Siona Indigenous guards in southern Colombia are raising alarm that landmines and armed groups are cutting off their families from natural resources and trapping them in small portions of their territory. It’s been an ongoing problem for decades, Mongabay contributor Jose Guarnizo reported.
In August 2024, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) expanded its recommendation for precautionary measures after dissident factions of the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC in Spanish) fought over “land corridors and river routes” for cocaine trafficking, trapping local people in their conflict in the process.
According to the Somos Defensores program, a Colombia-based human rights defenders organization, at least 70 Indigenous guards have been killed in the last 10 years by armed groups, including the Carolina Ramírez Front 1 and the Border Command, both offshoots of the now-dissolved FARC.
More than a year after the IACHR recommendation, Siona’s leaders reported that the same risks remain as community members cannot reach their rivers, hunt in their forests or practice cultural and spiritual rites without facing the risk of getting caught in crossfire or stepping on a landmine.
“One way or another, they have caused us to lose our rights,” one Indigenous guard in Buenavista, who was not named for safety reasons, told Mongabay reporter Daniela Quintero Díaz in another story.
Two Siona leaders told Guarnizo that the conflict is also getting in the way of the Siona’s 52,000 hectares (128,500 acres) land titling claim that was filed with Colombia’s land agency in 2014. Many families are fleeing the Indigenous reserves for safety.
According to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), in 2024, the southern Colombian district of Putumayo experienced 763 mass displacements and 6,062 cases of confinement: people were unable to go out to fish, farm, hunt, study or seek medical care.
“These are territories where people are being exposed to many risks and pressures over a long period of time,” human rights lawyer Lina María Espinosa of Amazon Frontlines told Guarnizo. “The common denominator is abandonment, the structural absence of a state that offers guarantees or protects basic rights.”
Beyond the active fighting, the communities still face landmines in their territories from when the then-active FARC planted thousands of explosives around Buenavista between 2009 and 2012. Mines can stay active for more than 50 years, posing ongoing danger.
In July 2024, the Colombian army found 248 improvised explosive devices near the reserve, and in April 2025, another 1,000 landmines were discovered in a neighboring municipality.
Read the full story by Jose Guarnizo here.
Banner image: The Siona Buenavista Indigenous Guard in Colombia. Image courtesy of the Siona Indigenous community.
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