Carmelina Yule, the indigenous leader murdered for standing up to the FARC dissidents

Carmelina Yule Paví imagined several times that defending her people was going to cost her her life.

She had reasons to fear death: she was a member of the Cauca Indigenous Guard, she was threatened, and the FARC dissidents that called themselves the Central General Staff (EMC) were increasingly looming over the Nasa communities of Toribío.

Even so, she insisted that she should not surrender to the armed groups.

“If I die with this little stick, I die clean,” she used to say in reference to the symbol of authority with which she guarded the territory.

Last weekend her fears came true: the EMC shot her after the community rescued a young man the armed group had recruited at a school.

He was 62 years old.

Attendees at Carmelina's wake hold candles to commemorate the leader's life, on March 18. Ernesto Guzmán (EFE)

The upsurge in violence during the Government of Iván Duque (2018-2022) had already hit Carmelina closely.

Two of her 11 children were murdered: one in 2020, in circumstances about which there is no further information, and another the following year, in an attack on her home.

The leader blamed the Dagoberto Ramos Front of the EMC, which operates in that area, for the second death.

“You killed my son, but I am going to continue defending the territory.

“I'm not going to be scared,” she assured a member of the dissidents, as a friend of the leader recalled in a telephone conversation with this newspaper.

Carmelina did not let herself be intimidated and she openly expressed her pride that several of her daughters continued in the reservation organizations.

Added to the death of their children was the constant recruitment of Nasa minors, which infuriated the majority and is one of the biggest reasons for clashes between indigenous authorities and armed groups.

In 2023 alone there were 150 cases of this crime in Cauca, according to a complaint from the Defense of Life and Human Rights Fabric of Çxhab Wala Kiwe.

“She had a lot of indignation and she always demanded respect from them.

She said that she preferred to die before they took more young people,” Ana María Ramos, coordinator of the Mujer Hilando Pensamiento movement, recalls by phone.

Precisely, that was what made Carmelina cut short a trip and return last Saturday to the reservation, after having participated in the minga in Cali.

Together with other leaders, she took on the task of recovering a young man kidnapped in another episode of the growing fight between indigenous leaders and illegal groups.

Carmelina's murder not only had such an impact because of who she was, but because it occurred in the middle of that bid for the Nasa youth.

The expedition to rescue the recruited teenager led to the Indigenous Guard capturing two members of the Dagoberto Ramos.

That led other dissidents to try to rescue them and end up shooting them.

The leader collapsed with a bullet in her head, two guards were wounded and the flame of exhaustion was finally ignited.

The next day, Carmelina died and President Gustavo Petro decreed the suspension of the ceasefire with the dissident group in Cauca and the neighboring departments of Valle del Cauca and Nariño.

On Monday, the dissidents reiterated their cruelty towards the indigenous people: they shot at the coffin in which the Nasa carried the remains of the murdered woman.

Indigenous guards pass by a destroyed car in which members of the Central General Staff (EMC) were allegedly transported, in the village of La Bodega de Toribío, on March 19. Ernesto Guzmán (EFE)

Carmelina's leadership

Carmelina grew up in a violent home, as she said in a tribute that the Nasa communities paid her in September 2021. “We were three sisters and at four in the morning they woke us up to make breakfast.

If we didn't want to get up, they poured water on us.

My dad was very drastic.

My mother and we grew up like that, with that punishment,” she said.

“Because of that abuse, I stayed with my husband when I was 14,” she added, in a story that recalls the reality of the Nasa indigenous people in the mid-20th century.

She trained as a leader with Álvaro Ulcué Chocué, an indigenous Catholic priest who promoted liberation theology, a reading of the Bible from the experience of the oppressed.

Ulcué arrived in Toribío in the seventies and was murdered by two armed men in 1984, in a context of struggles by indigenous communities for land.

Yoli Chante Salazar, another friend of Carmelina, explained by phone that the priest “said that women should not allow themselves to be mistreated, that they were equal.”

Since then, the leader attended all the courses she could.

“She was a majority who was constantly training,” she adds.

The community recognized Carmelina as a reference of wisdom.

Her friends, however, say that she did not see herself that way and that she regretted not knowing how to read or write, something that her parents prevented her from considering it was not necessary for women.

