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Maritza on her farm
On Saturday January 5th 2019, Maritza Isabel Quiroz Leiva became the year´s first victim in the Caribbean region of the ongoing wave of violence directed towards local leaders and activists in Colombia. On January 3rd, Maritza had been with her close friend and co-founder of the Rural Women´s Platform, Marcela Rodriguez Perez, at a meeting with government representatives (from the Presidential Council on Equality for Women, as well as consultants for the vice president of Colombia, Marta Lucia Ramirez) at the Gobernación de Magdalena buildings in the bustling tourist city of Santa Marta . Maritza had stated at the meeting the necessity of training local leaders to serve as conciliators in equity in the region. It was also agreed that the Presidential Council would keep the leaders informed of any upcoming projects for women in the region. Whereas the government representatives were likely driven to the airport and were back in Bogotá within a couple of hours, Maritza and Marcela headed off back to the other Colombia, the one with poor transport infrastructure and little state presence. Maritza´s journey would have taken a couple of hours by local bus and then on the back of a motorbike to arrive at her tierrita in the village of San Isidro, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. There, she shared some land with other women who had been victims of the displacement caused by the armed conflict in Magdalena. The house had been awarded by Incoder (Colombian Institute of Rural Development). The following day, she chatted with Marcela via WhatsApp and had told her friend of her plans to organize seaming workshops, which she reasoned would ensure she always had money in her pocket. At 9pm on the Saturday evening, there came a heavy knock on the front door. Upon opening the door, Maritza was shot dead by two gunshots. Her youngest son ran barefoot into the night in search of assistance. And so another family tragedy. Another social leader killed. Another statistic for the national media. The fact that the great majority of these victims (over four hundred reported cases since the signing of the peace accords with the FARC in 2016) hail from isolated and marginalized sectors of the country means that information is often scarce regarding who these leaders were and what they represented. This scarcity of information, coupled with a lack of government action, and (often) superficial media coverage leads to indifference. Indifference ensures that these killings go unpunished. Maritza, for her part, led a remarkable life and her story not only represents the great tragedy of the conflict in Colombia, but also the necessity to promote, support and defend the work done by victims and survivors. Hers is a story worth telling. A story worth knowing.
Maritza was 60 years old at the time of her killing. Like many others, she had experienced first hand the violence which reigned in the rural areas of the department of Magdalena. From the seventies onwards, much of the department was engulfed in bloodletting due mainly to its strategic location regarding the narcotrafficking trade. The marimbera bonanza (a period of extensive marijuana exportation to the U.S.) saw the area dominated by criminal groups from the department of La Guajira. The end of this boom time coincided with the rise in cocaine trafficking and the former drug networks assumed a more paramilitarised structure under the guise of the Rojas and Giraldo clans. These would later evolve into AUC paramilitaries. The arrival of guerrilla fighters from the FARC (1980s) and the ELN (1990s) to the area would complete this dangerous cocktail of violence. Towards the end of the 90s, the threat posed by such competing armed groups arrived at Maritza´s doorstep when her husband was killed, reportedly by guerrilla fighters, at the family farm in Palmor, Magdalena. There the family had cultivated coffee and had generally lived well off the land. However, the murder of her husband shattered this life, and Maritza fled with her five children to Santa Marta, with little more than the clothes they were wearing. Urban centers such as Santa Marta were ill prepared for the influx of displaced families among which Maritza now found herself. As such, there was nothing in the way of government support, and Maritza and her family had to rely on the charity of other residents in the city. During this period, Maritza came into contact with representatives from NGOs and other international organizations. This contact would prove to be crucial in Maritza´s formation as a social leader, and champion for the rights of displaced people.
Having gone through the anguish of losing her husband, fleeing to Santa Marta, and experiencing first hand the struggles caused by displacement, Maritza was keen to explore the assistance being offered by the handful of organisations working with displaced communities in Santa Marta at that time. She received assistance and training in the rights of victims via the Asociación Tierra de Esperanza (Land of Hope Association). The organisation showed Maritza the avenues which were available to her in terms of gaining access to programs promoting health, education, housing, food and generation of income. Those who knew her have described Maritza as having an insatiable appetite for learning and in turn for sharing her lessons with others. She may not have been from an “academic background”, but was described by one human rights worker as being “like a sponge” when it came to learning new concepts. Never one to miss out on any available workshops or events, Maritza was committed to incorporating her learning into her family and community life. By 2002, she had begun sharing this knowledge with those most in need, and spent the next sixteen years visiting Santa Marta´s most marginalized neighborhoods, informing displaced families of their rights, and how they too could gain access to assistance. In 2006, Maritza helped start the Displaced People´s Representative Association (Asovoceras), with whom she later reported on the impracticality and impossibility of national government subsidies to displaced communities, and later filed a successful lawsuit over the issue of education fees for displaced victims of the conflict. Two years later, Maritza was among 600 signatories to a statute, received by the high courts in 2008, demanding that the state introduce measures to protect female victims of the displacement caused by the internal conflict in Colombia. In addition to her work in the field of victim and women’s rights, Maritza was also involved in agrarian projects for rural development to help the displaced rural families find a place for themselves once more in the countryside. She was a staunch supporter of the peace process with the FARC and championed the ultimately unsuccessful Yes vote in the plebiscite over the terms of the agreement. One of the most notable chapters in this remarkable woman´s life came in November 2017 when Maritza addressed the Colombian Senate and spoke on the need for formalization of rural labour and social security for women. Former president Alvaro Uribe may have looked a disinterested observer in the front row during the four minute address (a video of the speech can be found at this link), but this humble woman from the Sierra Nevada received a rapturous ovation upon finishing a speech she had been reluctant to give. She later confided how nervous she had felt speaking in front of so many. The final year of her life included involvement on the victims board in Santa Marta, as well as being part of projects to promote rural development throughout the region (projects which were implementing key reforms agreed in the 2016 peace deal). Whilst her work for the benefit of several marginalized communities throughout the region was the central cause for much of her life, Maritza craved the peace of the countryside, and would always be drawn back to the life she had once known.
