BOGOTA, Colombia _ Before her brother and colleague were killed, before her daughter was stabbed, before she was raped and doused with acid, before she lost her husband, her business and her home, Martha Rojas dreamed of children playing soccer.
A onetime community leader and entrepreneur in the town of La Tebaida, in western Colombia, Rojas' life changed when her plans to create a youth soccer league ran afoul of local gangs. Now she's living in a bare room with no water or electricity, hiding from those who want her dead.
The government's Ombudsman's office says community leaders like Rojas are being killed, threatened and harassed at record levels. Some 164 community leaders have been assassinated this year _ the highest level in three years. The crimes are particularly jarring at a time when the national homicide rate is plummeting and as the country is being celebrated for signing a 2016 peace deal with its largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
"I've never felt lonelier or more unprotected," Rojas said. "My life has been ruined in the blink of an eye."
Michel Forst, the United Nations' special rapporteur for human rights defenders, recently spent 14 days in Colombia on a fact-finding mission and said he was "stunned" to discover that it costs less than $100 to have someone killed. And there were any number of groups _ from criminal gangs to paramilitary groups to FARC dissidents to corporate interests _ willing to pay that price or pull the trigger themselves.
At issue is general lawlessness. When the FARC demobilized, the government didn't fully fill the power vacuum, and now there's a struggle for control, Forst said. "In rural areas, where the state absence is coupled with a heavy presence of organized and illegal armed groups, defenders are an easy target for those who see them and their human rights agenda as an obstacle to their interests," he said.
President Ivan Duque, who took office in August, has said that the defense of social leaders is one of his priorities. The government's National Protection Unit provides security to more than 4,367 human rights defenders and social leaders, offering them bodyguards, flak jackets, drivers and secure cellphones _ depending on the threat level. But the attacks are often difficult to predict.
"We've found that in the majority of the cases where social leaders are killed there had been no previous threat," Pablo Elias Gonzalez, the director of the unit, said in a statement. And the attacks seem to be coming from all quarters.
"We know that the violence against social leaders is systemic," wrote the Peace and Reconciliation Foundation, a non-profit that tracks the violence. "But we cannot say the same thing about those responsible for the (crimes)...The complexity of this phenomenon is rooted in how difficult it is to find a pattern among the victimizers."
Earlier this month, two leaders of the Awa indigenous group in western Colombia were murdered in a brazen attack that left four others wounded. The community of about 1,000 people had been locked in confrontations with drug traffickers, coca growers and criminal gangs encroaching on their land. But it's still unclear who killed the men or why.
Tom Laffay, a photojournalist and documentary film maker was in the community in the wake of the murders. He said the double homicide of the village's two most prominent members (the father was the founder of the community and his son had recently won election as governor) rattled the village. And no one was willing to talk about what they might have seen.
"Whoever killed these guys got what they wanted, there was so much fear in the community," Laffay said. "It was a total hit on the power structure."
The National Organization of Indigenous Colombians (ONIC) says that at least 100 of its members have been murdered since November 2016 _ when the peace deal with the FARC was signed _ and more than 40 of its members have been assassinated since Duque took office four months ago.
For Oscar Montero, the head of ONIC's human rights commission, indigenous leaders are being targeted because they're one of the few groups resisting drug-running, illegal mining and criminality in their territories.
"We're caught in the middle," said Montero, himself a victim of threats. "We're being killed by all sorts of groups that are outside the law, and the numbers are scandalous."
Rojas' problems began in earnest in 2015 when she organized a drive to recover a soccer field that had been overtaken by agricultural crops. As the community cleared the field, they found the vegetation was hiding a shack that was being used to store drugs and guns.
Rojas said the death threats began almost immediately. Shortly after the discovery, her brother was murdered _ she believes as a reprisal _ and she fled town, leaving behind her home and business. Within months the gang had tracked down her 15-year-old daughter and stabbed her until she told them where her mother was.
One evening, as Rojas was leaving the coffee farm she worked on, she was beaten, raped and left unconscious on the side of the road. She woke up around midnight and stumbled home, but it still wasn't over. In March 2016, a stranger threw acid on her, leaving her arms and torso deeply scarred. With the help the Bogota-based human rights group Somos Defensores she went to Spain for a year to seek therapy and remove herself from the violence. But now that she's back in Colombia, the threats have resumed.
Last month, Rojas got a text message warning her that "next time it's not going to be acid, we'll be packing you into bags, you dog." As always, the message was signed "Las Aguilas Negras," or the Black Eagles _ a blanket term that roughly includes former paramilitary organizations that now operate in the drug and extortion trade.
On Tuesday that same group was circulating fliers offering bounties that run from $300 to $1,000 for the death of indigenous leaders and their local security.
Diana Sanchez with Somos Defensores, the non-profit, says the government seems incapable, or unwilling, to deal with the crisis _ responding to outbreaks of violence by rushing in the military.
"Sending in the military and soldiers has nothing to do with prevention and protection," she said. "This has to do with lack of government presence. ... The government is watching the exponential increase of armed groups, (guerrilla) dissidents, paramilitaries, and it's as if they were asleep."
On Thursday, Interior Minister Nancy Patricia Gutierrez said the government's strategy to protect leaders was working, and that the administration would continue focusing on high-risk regions. "The (areas) that are most affected by the murder of leaders are areas where there is more criminal activity due to narco-trafficking, coca crops, illegal mining and conflicts over land," she said.
Rojas is clear that it's criminals who are the cause of her problems, but she says the government has also exacerbated the situation. While she was in Spain, the prosecutor's office dropped her case, alleging that it didn't know how to reach her.
Speaking from her home on a recent weekday, Rojas said she wasn't scared to speak out because "the worst has already happened to me." But she still fears for her life.
"I really want to keep living because I still have dreams," she said. "And dreaming doesn't cost anything."