She was distressed by not being able to respond to knitting calls via WhatsApp and having to ask for help.

But her colleagues reminded her of the importance of other knowledge, according to Leidi Paví, a neighbor of hers, in a WhatsApp audio.

“Don't worry about not knowing how to read books.

You know how to read something more important: nature,” she was told.

Yoli agrees, and affirms that Carmelina had emotional wisdom to respond to tragedies, such as the murder of leader Cristina Bautista in 2020, allegedly at the hands of Dagoberto Ramos himself.

Yoli remembers that that day her friend told her that nature and the spirits were not going to leave them alone and that they were as sad as they were about that death.

One of the teachings of the majority, who became angry when their companions did not prioritize the spiritual, was the way to calm the disharmonies of the territory.

"When the sky thundered, she told us: 'Look, listen to nature speaking.'

She always sent us to toast and things calmed down,” says Yoli.

She also explained how to ask plants for permission to use their leaves in fabrics.

“It was an offering of reciprocity.

She asked the bush to give her leaves and promised: 'I'll bring you fertilizer later so you can give me more fibers,' says her friend.

She also insisted on taking backpacks to the stores and not using plastic bags.

“Look, the issue of global warming is because we are polluting.”

An indigenous guard holds his command staff during Carmelina's vigil. Ernesto Guzmán (EFE)

Fabrics

Fabrics were fundamental in Carmelina's life.

Through them, she found a way to express her ideas and contribute financially — she had a store to sell her creations.

“Weaving is like life, it has obstacles.

Sometimes you have to take two steps forward and then three steps back,” was one of her pieces of advice, according to Yoli.

“If one does not weave, he lives sick, bitter and in pain.

Knitting is to give peace of mind, to heal the soul and the heart,” was another, Yoli reiterates.

She co-founded the Tejedoras AMA group, was a professor at the Intercultural Indigenous Autonomous University and encouraged women to see this practice as a way to be more independent.

“Young people, learn to knit.

Because through weaving I supported the economy of my children's father,” Ana María remembers Carmelina advising.

Several of the colleagues consulted describe her as someone who opened new paths.

She invited them to meetings, many times in her house, in which they shared the situations of violence they were going through.

Carmelina insisted that her life experience had taught her not to allow mistreatment.

She also emphasized, as they recall, that women worked more than they were recognized for.

“Sometimes men want one to keep schedules and don't take into account that women work three times as hard.

We are the first to wake up—we wash, cook, take care of animals, we knit—and the last to go to bed.

Nobody pays us for what we do and we let ourselves be exploited,” she reflected.

Women, for Carmelina, also had a particular role in defending their community.

In Ana María's memory it remained that the leader stated “that Mother Earth was a woman.”

“If we don't defend the territory, no one is going to do it,” she remembers the majority saying, while she recalled how at the end of the last century the Nasa had recovered lands that were in the hands of large landowners.

Yoli, for her part, keeps in mind that the leader spoke of a feminine protective role.

“She always said that women are the strength of men and that we have to move forward so that they follow in our footsteps.

And defend them, because if they go to the front they are at greater risk.”

Indigenous women surround the coffin of the leader Carmelina Yule, on March 18, 2024. Ernesto Guzmán (EFE)

Emergency

After the murder of the majority, the outlook for the indigenous people of northern Cauca is even more worrying.

The EMC has intensified the harassment: there have already been two new attempts to recruit young people – frustrated by the indigenous authorities – and a bomb in the vehicle of a social leader.

The Association of Indigenous Councils of Toribío, Tacueyó and San Francisco declared a humanitarian and territorial emergency on Monday and ordered the indigenous guard to capture five members of the Dagoberto Ramos front, whom they accuse of being responsible for the murder.

The community's anger is mixed with the determination to remove the armed men from the territory, according to Leidi Paví.

“Carmelina's death has awakened rebellion and the Nasa warrior heart so that what happened does not happen again.

This is an ancestral community, here we rule and those who have weapons can no longer rule,” he emphasizes.

Ana María, meanwhile, comments that she did not stop thinking during her friend's wake about the vulnerability of women who raise their voices against conscriptions.

“Today they want to silence us, but we will honor the words of the majority.”

Yoli Chante concludes that Carmelina was never discouraged.

She “she put on her vest, she put on her cane and she was the first to walk.”

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