- For years, using organization and collaboration, unarmed guards in Colombia have acted as protective barriers of territories, the environment and communities.
- These days, the guards combine their traditional knowledge with monitoring technology, such as GPS and satellite imagery, so the data can be used by government entities.
- Working to protect their territory has put them in danger: Between 2014 and 2024, at least 70 Indigenous guardians have been killed in Colombia.
- A team of journalists tracked five cases in the Colombian departments of Amazonas, Putumayo and Guainía to get a firsthand look at these defense processes and the risks Indigenous guardians face.
In early February, in downtown Bogotá, Colombia, Luis Alfredo Acosta recited a line in a book from memory: “I am from the rainforest because I smell like the rainforest; I smell like the mountains. And when I smell like the mountains and I smell like the trees, I can touch the forehead of a wild deer in the afternoon.”
Acosta, the national coordinator of the Indigenous guard within the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC), is from the department of Cauca and a member of the Nasa (or Páez) Indigenous community. For 35 years, he has been part of the Indigenous guard, and as national coordinator, he has been part of multiple processes in the Amazon, where — just as in other places far from the Colombian capital — Indigenous guards spend day after day accomplishing a silent but vital, task. They protect their territory, despite violence and the presence of armed actors.
The Indigenous guards do this work even when the sociopolitical landscape in Bogotá is unfriendly toward them: 15,000 Indigenous people arrived to participate in marches on May 1, to demand that the government fulfill the promises it made, but they experienced several incidents of hate speech.
“What are these Indians doing here?” a woman in El Nogal, an exclusive club in Bogotá, said in a viral video on social media. They were also accused of being “kidnappers” and “militia.” In their own territories, however, guided by their elders and following their communities’ mandates, hundreds of Indigenous men and women from the Amazon organize to protect the rainforest.
For them, the rainforest is a living territory. Not only is it their pharmacy and the source of their food and materials for handmade goods, but it is also the home of their traditions, knowledge and sacred places. Conserving it also protects their existence, their culture and the rights of all those who live there, they said. They are not the only ones who benefit from conserving the rainforest: It is also a contribution to the entire planet.
“Our elders have told us that we’ve protected the territory for millennia,” said a Cuiracua Indigenous guardian from the Buenavista Reservation of the Siona People, in the department of Putumayo. The defense of their territory has been unarmed, peaceful and protected by their right to self-governance.
Although the Colombia Constitution and several international agreements recognize the work of the Indigenous guards, for decades, they have needed to conduct this work amid violence and the government’s absence.
“Historically, we have lived through many abuses, from the era of rubber plantations to the extraction of quinoa and, later, [the extraction] of other products,” recalled the guard from the Siona community. “When I was born, guerrillas began to appear, then came the peak of the coca [industry] and drug trafficking and then extractive companies settled in the territories, violating prior consultation [laws in Colombia]. One way or another, they have caused us to lose our rights.”
According to the organization Somos Defensores, in the last 10 years, at least 70 members of Indigenous guards have been killed in Colombia by guerrillas, such as members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army, paramilitary groups, FARC dissidents (who did not agree to the Peace Agreement), Colombia’s Public Forces and various criminal gangs. Many Indigenous Colombians say this has caused a “lack of harmony” in their territory. There has been a breakdown of the spiritual, ecological and social equilibrium they depend on.
The threats are increasingly difficult to control. Lina María Espinosa, a lawyer and human rights defender who works with Amazon Frontlines, explained that several different groups and interests travel through and affect Indigenous territories: armed groups, illicit crops, illegal mining, monocultures and oil or mineral extraction.
“If [we] layer all these, [we] understand that these territories are inhabited by people exposed to multiple pressures and risks, with a common denominator: abandonment and the structural absence of a government that does not guarantee or protect essential rights,” Espinosa said.
To get a firsthand look at these processes and the threats these guards face, Mongabay Latam coordinated an alliance of journalists from Baudó Agencia Pública, Vorágine, La Silla Vacía, Rutas del Conflicto and El Espectador. Together, they tracked five cases in the departments of Amazonas, Putumayo and Guainía. There, Indigenous guards protect their territory by combining ancestral knowledge with new technology and scientific knowledge. Not all of them identify as “guards,” wear vests or carry walking sticks to signal their authority, but they all, in one form or another, protect and guard their territory.
The resistance force
Acosta usually illustrates the various ways of protecting the territory with what he calls “the resistance force.”
“Although we are all guardians because we protect life, every community has developed its own way of resisting, of taking care [of the land], of guarding,” Acosta said. Among these methods, there are four elements that are employed to varying degrees.
