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Jani Silva sits inside a wooden house she built on the banks of Colombia’s Putumayo River – a house she has not slept in for more than eight years.
Long-time environmental activist has been threatened for doing work that includes protecting her stake Amazon From oil and mining exploitation. She describes a tense escape through the back window one night when community members told her that armed men were outside.
“Since leaving because of threats, I’m scared… it’s not safe to live here,” he told The Associated Press. She now only comes for brief visits during the day when she is accompanied by other people. “The two times I tried to come back and stay, I had to run away.”
Activists like Silva face enormous risks in Colombia, the world’s deadliest country for people protecting their lands and forests. global witnessAn international watchdog that monitors attacks on activists recorded 48 killings in Colombia in 2024, about a third of all cases worldwide.
Colombia says it protects activists through its national security unit, which provides bodyguards and other security measures. Officials also point to recent court decisions recognizing the rights of nature and stronger environmental monitoring as signs of progress.
Silva, 63, now lives under guard in Puerto Asís, a riverside town Ecuador Limit. He has been provided with four full-time bodyguards by the National Security Unit for 12 years. Yet the threats have not removed her from her role at ADISPA, the agricultural union that manages the Amazon Pearl Reserve where she previously lived and worked to protect.
“I feel called to serve,” Silva said. “I feel like I’m needed…there’s still a lot to do.”
Colombia’s ministries of the interior, national defense and environment did not respond to requests for comment.
The Interior Ministry said in a 2024 report that about 15,000 people across the country receive protection from the NPU. They include environmental and human rights defenders, journalists, local officials, union leaders and others facing threats, although monitoring groups say protection in rural conflict zones is often low.
Community buffer stands in a violent corridor
The Amazon Pearl is home to about 800 families who have spent decades trying to fend off oil drilling, deforestation, illegal crops and the armed groups that enforce them. Silva describes the community-run reserve, located about 30 minutes by boat from Puerto Assis in Putumayo, as “a beautiful land… almost blessed for its biodiversity, forests and rivers”.
The protected area’s 227 square kilometers (87 sq mi) hosts reforestation projects, programs to protect wetlands and forest threatened by oil exploration, and efforts to promote agroecology. The agricultural association has community beekeeping projects to support pollination and generate income, organizes community patrols, supports small sustainable farming and has undertaken major restoration including the cultivation of over 120,000 native plants to rebuild degraded river banks and forest corridors.
Silva has been a leading voice challenging oil operations inside the reserve. As president of ADISPA, he documented sprawl, deforestation and road construction associated with Bogotá-based oil company Geoparc’s Platanillo block and prompted environmental regulators to investigate.
Advocates say those complaints, as well as ADISPA’s efforts to keep out new drilling and mining, have angered armed groups that profit from mining and oil activity in the area.
The geopark said it complied with Colombian environmental and human rights regulations and had not received environmental restrictions since it began operations in 2009.
Geoparks said in a written statement to the AP that the company maintains formal dialogue with local communities, including Silva, and “categorically rejects” threats or links to armed groups and that its activities require environmental licenses and undergo regular inspections.
Ruben Pastrana, 32, runs one of Pearl’s beekeeping projects in the riverbank community of San Salvador, where ADISPA works with children using native stingless bees to teach biodiversity and forest conservation.
“They’re very gentle,” he said of the bees, and their calm nature lets children learn without fear.
Over 600 families now participate in conservation and agroecology projects, many of which are initiated through community initiatives.
“The first project was started on our own initiative,” Silva said. “We started setting up nurseries in our homes… and started reforesting the river banks.”
Women exchanged native seeds and organized replanting campaigns, and the community agreed to a temporary hunting ban after witnessing pregnant armadillos being killed – a move Silva said helped the wildlife recover. Family Now map their plots to balance production with conservation.
border commando control the area
Armed groups known locally as Comandos de la Frontera or Border Commandos operate in this part of Putumayo, controlling the area, river traffic, and parts of the local economy.
The commandos emerged after Colombia’s 2016 peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, a Marxist guerrilla army whose demobilization ended a half-century of conflict but left a power vacuum in the Amazon and Pacific regions. In places like Putumayo, those gaps were quickly filled by FARC dissidents, former paramilitaries, and other criminal networks.
The commandos enforce control through extortion, illegal taxation and coca cultivation, clandestine mining, and regulating or profiting from major river routes. Residents say the group forces some communities to perform unpaid labor or face fines, undermining livelihoods in an area where most families depend on tending their farms.
AP showed illegal coca growing near a beekeeping project via drone imagery.
Armed groups in Putumayo have tightened their control over daily life and committed serious abuses against civilians, including forced displacement, restricting movement, and targeting local leaders, Human Rights Watch said Friday.
Andrew Miller, head of advocacy at US-based advocacy group Amazon Watch, said Colombian authorities should go beyond providing bodyguards and prosecute those behind the threats and attacks on guards.
developing the next generation
Pastrana of the Beekeeping Project said Silva’s long-term vision has nurtured new leaders and guided youth, helping them develop the ground to resist recruitment by armed groups.
Silva’s daughter, Angie Miramar Silva, is part of ADISPA’s technical team. The 27-year-old grew up inside the reserve’s community process and watched her mother constantly move between meetings, workshops and patrols, inspiring others to protect the land.
She admires that determination, even though she’s living with the same fears that haunt her mother. While people often suggest that she could one day replace her mother, she is not convinced.
“My mother has a very difficult job,” Miramar said. “I don’t know if I would be willing to sacrifice everything I have for him.”
Jani Silva knows the risks. But stopping doesn’t seem to be an option.
“We must continue to protect the future,” she said, “and we need more and more people to join this cause.”
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