Appearance at the Senate
Those dreams of a return to her life in the countryside moved a step closer in 2011 when the Colombian Institute of Rural Development (the now defunct Incoder) awarded a plot of land in San Isidro to Maritza, eight other women, and their families. All had been victims of forced displacement as a result of the violence in the region. That same year, the government had begun the process of returning lands which had been expropriated throughout the conflict to their rightful owners. Maritza, however, felt that the process for claiming land restitution would take too long, and as such abandoned her claims to the farm in Palmor in favour of accepting the land in San Isidro. It seems that by the time of her killing, Maritza had re-established her life in the countryside, as days before her killing she had been urging her friend Marcela to come and see the farm in order to show her the organic fertilizer she had made. She had also been involved in a co-operative program (with the assistance of the mayor´s office in Santa Marta) called La Sierra Vuelve a Sembrar through which she had obtained seeds to plant and grow avocados and other crops. Maritza had not reported any threats against her to the authorities, nor had she confided anything to her close circle of friends. However, it seems the farm was not the bastion of peace Maritza deserved, with one report indicating that she was the only one of the victims awarded the land to have actually started cultivating there. The same report mentioned that there may have been acts of sabotage against the property, but that Maritza had persevered out of economic necessity. While it seems that Maritza had received no threats and had no enemies, there had been a warning issued by the Ombudsman’s Office (Defensoría del Pueblo) in May 2018 about the dangers faced by representatives of victims, leaders of displaced families and land claimants in the area due to the presence and increased activity of illegal armed groups there. The warning cited the presence of the Rojas Clan, Autodefensas Gaitanistas (also referred to as the Gulf Clan) and the ELN. The main threat in the area was identified as Los Pachencas (inheritors of the Giraldo Clan and Bloque Tayrona of the paramilitaries) who are said to have a vice like grip on many of the areas surrounding Santa Marta. This last group in particular is opposed to the process of land restitution and are thought to have been behind threats made against the Victims Board in Santa Marta, on which Maritza had participated. The brutal killing of Maritza would indicate that history is repeating itself in this picturesque corner of Colombia.
Picking corn on the farm
Learning about Maritza´s life leads one to marvel at what a unique woman she was. Sadly, there is nothing unique about her murder. In a co-authored report (funded by the Netherlands and the Spanish embassy) into the concerted killing of social leaders in Colombia since the signing of the peace accords, seven common themes were identified as being prevalent across the cases. The killing of Maritza can be linked to six of these. First, the Sierra Nevada is again increasing in coca cultivation and the presence of illegal crops is one principal denominator. Moving on, the region is also beginning its post agreement regional development programs (PDET), a process Maritza had been involved with. This sector of the Sierra Nevada is rife with para-militarism, another common theme. Maritza is yet another example of a proponent of the Yes vote in the plebiscite being slain. This slaying too occurred in an area where the Ombudsman’s office had warned there would be blood. Finally, and perhaps most tragically, the killing of Maritza took place in an area which had suffered the trauma of forced displacement. The suffering continues. History repeats itself. And another social leader killed. Another statistic. Another source of energy and hope extinguished. Finding another Maritza is no easy task. She had six decades of life experience, much of it tragic, none of it easy. She had suffered its true tolls and faced its toughest challenges. Being a mother of five is daunting enough, let alone without a husband nor home. Yet Maritza endured. The woman with an insatiable appetite for learning explored every avenue available to her to ensure those five children had access to the public education system. Those children are now engineers and nurses. Her colleagues and comrades in struggle spoke of a serene woman who inspired respect and tranquility; she was softly spoken but her words carried weight. Maritza, they said, was tolerant, conciliatory and determined. Not content with doing her best for the sake of her own family, Maritza wished to help all the others who had suffered like her. She was a woman keen to help build this country. And it was decided that she should be shot. Finding another Maritza is no easy task. The fact victims of displacement are treated as shabbily as they are is a stain on Colombia. That leaders like Maritza are left to be slaughtered is a disgrace.
*Article written by Paddy Pelican
*The information included in this article was sourced from the following sites:
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