Alexandra Isabel Sala-
manca holds a photo
of her father, Luis
Manuel Salamanca,
as a young man. A
famed anthropologist
and conservationist
in southwestern Huila,
he was murdered on
May 11, 2019. “My
father was shot on the
other side of this win-
dow,” said Alexandra
Isabel. No arrests have
been made.
L
UIS MANUEL SALAMANCA 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.
As the fog lifted, a woman milking a bloated
brown cow came into sight in a clearing. Red-
and-white buses crammed with schoolchildren
fought for passage with horse-drawn carts and
cargo mules on narrow roads. More than 650 feet
below, the Magdalena River rushed through a
steep, emerald gorge fed by waterfalls tumbling
down from every direction.
We were heading toward Quinchana—a village
of some 90 families hidden in the misty, verdant
hills of Huila Department, a region known for
coffee growing and oil exploration and home
to the headwaters of several major rivers. Quin-
chana is also the trailhead to a small community
called La Gaitana and an archaeological site of
pre-Columbian artifacts—imposing megalithic
stone deities and tombs that date to the first
through eighth centuries. They were rediscov-
ered in 1942, helping put this region on the map.
Salamanca had dedicated his career to study-
ing and preserving this history. The 64-year-old
was one of Colombia’s most renowned anthropol-
ogists. Soft-spoken and selective with his words,
he had a gentle face, round with a ball-shaped
nose, a countenance that exuded the comfort of
a fuzzy sweater.
104 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
