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His friends and family feared for his life, he had a security scheme and his murder remains unpunished.
The story about the murder of Ludivia Galindez has many points in common with those of other social leaders.
This 50-year-old woman was one of the greatest defenders of human rights in the municipality of La Montañita (Caquetá, in the south of the country) and president of the Municipal Association of Community Action Boards of (Asojuntas).
Those who know her say that she was a fundamental pillar of the social movements in the territory and a very vocal and committed person.
But on February 23, she was brutally murdered in her house, minutes after her bodyguards left her at the house.
She died on the way to the hospital as a result of being shot.
Since then, the entire municipality has been shocked and scared.
Three of her closest friends prefer not to talk: “You've seen what happens when you talk.”
His main job was to guide the processes of the Comprehensive National Program for the Substitution of Illicit Crops, in an Amazonian department historically plagued by drug trafficking.
And it was that commitment against the armed groups in the region that was behind the threats.
She is one of the 5,038 leaders and human rights defenders with protection measures granted that Colombia had in September.
“She always sought the development of communities and the promotion of women,” she said in a video of condolences Héctor Fabio Henao Gaviria, the Catholic bishop and member of the National Secretariat of Social Pastoral.
“She makes us reflect on whether adequate protection is provided to social leaders.”
The short answer from the territory's own defenders is clear: no.
“No one takes care of us.
They did not take care of Ludivia and they do not take care of the others either,” says one of her colleagues who prefers not to be identified.
While safeguarding leaders is at the heart of the Escazú Agreement, the first regional treaty on human rights and the environment in Latin America and the Caribbean, only 16 countries have ratified it.
The nations that have not done so are Brazil, Costa Rica, Dominica, Guatemala, Haiti, Jamaica, Paraguay, Peru, and the Dominican Republic.
Colombia was the last to join after two years of delays in Congress.
This pact includes a clause for greater transparency to access information, environmental justice and better protection of leaders.
Galindez is the first female leader assassinated in 2024 in Colombia, a country that remains the largest cemetery for leaders in the world.
In 2022 alone, about 60 environmentalists were massacred.
Galindez's case also joins another list that is gradually growing: that of activists forcibly silenced.
Between 2022 and March 2024, 42 women leaders have been murdered in this country, according to a recent report by the Peace and Reconciliation Foundation (Pares) with data collected by the Observatory for the Defense of Life (Odevida).
The organization denounces at least 125 defenders murdered since 2019. The count of murders adds up to 22 cases in 2019, 34 in 2020, 28 in 2021, 14 in 2022, 27 cases in 2023 and that of Galindez in 2024.
The year of the pandemic was the most critical.
Every month, they ended the lives of almost three leaders.
According to this document, one of the biggest problems after violence is impunity and lack of access to justice.
86% of the cases presented to the authorities between January 2023 and March of this year are archived without a culprit and 14% correspond to dissidents of the 2016 Peace Agreement. Regarding the most affected social sectors, Indepaz indicated that Indigenous and peasant women represent more than half of those murdered in the period between November 2016 and March 2023.
The Pares Foundation criticizes the insufficiency of the investigations carried out by the Prosecutor's Office, which attributes the events to armed actors and the control they exercise over the territories, "leaving aside the interest in determining who is responsible," according to a statement.
For Leonardo González, director of the Institute of Development and Peace Studies (Indepaz), the increase in murdered female leaders is due to the increasing presence of women defending the territory and their way of doing so.
“When women are the ones who lead, we think more about the collective and the protection of everyone in the territory.
And it is something very positive, that is why it is very serious that it is attacked: because it is not easy to get there.”
And he adds: “It does even more damage to the community than the murder of a male leader.
Killing a leader is one of the strongest ways to attack a community,” he says by phone.
According to Odevida data, the murdered leaders were women who exercised community, political, environmental and victim leadership.
About 38% of them held leadership roles in the Community Action Boards (JAC), both as presidents and as members.
González also warns of a change in the attacks received.
“Previously it was violence more linked to sexual issues.
Let's not forget that those who usually violate human rights are men and that those who attack are women, not only for being leaders, but for being women."