A chronicle of a (slow) death foretold: The case of Wilton Orrego

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.

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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.

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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.

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“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.

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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.

*Translated from the following article: https://www.eltiempo.com/colombia/otras-ciudades/asesinato-de-wilton-orrego-lider-de-la-sierra-nevada-de-santa-marta-611607