giacometto in order to better understand the context of his murder.
Francisco Giacometto was an activist who understood the dangers of being stigmatized for political beliefs. According to the information portal Infobae (2021), Francisco Giacometto was a recognized student leader in Magdalena who was part of various leftist movements such as the JUCO Communist Youth, the Unes (a student unity movement) and was a co-founder, in the 1980s, of the Union Patriotica (UP), a Colombian leftist political party formed as part of an internal peace agreement process when the FARC guerrillas argued that by supporting the creation of this party they would explore the possibility of pursuing politics without weapons under the ceasefire agreements signed by government commissioner John Agudelo Ríos during the presidency of Belisario Betancur in the 1980s. However, from the very beginning, the UP, as it was commonly known, was subjected to all kinds of harassment and attacks and according to Cepeda (2006) in 1984, the first murders and forced “disappearances” targeting the party occurred. Throughout the 80s and 90s, anywhere between 3,000 and 5,000 members of the UP were massacred (El Pais), including countless elected officials and two presidential candidates. The majority of these killings were perpetrated by paramilitary groups and drug cartels, often working in collusion with state agents. These attacks effectively exterminated the UP as a political force and highlighted the danger faced by those who are identified as having alternative political leanings; those targeted were stigmatized as being an extension of the guerrilla forces rather than political activists. Unfortunately, such stigmatization continues to this day. Giacometto had moved to Santa Marta to support political activism and propaganda work in the city with the intention of “contributing to social justice and the consolidation of change” (Voz, 2021). In the same way, he always stood out for the defense of human rights, the intense desire to propagate the party’s lines, and for the dissemination of the newspaper ‘Voz’, of the communist party. According to the above, it is possible to infer that Francisco remained faithful and died defending his ideological belief. It is heartbreaking to know that this is not the first nor the last case of people who are silenced because they represent a “problem” or an obstacle for the interests of the powerful This kind of situation is constant in Colombia with over 1,200 social leaders and human rights defenders murdered since 2016 (Indepaz), and the Magdalena department is no exception with the high profile murders of leaders such as Maritza Quiroz, Wilton Orrego, Alejandro Llinas and the aforementioned Natalia Jimenez and her husband Rodrigo Monsalve all occurring in the department in the past 3 years. In these cases, it is crucial to explore the type of work and activism pursued by the victims and for this reason, it is vital to know what Francisco had been involved in.
A social leader performs different types of work depending on the different types of rights they seek to guarantee. The work of Francisco Giacometto or “Yako” as he was known to friends, was based on guaranteeing the right to youth organization and participation, principally in defense of public education and a dignified life for the youth. According to Infobae (2021), the political leader played an important role as a witness in the investigative issues surrounding the murder of Nicolas Neira at the hands of the ESMAD (this is the Colombian anti-riot squad). Neira was injured during the demonstrations of May 1, 2005, and Francisco had assisted him at the time of the clashes; it is important to mention that this murder was declared a state crime. In January 2021, after 16 years of legal processes, ESMAD agent Néstor Rodríguez Rúa was convicted as being responsible for the shooting of Nicolás, causing the wounds that led to his death. Months later, on March 26, another former ESMAD agent was convicted, retired Major Fabián Mauricio Infante. Infante had been accused of concealing the homicide and delaying the process with the intention of favoring Rodríguez Rúa. Activism related to education has been historically problematic in Colombia because many of those who confront the state and begin to have the attention of citizens are threatened or killed to silence them. Furthermore, the lack of state presence in the areas where these problems are generated is often a primary factor of these crimes (Rouille & Atencia, 2021). This is a situation which remains unchanged in current times with student leaders Lucas Villa and Esteban Mosquera being murdered in Colombia throughout 2021 (Caracol radio, 2021), in addition to those murdered and disappeared during nationwide strikes which brought hundreds of thousands onto the streets between April and June. While it is not possible to establish with certainty the link between Francisco’s activism and his violent death, given his own personal history and the painful lessons from the past, such a hypothesis cannot be overlooked. As ever in these tragic situations, it is also necessary to explore the local context where the crime took place.
