Indigenous Women Are on the Front Lines of the Narco War — and Dying Because of It

A luscious, green canopy outlines Cauca, a mountainous municipality in southwestern Colombia. These biodiverse forests are under threat from the damaging impact of narcotrafficking, and so are the indigenous people defending them. For environmentalist and politician Sandra Liliana Peña Chocué, the price of defending this indigenous territory was her life.

On April 20, four men shot and killed Peña, 38, and injured her colleague. An indigenous Nasa (or Paéz) woman, Peña left behind two daughters, ages 5 and 9.

Human rights groups said that Peña, who had been the governor of the La Laguna Siberia reservation, was one of at least 52 social leaders murdered thus far in 2020, according to “Democracy Now!” Colombia led the world in killings of environmental defenders in 2019, with 64 deaths, a report from Global Witness, a UK-based nonprofit, found.

And, since the country signed a peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in 2016, at least 272 leaders have been killed while fighting against narcotrafficking plantations in Cauca. More than half of them were indigenous.

The indigenous people of Cauca “are willing to die for their territory,” said Joanna Barney, a researcher from Indepaz, a leading Colombian human rights organization. And women like Peña are leading this life-or-death campaign.

“The indigenous woman is a tireless fighter for her community,” Barney said. “She rarely thinks of herself or her security. They are, in short, the most valuable [people] we have in Colombia.”

Peña’s assassination triggered thousands of people to protest in her memory. The demonstration, intended to continue her fight in eradicating narcotrafficking, was underscored by violence, leaving more than two-dozen people injured and one person killed.

Portrayals in the media

While Peña’s death made headlines across Colombia, the news of her murder was restricted mainly to the realms of Spanish-speaking media. And no article emphasized that her fate as an indigenous environmental defender is a common one for such women.

“I couldn’t find information that was beyond her just being part of a community or a mother,” said Dalena Tran from the Environmental Justice Atlas, which maps environmental conflict around the world. Tran also couldn’t find any articles that humanized Peña.

“Especially in Latin American media,” she said. “It’s just, ‘Another woman was killed.’”

Tran is frustrated by the limited depiction of women environmental defenders. “The way [stories are] written can homogenize all of their experiences into this monolithic idea of this desperate suffering woman who’s so oppressed and is also an underdog superhero. In order to avoid that, you also need to honor the individual: who she is, the full experience of her, or the full context of what she was.”

Various international human rights organizations have since described Peña as “emphatic,” and “known for her conviction,” as they mourn her loss.

How narcotrafficking impacts the environment

In 2019, over 1,000 tons of coca, plants that contain cocaine, were produced in Cauca. This was an 82 percent increase from the previous year, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The conflict surrounding cultivation is not only notoriously violent, but also has devastating environmental consequences.

Harvesting coca contaminates soil, and causes groundwater pollution and deforestation, which releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, exacerbating the climate crisis. Crucially, coca cultivation threatens biodiversity and food security from crop damage. Also, cocaine labs are often placed close to rivers, which can seriously affect water quality, said Paulo Murillo, a geographer from Oregon State University.

In his work using satellite and aerial imaging, Murillo has been watching deforestation increase over the years. He argues that “better policies that anticipate the beginning of a more socioeconomically stable condition,” aka the end of conflict, “must also include clear elements about forest management and land distribution.”

And while narcotrafficking and climate change are more intense in the Global South, “the responsibility for most of the action to change those dynamics are elsewhere,” said Elizabeth Tellman, a human-environmental geographer from Columbia University. Andean countries like Colombia have borne the brunt of U.S.-led eradication and interdiction efforts, the Drug Policy Alliance reports.

There is no doubt that the effects of illegal drug cultivation are destroying the countryside of Colombia and contributing to climate change, but Tellman wants to shift the focus of how we talk about what’s happening there.

“There’s so much more attention on environmental impacts than on the human impact,” she said. “The real human impact of the violence of narcotrafficking — all of the environmental activists who’ve been murdered, and the viability for them to be able to live a good life — that … has more long-term effects than just the environmental change.”

Even as women and indigenous communities are targeted by people who want their campaigning to end, the fact is, the disproportionate impact on them of both the ongoing violence and climate change, keeps them stepping up and defending their communities, despite the dangers. For female environmentalists in Cauca, the battle against narcotrafficking is lifelong.

“They will continue to fight as long as they remain indigenous,” Barney said.