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Pacto Historico members Juan Bautista and Luis Peña were both murdered within days of one another in Bolívar.
*Article written by Tatiana Montes, Lina Perez & Laura Rada
Despite the change of government to a left-wing party (the Pacto Historico coalition led by current Colombian president Gustavo Petro), which promoted social justice in its campaign, the panorama for social leaders in Colombia does not seem to be changing. According to Indepaz, across 2022 and as of May 2023, 237 social leaders had been murdered, 116 of them during the current administration. Alarming rates in approximately 7 months. However, they are much more than just numbers. Thus, within this shocking list of 237 leaders, families and shattered hopes, we find the stories of Luis Peña and Juan Bautista Navarro, both shot dead in December 2022. They were civic leaders who had denounced corruption and promoted change, and both were also members of the Pacto Historico party in the municipality of Magangué, in the south of Bolívar. All this in a local context of a strong presence of guerrilla groups and narco-paramilitary groups in this department, in accordance with the Indepaz report on the presence of armed groups in Colombia (2022). This article will address the particularities and similarities of these cases with others in the department. Likewise, it will include an analysis of the responses of the media and government institutions.
It must be stated clearly that these crimes are not isolated events. Luis Peña was the president of the Community Action Board (JAC) of the ‘Dos de Noviembre’ neighborhood, and Juan Bautista Navarro was a lawyer with more than 30 years of experience. Navarro was Peña's legal representative to claim, through administrative and judicial channels, to the municipal mayor’s office of Magangué regarding some labor related issues (Torres, 2022). In fact, Peña worked in the mayor’s office during the term of former mayor Pedro Alí. Additionally, the crimes had the same modus operandi: armed men on motorbikes shot them to death at the doors of their respective houses. Also, the events occurred within 72 hours of one another, on December 8th in the case of Peña and December 10th in the case of Navarro. Moreover, Bautista was the husband of a former council candidate for El Partido Verde (the Green Party), which is also a member of the Pacto Histórico. According to the early warning AT 004/2022 emitted by the Ombudsman’s Office, community leaderships represent one of the sectors most affected by violence, especially in territories with the presence of illegal armed groups. Likewise, this document established that some of these affectations are threats, homicides, intimidation, persecution, gender-based violence, forced displacement, and pressures under coercion and stigmatization, among others. Unfortunately, all of the above can be seen in the context of Bolivar.
The department of Bolivar, and particularly the south of the department, has been historically marginalized and impacted by the armed conflict. The humanitarian crisis in the south of Bolivar has intensified since 2019, as illegal groups in addition to actors from the private sectors are competing to establish control over lucrative resources, with the former being involved in activities such as illegal mining, drug trafficking, illicit crops and other legal and illegal economic activities, but also due to a military-focused state presence (Rutas del Conflicto). Some of the illegal groups in the region are left-wing guerrilla organizations like the ELN and FARC dissidences (Frente 37), paramilitary groups like AGC (an illegal armed group formed from the extinct AUC paramilitaries), and organized crime groups, according to information from the Ombudsman’s Office. In addition to these illicit business interests, these groups have also been using violence against community leaders, as a way to assert control and intimidate communities. Moreover, another cause of the armed conflict in the south of Bolívar is the role of Colombian state. According to Rutas del Conflicto, many leaders had expressed that in terms of recognizing rights and promoting a dignified life for the communities, there is no real and effective state presence. They also mention Águeda Plata (territorial coordinator of the Truth Commission in Magdalena Medio), who established that the state is present in the region with a high presence of the security forces (military), but that the problem is that this presence of military forces has not been able to protect the lives and property of the inhabitants. Social leaders have been notable victims of this scenario.
Additionally, the deaths of social leaders have been characterized by the lack of information shared by the local and national media. This means that the information on the murders of Peña and Bautista is limited with different media sources simply regurgitating the same information, without a thorough analysis of the regional context or the type of work the leaders had been involved in. Generally, the media only share the name of the murdered social leader, the way he or she was killed, and the city or municipality where they worked. Nevertheless, in addition to the failure to properly explore the context around the murders, the media do not communicate the impact of the death on their relatives. Experts affirm that this problem "has been made invisible by the country's major media, which do not provide sufficient coverage of this type of events" (Cárdenas, 2022), which causes the stories of the men and women murdered to be forgotten or reduced to simple numbers on a board. At the same time, the lack of information generates that Colombians do not dimension the size of this problem and forget names like those of Luis Peña and Juan Bautista. It is important to highlight that this has not been the case with different international institutions and organizations, such as Human Right Watch, or national NGOs such as INDEPAZ, who have taken the lead in the spreading of information about this phenomenon that affects thousands of families, communities, and indeed the whole country.
Subsequently local and national institutions have generally lacked the will or resources to protect social leaders or to fully investigate their murders. As mentioned previously, Colombia elected its first left-leaning government, led by President Gustavo Petro, in 2022. One of the great hopes for this government was that much more attention and resources would be focused on the long marginalized and forgotten parts of the country. Indeed, vice-president Francia Marquez was a social leader herself and was pivotal in ensuring many from previously war-torn regions voted in the hope of seeing real change. While Marquez has spent much of her time thus far in visiting many of these areas and communities, the Petro government has ran into difficulties in terms of implementing reforms, and little progress has been made in terms of resolving the structural issues which allow these crimes to occur. In fact, the deaths of social leaders have not stopped despite the change of government. As Millán (2023) puts it, "for those who were once the opposition and are now the government, the massacres and murders of social leaders have ceased to exist, since recognizing the continued existence of this reality would reveal Petro's lack of execution". In this sense, despite the current government repeating the discourse of "total peace", a law proposed by Gustavo Petro that seeks to generate dialogue with guerrillas, drug traffickers and paramilitary groups to deactivate the conflict, there has been no real progress in terms of investigating the deaths of leaders such as Luis Peña and Juan Bautista. Among the deficiencies presented by the institutions in relation to the murders of social leaders, we find a lack of budget to implement policies, a lack of efforts to prosecute those both ordering and carrying out murders, and a delay in response to requests for help from different social leaders, among others. In the words of Human Right Watch (2021), “Colombia has many policies, mechanisms, and laws to prevent abuses against human rights defenders, however, their implementation has often been poor. Based on this, the reality is a far cry from the appearances presented by successive governments.
In summary, the deaths of social leaders in Magangué, in the department of Bolivar, and indeed throughout Colombia is a hugely serious issue that urgently and effectively needs to be addressed. The change of government in Colombia to a leftist party that promoted social justice and total peace has yet to change the outlook for social leaders in the country. In fact, community leaders are one of the sectors most affected by violence in Colombia, especially in territories with the presence of illegal armed groups. The cases of Luis Peña and Juan Bautista Navarro are examples of the multiple stories of devastated families and shattered hopes. Specifically, the lack of a security policy has contributed to an increase in violence against the civilian population in Colombia. Likewise, the lack of information shared by the local and national media about social leaders is alarming, since this makes it difficult to identify patterns and develop effective strategies to address violence in the country. For that reason, the Colombian government must take measures to protect and guarantee the safety of social leaders by strengthening protection systems for them and their communities, and by investigating and prosecuting those responsible for the attacks. Ensuring respect for human rights and the rule of law throughout the country is critical to building a more just and peaceful society for all.
Information sourced from:
https://voxpopuli.digital/nuevas-teorias-del-doble-asesinato-de-lucho-loco-y-su-abogado-navarro-i/
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