Danilo Villafañe and the ancestor we will be

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Life is a race full of obstacles in which the dreams and projections we have can be cut short in a flash.

In just a few seconds, a stroke of luck (or bad luck) can change the course of your life.

I learned this with pain last December 25 when I was living a moment of plenitude with my husband, my two daughters, ages four and six, and other family members on the seashore in the Colombian Caribbean.

40 minutes were enough for everything to change.

That was the time from the moment my life partner jumped into the water to rescue a cousin and the waves dragged him to the bottom.

They were moments of anguish for everyone, until the sea itself returned the two lifeless bodies.

At that moment, for me, everything was unreal, it was a lie.

I thought my husband was just unconscious, but seeing that his body was not reacting and my girls with tears on their faces as they watched his father, my spirit became clouded and I felt a shake.

I screamed like I had never screamed before, I was out of breath.

But I also understood that my partner, the Arhuaco leader Danilo Villafañe, had not died.

Danilo could not die because he represented the complete opposite of death.

He was a man of great spirit, challenging, and a source of inspiration in leadership for present and future generations.

Between the certainty and the heartbreak over the departure of my partner, who was also my friend and someone I always admired, I began to reflect that life never belonged to him, but that his life belonged to people.

The reflection of this are the expressions in memory of him that I have received: from street vendors to the multiple statements from politicians, businessmen and activists.

Danilo was a political leader and one of the great thinkers and intellectuals that the Arhuaco people have given to Colombia and the world in recent decades.

He supported the tireless fights for the conservation of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.

This purpose, which we both share, took him to multiple world stages where he expressed his ideas about the need to protect the environment to ensure the survival of the human species.

For his work in favor of environmental conservation, Danilo Villafañe was known in Colombia as the "chancellor of ecosystems."

In the image, Villafañe with his wife, Gunna Chaparro. Courtesy

His work in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta made Danilo a world reference.

He left a legacy for humanity that must be protected and crystallized because, through his lens, he saw nature not as a storehouse of resources, but as an essential part of ourselves.

For years I had the fortune of listening to him and the honor of accompanying him in his visions until his last breath.

Now it breaks my heart to know that I will never see him again.

Although the pain is deep, I am beginning to understand from my culture my partner's transition to another plane, not from pain, but aware of how he marked the hearts of many in this world.

I also understand the importance of continuing to honor his memory—that memory of the ancestor that we will be—through work and alliances that vindicate his cultural heritage and his greatness to put that light that he radiated at the service of humanity.

It was a process that we once undertook together with people who supported it.

Now, that he has left me halfway, the responsibility falls on me and those present to continue the path to continue with our agenda of respect for the environment in the midst of a historic situation, a moment for which, more than ever, It requires action to restore the world's ecosystems.

With this purpose, the Danilo Villafañe Foundation was born, whose objective is to conserve the mountains and improve the living conditions and participation of indigenous peoples.

The most important thing about the foundation is that, in honor of Danilo's ideas, it positions its thinking by which, from a global vision, it understands climate change as a threat to the physical and cultural survival of indigenous peoples and other societies.

Gunna Chaparro

is an Arhuaco woman.

She directs the Danilo Villafañe Foundation.

She has been a consultant for CAF-development bank of Latin America and the Caribbean to strengthen the participation of indigenous communities in the region and has participated in international forums such as COP28.