On the other hand, the situation of violence that has existed in Magdalena for many years is quite complex and involves more than just education. More specifically, in Santa Marta and its surrounding areas, there exists a mix between a “tourism mafia” and a kind of local de facto government. In this case, one is referring to the paramilitary group that rules in this zone known as Los Pachencas or the Autodefensas Conquistadores de la Sierra (ACSN). They are the “owners” of this zone since the 80s; this group is seen as a legacy of Hernan Giraldo, a former paramilitary leader and a sexual predator that was extradited to the USA in 2008 for charges of drug trafficking. Los Pachencas have an organisation named Oficina Caribe and they regulate and allow the entrance of other criminals in the region. They also control tourism and impose territorial arrangements, planning and appropriating the best properties in the area and putting illegal tolls on them. This illegal group profits from the trafficking of drugs and arms, as well as taxing businesses and tourism operators in the region. They are suspected to have been responsible for the aforementioned murder of leaders in the region such as Maritza Quiroz, Wilton Orrego and Alejandro Llinas, as well as that of Natalia and Rodrigo, in spite of the robbery theory and subsequent convictions. While military operations have led to several of their leaders being either killed or arrested in recent times, the organisation remains in firm control of criminal operations in the area and along the Troncal del Caribe road which links Santa Marta to Riohacha in La Guajira. Keeping in mind their track record of violence, and the firm grip they possess over Santa Marta, it would not be a shock if this organisation played some part in the gruesome murder of Francisco Giacometto.
The history of Colombia has been very chaotic and violent, and the presence of the state is so weak in many parts of its territory that it seems impossible for some citizens to feel protected. This is where the social leaders play their roles. Social leaders in Colombia become familiar with the social, political, cultural, and economic areas of their regions even if their work is just focused on one of them, and because of their persistence and continuous labor to protect the appliance and promotion of rights, they all too frequently become a target of violence. It is hard to determine exactly who targets them but according to an article by La República (2021), there are many groups and actors who are responsible for the violence against the leaders. According to data published by the UN, between January and September of 2020 around 139 murders were committed of social leaders who lived in rural zones, particularly municipalities with illegal economies related to drugs and illegal mining and in zones where the Planes de Desarrollo con Enfoque Territorial (PDET, for their initials in Spanish are rural development plans created as part of the 2016 peace deal between the government and the FARC guerrilla) is developed, which means that such zones are a priority for the state to protect because they are at risk zones with a higher percentage of violence. In the same way according to the Fiscalia´s (public prosecutor’s office) information from 2016 to 2020 around 300 cases related to social leaders were opened but only around 100 were clarified, which is a worrying number of cases of violence. The work of social leaders in Colombia is a vital role, but also a dangerous one. Due to different reasons, and depending on their location they are threatened by armed groups such as “Los Pachencas”, “el Clan del Golfo”, the ELN, etc; groups that have presence over certain territories, making it difficult to identify the perpetrators of crimes against social leaders. It is important to point out that Santa Marta and its surrounding areas, in spite of its stunning natural and cultural beauty, bears many of the characteristics mentioned above, leaving leaders such as Francisco in a precarious position.
To conclude, it is important to point out the importance of social leaders in the territories and communities in Colombia. As highlighted above, their work gains more significance when there is a power vacuum, and they have to do the work of the State. The mass assassination of social leaders is an hugely important issue, with a high increase of cases after the signing of the peace agreement with the FARC. Yet, the government is not taking the necessary measures or does not seem to care enough. In regional terms, Magdalena is one of the most affected departments in the Caribbean area, and cases like Francisco’s are sadly common. As a student rights activist and a member of the communist party, his work was fundamental to a society of pluralistic values and visions. Unfortunately though, his case, like that of many others, is a clear example of the price that activists have to pay in Colombia for demanding the bare minimum which is the protection and guarantee of human rights. Also, what is more concerning and frustrating is the fact that justice will most probably not be served as a responsibility of the State. We as a society should be more aware of the work and importance of social leaders and their contribution to society and the country as a whole. This is why we should call upon the state to take action over the issue, and have a presence in the territories that have been most affected during the post-conflict. If we fail to act, we simply contribute to this state of indifference and impunity.
RAE. (s. f.). líder, lideresa | Diccionario de la lengua española. «Diccionario de la lengua española» – Edición del Tricentenario. https://dle.rae.es/l%C3%ADder
Rouille, B., & Atencia, I. (2021, March 12). En los últimos cuatro años siguientes a la firma del Acuerdo de Paz entre la guerrilla de las FARC y el Gobierno Nacional, las cifras de asesinatos de líderes y lideresas sociales se han venido incrementando, pero esto no ha impedido que las poblaciones de los territorios del postconflicto sigan en la búsqueda de la paz. UNIMINUTO Radio.
La Libertad Sublime 