The first element, according to Acosta, is “resisting with feet and hands.”
“For us, as Indigenous people, it is very important to travel through the territory. And we are trained for that; we know how to do that. But we have a distinctive trait: we do not walk alone. Our strength is in the collective,” Acosta said.
In the far southern part of Colombia, near its borders with Peru and Brazil, more than 400 socioenvironmental guards have been trained. These guards belong to 40 different Indigenous communities in the Amazon Trapeze (a corridor in the Amazonas department), in the department of Amazonas. While protecting their territory, they have worked to plant more than 430,000 seedlings of timber-bearing tree species and 650,000 seedlings of fruit-bearing species over the last 14 years. They do not use nurseries; instead, they have arranged seed banks underneath “mother trees,” allowing them to reforest 500 hectares (about 1,236 acres). By monitoring these plants, one by one, they have observed that their reforestation work is almost 75% effective.
In the northwestern part of the Amazon, in the department of Putumayo (on the border with Ecuador), the Siona Indigenous guard has worked to protect 57,000 hectares (about 140,850 acres) of forest, defended their territory against extractive activities and worked to remove antipersonnel mines, allowing them to return to walking on their own land. With their walking sticks made of wood from peach palm trees (palma de chonta, Bactris gasipaes), which are symbols of authority and resistance, they have acted as shields for their communities against armed actors, which is why many of their members and leaders are still threatened and displaced.
In addition to physical strength, they need food to resist. The second element, according to Acosta, is resisting with one’s stomach. “When we talk about our strong relationship with nature, the stomach is fundamental, because our ‘seed’ is in our stomach. We are protectors of the seed, of the harvest of our own food,” Acosta said.
In the heart of the Sibundoy Valley, where the Amazon and the Andes meet, women from the Inga and Kamëntšá communities guard their culture, language, traditional knowledge and territory by protecting their traditional cultivation system: their small farms, or chagras.
The small farm that belongs to María Concepción Juajibioy, better known as “Mama Conchita,” is a living example of “resisting with one’s stomach.” Although the mountains around Mama Conchita’s farm are full of monoculture plantations with potatoes, avocados and beans, her yard contains 217 species of medicinal, ornamental, timber-bearing and food-bearing plants. Alongside other women, Mama Conchita is reclaiming more environmentally friendly cultivation practices.
“That, too, is defense,” said Sofía Díaz, a researcher from the Environment and Society Association (Asociación Ambiente y Sociedad). “The women from Sibundoy are a very important indication that
guarding [territory] can also be done in daily life: protecting who we are [and] taking care of and following historical, cultural and ancestral advice about our link to the territory.”
For those who depend on the area’s rivers, conserving fish diversity has also become part of their resistance movement. At the Fluvial Star of Inírida, an internationally important Ramsar wetland in the department of Guainía, on the border with Venezuela, Fredy Yaviniape and others from the area have spent more than a decade turning fishing trips, and fish themselves, into their “objects of study.” They navigate rivers to gather data, and their kitchens transform into laboratories where they measure, weigh and organize information about the fish.
For example, they inspect the fishes’ stomach contents to understand their diets and determine which plant species they can use to reforest the shores around bodies of water. They also check whether the fish are adults or juveniles, determine at what sizes they reach sexual maturity and discover where they reproduce.
Jaime Cabrera, the monitoring coordinator for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), said the Indigenous communities’ ancestral knowledge and the data they gather during their fishing trips have been crucial for scientists to understand how the area’s freshwater species behave. Thanks to the Indigenous communities, the National Aquaculture and Fisheries Authority has issued two resolutions to correct closed season dates and the acceptable sizes for fishing for ornamental and consumer species in the area.
Resisting with both heart and mind
Although distant from each other, all of these experiences share a starting point: the decision to organize for conservation. Acosta, the national coordinator of the Indigenous guard, said this is part of the third element of resistance: resisting with one’s head.
“Many very important things are in our heads: our own education, ancestral knowledge [and] our life plan. Although we begin from there, we do not only protect [the territory] for ourselves, or for a reservation or a community, but for the entire society, Indigenous or not Indigenous,” Acosta said.
In the southern part of the Caquetá River, before it reaches Brazil, several Indigenous communities decided more than a decade ago to declare a portion of their territory an “intangible zone,” dedicating it solely to conservation. Some footprints on the ground and a bonfire on the riverbank were the first few indications to confirm that, in the territory that the government had granted them, other uncontacted Indigenous peoples were living in voluntary isolation: the Yuri and the Passé.
