THE SUN had barely risen on 2019 when the year’s first killing of a social activist took place in Colombia. Gilberto Valencia, an African-Colombian musician and peace campaigner, was shot dead after leaving a New Year’s party in Cauca, southern Colombia.

Several more killings occurred in the following days. Community organiser Jesus Parafan died, like Gilberto, on New Year’s Day, rural leader Jose Solano Gonzalez and trade unionist Wilmer Miranda on January 4. A day later, 60-year-old Maritza Quiroz’s murder sparked indignation across social media and shocked even those accustomed to bloodshed.

Like so many poor Colombians, Maritza suffered terribly during the country’s long conflict: years earlier right-wing paramilitaries displaced her family and murdered her husband. Now a campaigner for African-Colombian women conflict victims, she was killed by intruders at the rural home she shared with nine other women in Santa Marta, northern Colombia. Photographs showed a gently smiling woman at ease tending the group’s crops or livestock.