Gen. Mauricio Santoyo, security chief to Colombia’s ex-president Álvaro Uribe, pleaded guilty before a US court to collaborating with the outlawed AUC paramilitary network.
A reconstituted paramilitary group is threatening to execute a union leader and members of human rights organizations in Colombia’s river port of Barrancabermeja.
Former employees of GM’s subsidiary in Colombia agreed to end a three-week hunger strike and enter into mediation to resolve a dispute with the company.
Former employees of General Motors' Colombian subsidiary are on hunger strike to demand reinstatement and compensation for injuries they say they received on the job.
The San José de Apartadó Peace Community in Colombia’s northern Urabá region is again under threat—seven years after the massacre that forced many residents to flee the village.
Embera indigenous communities on Colombia’s Pacific coast came under bombardment by army helicopters, while an Awá community expelled illegal gold miners from their land.
The Andean Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations (CAOI), meeting in Cundinamarca, Colombia, called for construction of a "new paradigm" for a "sustainable civilization."
Lisandro Tenorio, a traditional elder in Cauca, Colombia, was shot dead by unknown assassins—the latest backlash against indigenous demands that armed actors leave their lands.
The UN representative for indigenous rights, James Anaya, called on Colombia to respect demands for the removal of military forces from indigenous territories.
Colombian National Police arrested one top cartel kingpin, “Sebastian,” and extradited another, “Nano.” But a new paramilitary network linked to the cartels is fast consolidating.
Under pressure to address the ongoing wave of targeted assassinations in Colombia, President Iván Duque for the first time spoke before the National Commission to Guarantee Security, formed by the previous government to address continuing violence in the country—which has only worsened since he took office last year. Duque said 4,000 people are now under the government's protection program for threatened citizens. But his office implied that the narco trade is entirely behind the growing violence. Interior Minister Nancy Patricia Gutiérrez told the meeting: "This great problem is derived from the 200,000 hectares of illicit crops that we have in Colombia." However, it is clear that the narco economy is but part of a greater nexus of forces that fuel the relentless terror—all related to protecting rural land empires and intimidating the peasantry. (Photo via Contagio Radio)
Gilberto Valencia, a young Afro-Colombian cultural worker, became 2019's first casualty of political violence in Colombia, when a gunman opened fire on a New Years party he was attending in his village in Cauca region. As the death toll from around the country mounted over the following weeks, the UN Mission to Colombia warned President Iván Duque that he must address "the issue of the assassinations of social leaders and human rights defenders." Colombia's official rights watchdog, the Defensoría del Pueblo, acknowledges that there was an assassination on average every two days in the country last year—a total of 172, and a rise of more than 35% over 2017. (Photo via Caracol Radio)