Respecting their decisions and autonomy, residents of the Curare-Los Ingleses Indigenous Reserve and the community of Manacaro decided to unite and become a barrier against threats from the rest of the world: missionaries trying to contact them, armed actors and the spread of illegal mining. Guided by their spirituality, they have also implemented other tools to protect the territory and their neighbors: mapping, geolocation and satellite imaging.
For the majority of Amazonian Indigenous communities, spirituality is the key to their connection with everything. The use of yagé, or the ayahuasca hallucinogenic brew, allows many to maintain their spiritual connection and dialogue with their territory. According to Acosta, this is the fourth element of resistance: “resisting with the heart.”
“That is the Law of Origin, of ancestry. Yagé is a grandfather who provides you with knowledge [and] allows you to become the rainforest to understand what is happening and what you can do to harmonize with it,” Acosta said. Shamans, Taitas (healers or spiritual leaders) and Sabedoras (wise women) are central parts of Indigenous resistance.
In the words of Judy Jacanmejoy, a 38-year-old Kamëntšá Indigenous woman, if people are not in balance and do not first awaken their awareness of the land, “then they cannot protect the territory.”
Acosta offered a final reflection: “Although these appear to be isolated things, and some communities can be stronger at resisting with their feet and hands and others [stronger at] resisting with their stomach, head or heart, it really is an integral resistance. Why? Because at its core, all of this only works if there is land,” he said.
When protecting territory becomes a danger
According to the environment ministry, of the 107,000 hectares (about 264,403 acres) deforested in Colombia in 2024, 68,000 hectares (about 168,032 acres) were in the Amazon. This is also where 22 of Colombia’s 28 deforestation hotspots are located and where more than 50% of the country’s deforestation has been concentrated historically. Nevertheless, Indigenous territories and protected areas have played an undeniable role in conserving the forest that still stands.
Of the more than 50 million hectares (about 123.5 million acres) in this region of Colombia, about 25 million hectares (about 61.7 million acres) are owned by the 64 Indigenous groups living in the Amazon. According to a 2019 study by the country’s Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology, and Environmental Studies, the forest cover in the Indigenous territories is very well conserved, at almost 98%.
Indigenous peoples are also able to guard protected areas that institutions cannot enter anymore. Colombia’s National Natural Parks System told Mongabay Latam there are 11 protected areas in the Colombian Amazon that the entity’s officials and park rangers can no longer access due to armed groups. “The restrictions complicate biodiversity research and monitoring. And they limit the possibility of conducting walk-throughs for prevention, surveillance and control, putting at risk the improved identification and characterization of these pressures,” officials from the National Natural Parks System said.
The Indigenous guards’ conservation work has been recognized by entities such as the U.N. Human Rights Office in Colombia, which acknowledged the guards’ “cultural exercise of territorial defense and of human rights … as protectors and guardians of ancestral territories and, in that way, of the very existence of the peoples that inhabit them.” In addition, because these territories are heavily affected by violence, the Indigenous guards’ humanitarian actions — liberating kidnapped people, preventing minors from being recruited, aiding in searches for missing people and protecting communities from antipersonnel mines — have also been acknowledged.
In the words of Espinosa, the coordinator of the Legal Defenders program for Amazon Frontlines, that has its risks.
“The guard is the person who argues and is the human shield who puts themselves in between armed and unarmed people, affecting their interests. [The guard] is the person who confronts oil companies and illegal actors,” she said. Espinosa insisted that guards are the first people to “be stigmatized, called out, persecuted and stopped from completing their work.”
According to data by the organization Somos Defensores’ Information System on Attacks Against Human Rights Defenders in Colombia (SIADDHH), of the 1,411 killings reported between 2014 and 2024, 241 were Indigenous leaders. Of them, 70 were leaders who also acted as Indigenous guards. However, according to Juan Manuel Quinche of the SIADDHH, these figures are conservative: It was not possible, for each year, to determine which of the leaders were Indigenous guards and which were not.
“We are still in a pretty complex situation with recruitments, threats, accusations and displacement. We had to defend ourselves, but we also began to suffer the consequences,” said the guard from the Siona community in Putumayo. The number of Siona people living in their ancestral territory has been drastically reduced due to their need to flee to nearby cities and towns.
Censuses taken between 2009 and 2012 estimated an approximate population of 2,578 people in the territory, distributed among six reservations and six councils. By 2017, the Siona leader counted only 171 families, representing 633 individuals. Members of these communities have lost the chance to move around due to the presence of antipersonnel mines planted by armed actors. They are left without access to their sacred sites and to areas for hunting, fishing and collecting medicinal plants.
