BOGOTA.- A mayor and five indigenous people were murdered in two separate events, on a violent day on Christmas Eve in the Colombian department of Cauca (southwest), where coca leaf and marijuana plantations abound, authorities reported.
The mayor of Guachené (southwest), Elmer Abonía Rodríguez, was murdered at night by unknown persons in a rural area of the municipality, the prosecutor’s office reported on the social network “.
Hours before, in the early morning, an indigenous community of the Nasa people was shaken by the massacre of five of its members, including a 15-year-old minor, in the neighboring municipality of Santander de Quilichao, about 20 kilometers away.
Around 4:00 a.m. armed men broke into the house of professor Jhon Freiman Ramos and shot his family. In addition to the teacher, his wife Yisel Menza and his minor daughter, Jelen Ramos, died, according to a bulletin from the Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca, which also lamented the murder of two other men in the same reservation. .
The area concentrates large areas of drug crops and dissidents from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) operate there, negotiating with President Gustavo Petro after rejecting the 2016 peace agreement.
Petro’s government intends to completely extinguish the last internal armed conflict on the continent through peace talks or criminal benefits to drug groups that agree to “peacefully” dismantle the business.
However, its so-called “Total Peace” policy still fails to stop the spiral of violence that engulfs the country after the disarmament of the FARC.
Complex situation in Colombia
Elected in 2019 by the Liberal Party, Mayor Abonía Rodríguez was about to end his term, which runs until December 31. According to the local press, he was shot at the end of a public event in a rural town called Cabito.
In September the president denounced a “complex public order situation” and asked for “support from the government and public forces” in an interview with RCN television, regarding the death of a girl during a shootout in Guachené.
“The capabilities of the municipality are insufficient,” he claimed then. That same month, town councilman William Fory, who was seeking re-election, was assassinated.
Since January, deaths from political violence have increased almost continuously, breaking the downward trend that they had seen since the end of 2020, according to the NGO Conflict Analysis Resource Center (CERAC).
The so-called Central General Staff, the main FARC dissident group operating in the area, agreed at the beginning of the year to a ceasefire with state forces.
The truce remains in place despite several violations of the ceasefire.
“For us the situation is very delicate. Over the last four years we have already had situations against the lives of indigenous community leaders, teachers and social assets in the sector. We call for the crimes to be clarified,” he told Blu Radio. mayor of Santander de Quilichao, Lucy Amparo Guzmán.
Source: With information from AFP
