Since a 2016 peace deal, nearly 1,300 Colombians living in former guerrilla territories have been killed resisting mining, logging, and drugs
balanced on the tailgate of a rickety covered pickup truck, clinging onto the roof rack as it careened down the winding backroads of the Andes. It was dawn on May 22, 2018, and the Nudo de Almaguer—a fertile knot of dome-shaped mountains in southwestern Colombia known in English as the Colombian Massif—was beginning to stir.
I’d come to see Salamanca during a fraught moment of transition for Colombia, a country that had suffered half a century of violent armed conflict. I was following the course of the Magdalena River—the central, storied waterway that runs for nearly a thousand miles through the heart of the South American nation—and spending time with people working to support a fragile peace along its banks. Mid-2018 was a time of relative calm. It wouldn’t last.
For more than half a century, the Marxist-inspired Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, were at war with the Colombian state. The conflict drew in other leftist militias, right-wing paramilitary groups, drug cartels, and the U.S. military, rendering huge swaths of jungle and other remote areas unsafe for visitors and locals alike. Almost 270,000 people died in the conflict, 81,000 disappeared, and 7.4 million were displaced from their homes.
Nazaria Calambás Tunubalá’s family mourn at her funeral in Cauca. In October 2021, the 34-year-old Indigenous Misak, a former mayor, was gunned down. Groups vying for drug routes and resources have targeted Indigenous and Afro-Colombian women in particular.“The way in which these killings of leaders are being carried out, the kinds of leaders being targeted, the places where it’s happening, it’s systematic,” Leonardo González of INDEPAZ told me.
Biologists have explored new corners of the country, discovering unknown species and protecting endangered ones. Annual international tourist arrivals rose by more than one million people from 2016 through 2019. Not even children have been spared. In January 2022, Breiner David Cucuñame, a 14-year-old from the Nasa community in Cauca Department, was murdered by dissident guerrillas while on patrol with the Guardia Indígena, a nonviolent civilian defense movement that was founded two decades ago to protect Indigenous land.
A rare exception was in 2019 when a governor, two mayors, and a local landowner were collectively fined more than a million dollars for clearing an unauthorized 85-mile road through unspoiled Amazon rainforest in Guaviare Department. The scheme resulted in 57,000 acres of deforestation and displaced small farmers for cattle ranches and illegal palm oil plantations. Prominent senators’ families also have been implicated in other land grabs and kickbacks for ranching schemes.
In the days after Salamanca’s death, hundreds took to the streets in San Agustín, candles in hand, demanding justice. A $2,700 reward was offered for tips, and San Agustín’s mayor promised answers. Nearly three years later, no one has been charged. This too is routine in cases involving social leaders. Authorities sometimes capture individuals who pulled the trigger, but rarely those who order or incentivize killings.