“Today, this collective process and project, which they have developed with autonomy and courage, is deeply threatened, and several of their leaders have been displaced and exiled,” Espinosa said. This scenario is common throughout the Amazon, affecting several communities, which, as the Constitutional Court announced in 2009, are at risk of being culturally or physically exterminated.
Broken promises
When President Gustavo Petro presented his National Development Plan (PND), the road map that would steer his four-year term, Indigenous communities and the environment played a central role. The plan stated that the “empowerment” of Indigenous guards would be advanced to strengthen their communities’ territorial protection and autonomy. The PND also established that Indigenous guards would be “promoted” as collective mechanisms for protection, and that financial and human resources would be allocated to strengthen them.
The news of this plan thrilled many members of the Indigenous guard. In May 2023, while Colombia’s Congress discussed the PND, many guards marched to Bogotá to call for its approval. In a message to Mongabay Latam, the Ministry of the Interior said in 2023 and 2024, resources in the amount of 4.3 billion Colombian pesos (about $1 million) were given out, broken into seven agreements with Indigenous guardianship programs. In 2025, that value was 1 billion Colombian pesos (about $247,000) for an Indigenous guard project, they wrote in a statement.
According to Acosta, “at least we have seen that the government is willing.”
The last time they saw anything similar was with the Ethnic Chapter included in the Peace Agreement with the FARC. However, until now, the promises have remained on paper only. For that reason, in the last few months, the Indigenous communities’ efforts have been focused on creating a public policy for protection mechanisms that includes a budget for Indigenous guards.
“Historically, there has been abandonment and ignorance about what self-government is. We, as guards, have worked toward less deforestation, we have lent our support in war situations [and] we have prevented minors from being recruited. We have fulfilled our role and we’ve done it wholeheartedly, but the government has not taken that into account,” Acosta said.
Those who guard the Amazon’s forests, rivers and wetlands are suffering the consequences. Olegario Sánchez is one of the longest-standing guards from the Tikuna Indigenous community of San Martín de Amacayacu, in the extreme southern end of the department of Amazonas. Sánchez has seen dozens of his fellow members abandon the Indigenous guard due to a lack of income. Without canoes, personnel or radios to communicate, it is very difficult to fulfill their role.
“We do not believe that Indigenous communities, which we now call the ‘guardians of the rainforest,’ should have to work for free. Instead, they need to be paid for taking care of this biome,” said Sergio Martínez, the project coordinator for the Roads to Identity Foundation (FUCAI, or Fundación Caminos de Identidad, in Spanish). This organization works for the respect and protection of Indigenous communities. The service that the guards are providing, according to Martínez, “is not just nothing.”
Achieving this financial recognition would support the socio-environmental guards of the Amazon Trapeze to continue to measure the impact of their reforestation work, tree by tree. This support would allow the women from Sibundoy to create more small farms and protect the water sources in their community. At the Fluvial Star of Inírida, it would help to maintain the relationship between the rainforest and the wetlands, protecting the enormous diversity of freshwater fish.
This financial support would also allow the Siona people to return to travelling the paths from which they had managed to remove antipersonnel mines. With the worsening of the conflict, the community reports that these paths are newly contaminated. The support would allow the Indigenous neighbors of peoples living in voluntary isolation to help them remain uncontacted by the rest of the world. But above all, according to the guardian from the Siona community, it would allow the Siona people to remain in their home.
“If we leave the territory, we get closer to dying. If a root dies, its essence dies. And the principle of a community dies,” the guardian said.
*This journalistic collaboration was coordinated by Mongabay Latam and developed in an alliance with Vorágine, Baudó Agencia Pública, La Silla Vacía, El Espectador and Rutas del Conflicto. Coordination: Antonio Paz Cardona, Daniela Quintero Díaz. Editing: Daniela Quintero Díaz, Antonio Paz Cardona. Illustrations: Sara Arredondo – Baudó Agencia Pública. Research: Daniela Quintero Díaz. Journalists: Camilo Alzate, Natalia Arbeláez, Pilar Puentes, Daniela Quintero Díaz and César Giraldo. Graphic design and video: Richard Romero. Audiences and social networks: María Isabel Torres, Dalia Medina Albarracín.
Banner image: Sara Arredondo – Baudó Agencia Pública.
This article was originally published here on Mongabay’s Spanish news site, Mongabay Latam.
Editor’s Note:
- This article is part of the project “The Rights of the Amazon in Sight: The Protection of Communities and Forests,” a series of investigative reports about the situation surrounding deforestation and environmental crimes in Colombia, funded by Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI). Editorial decisions are made on an independent basis and are not based on donor support.
- The name of one of the sources cited in this report has been removed for their safety.
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