The liberation
of land once
controlled by
rebels has
been a boon
for science and
tourism—but has
led to an assault
on natural
resources.
implicated, but less than 10 percent of investi-
gations result in sentences.
“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. Systematic and frequent: Colombia was
the world’s deadliest country for environmental
activists in 2020 for the second year in a row,
according to Global Witness, an environmental
and human rights investigative organization
based in London. Almost a year to the day after
I met Salamanca, the anthropologist became
one of those grim casualties. On the night of
May 11, 2019, he was shot and left for dead in
front of his door.T
HE DAY I SPENT with Sala-
manca, our camioneta ride
ended at Quinchana’s town
strip; from there our jour-
ney would be on foot. We
clambered down in front of a
modest family home that doubled as a general
store. A colorful, quirky array of provisions was
for sale in the living room: Teddy bears and col-
oring books shared shelves with rubbing alcohol,
canned lentils, and feminine-hygiene products.
The morning was quiet, but my heart was rac-
ing. Not too long before, these FARC-controlled
towns were no-go zones for the uninvited. For-
eigners and Colombians, especially wealthy
ones, were kidnapped for ransom. Loggers and
developers avoided rebel-controlled jungles.
Places like Quinchana—strategically located
near mountain passes long frequented by salt,
leather, and sugar traders in the pre industrial
era—became drug- and weapon-smuggling cor-
ridors that financed the guerrillas.
“The guerrillas controlled everyone’s move-
ments. They decided who to allow in and who
to keep out,” Salamanca recalled.
The liberation of large tracts of Colombian
territory from the FARC has been a boon for sci-
ence and tourism. Colombia is the second most
biodiverse country in the world, home to a kalei-
doscope of ecosystems, landscapes, and species. It
boasts huge expanses of coral reefs, grassland lla-
nos, and buzzing rainforests. In the steaming-hot
central valleys, rivers and wetlands are home to
caimans, vulnerable manatees, and critically
endangered freshwater turtles. On the Pacificwas off-limits, a gateway to a drug- trafficking
corridor controlled by guerrillas.
For more than half a century, the Marxist-
inspired Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colom-
bia, known as the FARC, were at war with the
Colombian state. The conflict drew in other left-
ist 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 peo-
ple died in the conflict, 81,000 disappeared, and
7.4 million were displaced from their homes.
A peace deal signed in 2016 was supposed
to change everything. FARC soldiers agreed to
lay down their weapons, and the government
pledged to welcome them back into society. Cru-
cially, the state promised to establish or improve
public services in rural areas once controlled by
guerrillas. There was hope that former conflict
zones would reopen to visitors, creating more
opportunities for the people who live there.
But the lure of commercial rewards from
untapped resources has come at a high price.
Gold miners, cattle ranchers, and narco traffick-
ers have moved in, and locals who dare to defend
their land and culture from development have
become targets. According to the Institute for
Development and Peace Studies, a Bogotá-based
nonprofit known as INDEPAZ, 1,280 Colombian
“social leaders”—many of them Indigenous and
Afro-Colombian land defenders and environ-
mentalists—have been murdered since the
2016 peace agreement. Armed groups vying for
control of the resource-rich territory have been
108 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC