Etelvina Ramos: From coca farmer to opponent of the illegal crop

This story is part of a Mongabay series on female environmental defenders in the Amazon. Read about the lives and work of Soraida Chindoy, Maydany Salcedo, and Alis Ramírez.

It was when Etelvina Ramos Campo was four years old that she first became aware that she could die. In her nightmares, a boa surrounded her, broke her fragile bones and left her body at the mercy of other beasts. Almost half a century later, a snake is no longer the antagonist of her sleepless nights but the trigger of a gun held by those who want her dead.

Etelvina Ramos arrived in the Amazon at four years old because her father, José Antonio Ramos, promised to earn an inheritance for her and her ten siblings in a new land: a place where water flowed abundantly and food was so fresh that it seemed to be still alive.

In 1977, her family — her mother, father, and siblings — abandoned Santander de Quilichao, the second-largest city in Cauca Department, Colombia. After almost a full day on a bus, passing trails and towns that became smaller and smaller, they arrived in Puerto Caicedo, in Putumayo Department. It was at the end of the road and what seemed like the end of the populated world.

There, the family seemed to step into another reality, into the Colombian Amazon, with hundred-year-old trees, marmosets, deer, armadillos, large rodents, parrots, tigers, snakes, and a forest so thick that Etelvina Ramos’ father had to walk through it by clearing it with a machete. This exodus took 15 hours by the time the family arrived in the village of La Cristalina in the municipality of San Miguel, near the border with Ecuador.

Her family settled on a 300-hectare (741-acre) piece of land that her father had blindly bought from a man who had become bored of living in that remote area. One day, when they were still new to the area, Etelvina Ramos remembers when they went fishing with rudimentary rods and a pot to make lunch near the water. Her mother sat down on a log and immediately felt movement underneath her. It was not wood that she was sitting on, but a boa. Hunger and fatigue immediately disappeared from the family’s mind, and everyone ran.

That night as a child, Etelvina Ramos struggled to sleep as she imagined the snake swallowing her whole body. Today, she fears another type of violence: that of humans.

“I no longer fear nature; [nature] can be known. However, man is a ferocious thing,” said Etelvina Ramos. “My children learned to see me threatened, but I do not want to leave them alone even though they are adults now — that does scare me.”

The boss’s daughter

During that period, in the late 1970s, there was no talk of guerrillas, paramilitaries, or even the Army. What the Ramos family saw, however, were the coca plantations on neighboring farms, which were about an hour away. Etelvina Ramos and her siblings began to work as coca leaf pickers, or raspachines. They sold the leaves they picked in bundles to foreigners carrying wads of cash.

Their father filled the farm with plants and hired 20 raspachines. Given the amount of uncultivated land, he planted another large crop six hours from his main farm and became a boss.

Due to the company’s success, he frequently traveled in search of supplies. Etelvina Ramos, who was ten years old at the time, saw the workers’ laziness during the boss’s absence. She took her father’s place and began to give orders. Initially, the day laborers ridiculed her adult-like scolding, but they soon understood the seriousness of her words. She told them she was a day laborer who plucked leaves under the sun on farms without even being given water.

Etelvina Ramos’ brothers already had their own crops, and her sisters — beginning at age 14 — found husbands and became mothers while they themselves were still girls. Etelvina Ramos was one of the youngest, followed only by one brother. She was her father’s shadow; she went with him to negotiations and taught herself to read, write, add and subtract to manage the business. She even learned to process coca leaves when she was 12 years old, and she did this so well that the family’s coca began to sell at higher prices. At that time, her mission was to take care of the family business. Decades later, she took on that leadership role from the opposite side by understanding the blood spilled by drug trafficking, in addition to the environmental damage caused by this industry. She experienced these first-hand as a victim and a displaced person.

In that land of nonexistent laws and government neglect, coca paste was sold as if it were corn, yucca, or bananas, although it had much greater profits. Nobody gave a name to this business, and the concept of legality versus illegality did not exist. Drug trafficking was not mentioned; everyone considered themselves to be farmers who lived off of what was cultivated on that generous land, where death due to exhaustion sometimes happened suddenly.

In the early 1980s, people in the area began to discuss the presence of armed men: members of the 48th Front of the Southern Bloc of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). They stayed overnight on farms with the unspoken permission that is common in the jungle or the countryside: giving shelter to those without it and feeding the hungry no matter where they come from — or, in this case, no matter what uniform they wore. Once settled, they took advantage of this time; they could stay for two days, a week, or even a month. This is how they arrived at the Ramos family’s house. Not only did they stay for several weeks, but they also took one of the family’s youngest children, who was 15 years old.

According to a study by Guillermo Rivera Flórez, who was the Minister of the Interior during the presidency of Juan Manuel Santos, “with the expansion of crops for illicit use, armed groups — and especially the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) — had the opportunity to grow in their role as administrators of illegality and begin their own structure as an embryonic state — that is, as a tax collector and provider of security and justice in their historical areas and [areas] of influence.”

The study added that “in the 1980s, coca began to play a definitive role in the funding of guerrilla organizations and this explains the growing number of fronts in Meta, Guaviare, Caquetá and Putumayo.”

In addition to the sounds of the jungle, the sound of bullets rang out from clashes between the FARC and soldiers from the National Army of Colombia. When this happened, farmers in the area had to run, hide under their beds and pray that no stray bullet would shoot through a window and hit anyone.

Etelvina Ramos found herself at the health clinic in a nearby village, talking to a nurse, when the bodies of eight guerrilla members arrived. She offered to help mend the dead bodies. “Doesn’t that scare you? You are still a girl,” asked the nurse. “They were scared,” answered the teenager, gesturing towards the bodies. An adult female guerrilla member had slashes on her breasts, stomach, and mouth. “I’m sure that they did it when she was alive,” said the nurse.

While they mended the lifeless bodies, the smell of rust and gunpowder clouded the space and their thoughts. They talked about existence and about whether they would manage to live or if they would be killed for no reason or out of suspicion.

“Go away, go far away, and don’t come back,” the nurse finally told Etelvina Ramos. She still remembers those words.

Amid this death, the young woman understood that something was transforming and that the spread of violence came wearing the boots of different sides. She realized that a plant that was sacred for some Indigenous ethnic groups was the center of debate for many armed white people. The magical, peaceful land that she had known as a child was now filled with shadows, shell casings and corpses. Something was happening, and it took her years to understand her mission: defending her home, the Amazon.

Family betrayal

The family’s eldest son, a 30-year-old man with his own farm and crops, extended the family business into central Colombia. He paid women to transport coca paste to Bogotá. Although his earnings were high since he was at the top of the chain, he complained about the payments he had to make to the women. Their mother, who was worried about her son’s financial concerns, reprimanded Etelvina Ramos: “He is spending money on young women and you’re here, giggling with the workers and skipping around like a goat.” Without the right to defend herself by arguing that she was still a child and overseeing the farm, she was forced to transport the products.

Etelvina Ramos was only 14 years old, and her entire world was reduced to that piece of land. She had never left the area, much less with an enormous package of coca paste. Without talking back, she prepared herself to transport five kilograms of coca wrapped in plastic and attached to her legs and stomach with adhesives. She only dared to ask for a handgun to defend herself from the robbers and animals in the jungle. She was sent alone on a bus to the Caquetá River and later walked through a mountain range to the community of San Juan de Villalobos. She could not walk on the roads; she had to stay in the shadow of the vegetation. She was afraid of the guerrilla members, the stalkers in the forests and the tigers that she heard in the distance. At night, she slept very little; she was afraid of the snakes and sounds of the darkness.

Along with this fear came resentment, which she ruminated over during her entire journey until it became unforgivable. She cried with rage upon remembering her mother’s scolding to force her to leave, and her brother for exposing her in order to save a few pesos.

She arrived in Bogotá, where the cold weather and gray skies reinforced her sadness. She delivered the products and received money for her return trip by bus. But she did not return home; her resentment prevented her from looking her mother in the eyes or being in the same room. She instead took a job in a coca processing kitchen.

Etelvina Ramos returned to La Cristalina, her home, at age 18 with the intention of introducing her husband and daughter to her family — not out of affection, but out of duty. Her mother cried as she believed she was dead. She also believed that Etelvina Ramos’ brother, who had become a guerrilla member several years earlier, was dead. To calm her, Etelvina Ramos went to the forest to talk to the commander of that FARC unit. The militia leader confirmed that her brother was still alive but almost terminally ill due to an untreated hernia.

“How much do I have to give?” asked Etelvina Ramos, regarding a payment for a treatment. They agreed upon four cows over two months, and if she did not comply, she would go to the forest to be exchanged for her brother. She accepted.

She remembers the guerrilla — who knew her when she was a little girl — asking her, “What did they give you to make you have such a character?” She replied, “In life, I’ve learned that I should not kneel before anyone.” Her mother, who was unaware of the resentment that Etelvina Ramos felt all those years, agreed to provide the four cows.

“One does not need to go backwards in life in the face of any conflict, because only by confronting it head on can one see if it has a remedy,” wrote José Eustasio Rivera in his book ‘The Vortex’ (La Vorágine). With that premise in mind, Etelvina Ramos got her brother and continued her journey that would lead her to transform into a defender of the land and human rights.

Etelvina’s exodus

On the morning of November 7, 1999, Etelvina Ramos was startled awake by the banging of rifle butts on the door to her house. Men from the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia were launching bursts of lead — and insults — and ordered everyone to leave the home.

Etelvina Ramos lived in La Dorada, a small village near the farm where she grew up. With this still trapped in her head, and with some faith that it was a nightmare, she left her home. The stillness, the screams and the deaths were like slaps of reality. She found herself hiding in the main park with other terrified residents, and in the distance, she heard gunshots in houses she knew. She realized that she would no longer see those neighbors. She believes that about 20 people were killed. The official figure is six deaths, according to an investigation by the journalistic portal Verdad Abierta.

The cruelty occurring in that region of the country originated in the mid-1990s during the Third National Summit of the Movement of Rural Self-Defense Groups of Urabá and Córdoba, which was led by the Castaño brothers. These brothers devised a plan to recover lost territory, dominate others using guerrilla presence, and take over the coca industry. Protected by the Public Forces — according to the victims — they arrived in the towns in trucks, and using a regime of terror, they murdered thousands of civilians who were considered subversives..

Etelvina Ramos fled from La Dorada to Puerto Guzmán, Putumayo, but the war seemed to follow in her footsteps. The Self-Defense Groups again entered that community. She continued to flee and arrived in Puerto Valdivia, in the municipality of Curillo in Caquetá Department, to meet up with her husband. He had already been living there for a while.

With life turning into a downward spiral that culminates in an abyss, she found Puerto Valdivia to be empty, with its homes abandoned due to the anguish and horror. Etelvina Ramos’ husband rushed to pick her up in despair at the situation. Someone who happened to be passing by in a canoe hurried to pick the couple up, warning that they would not survive if they stayed there. The guerrilla had ordered everyone to leave before the next arrival of the paramilitaries.

In the struggle to control the drug trafficking business, the area’s farmers fell into the hands of members of paramilitaries, guerrillas and the military. The dead were suspected of belonging to an armed group, and many social leaders have been threatened and persecuted since then. According to the Institute for Development and Peace Studies (Indepaz), since the signing of the Peace Agreement in 2016, 1,552 people have been murdered in Colombia.

Threats against anyone who resists

Etelvina Ramos says that fear is a pain in an invisible body part. She has felt this pain so much that it has become chronic, and she even forgets about it at times. With this chronic pain, she settled in Puerto Valdivia, in Caquetá, after three days of sleeping with her husband and their four children in the forest until public order could be normalized. She promised to build from there.

“I was tired of running from town to town, leaving everything behind. In that place, I told myself: ‘This is where I am from,’ and I began my work with the communities,” said Etelvina Ramos.

She received training in law, community participation and human rights at workshops provided by the Red Cross and the Ombudsman’s Office of Colombia. She created a main community cooperative, which disappeared in 2007 when a female guerrilla member of the FARC killed its secretary and its treasurer. The paramilitaries also viewed her with suspicion and accused her of being the lover of a left-wing commander. With that reasoning, she found herself in a dangerous spot: being a target to be aimed at and killed. In that region, it was believed that standing up and speaking in public meant that a person was backed by an armed group. Because she was alone, people on both sides claimed that she was on the opposite side, and along with that thought came threats.

Aware of this danger, in 2007, Etelvina Ramos founded the Women’s Human Rights Association, which became known as the Rural Association (Asociación Campesina) a decade later at the request of men. In 2016, she also created the Workers’ Association of Curillo (ASTRACUR) to include the different community associations in the municipality’s villages.

With the signing of the Peace Agreements between the FARC guerrilla members and the Colombian government, they established ideas for the replacement of crops with guarantees for the farmers. This would be a form of compensation for the authorities’ historical neglect and the war caused by that neglect. With Etelvina Ramos as the leader of the Association, 482 families were accepted. Of them, 375 have received a subsidy of more than 32 million Colombian pesos (about $8,000) for four concepts: seed capital, short-term projects, food security, and long-term projects.

ASTRACUR is a large foundation that includes several smaller ones. It is the link between the national government and the region. The Rural Women’s Association of Bajo Ceilán is one of the organizations within ASTRACUR. This organization, represented legally by Luz Marina Giraldo, has benefited from logistical and economic support in its crop replacement projects.

“Despite the threats, she remains steady; others left and did not return to avoid being murdered. In contrast, Etelvina — although she doesn’t live here — comes here often and is on top of everything that happens,” said Giraldo.

With the implementation of the Agreements, the war seemed to move away from the territory. The calm vanished the next year, in 2018, with the appearance of old and new groups: FARC dissidents (now called “Second Marquetalia”), criminal bands, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, the Sinaloa Cartel and the Public Forces. Once again, the crops expanded. If a crop was previously sold to paramilitaries or guerrillas, it was now no longer known who the buyer was.

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), 204,000 hectares (504,000 acres) of crops covered Colombian land in 2021. This figure increased by 13% in 2022 to a total of 230,000 hectares (over 568,000 acres). The department with the most significant growth of coca crops is Putumayo, in the Colombian Amazon. In 2022, 48,034 hectares (over 118,000 acres) of coca crops were recorded there, which is a 70% increase compared to 2021.

Since 2019, several rural organizations in the Amazon that work in environmental defense and crop replacement have suffered threats and murders. These organizations include ASTRACUR, the Departmental Coordinator of Social, Environmental and Farming Organizations of Caquetá (COORDOSAC) and the Municipal Association of Workers of Piamonte Cauca (ASIMTRACAMPIC). Several of their leaders have been forced to flee and implement their projects from secret locations.

Marlon Yecid Calderón, a delegate from the Departmental Board of Victims (Mesa Departamental de Víctimas), has been the victim of three attacks that he prefers not to discuss. He is now protected by escorts from Colombia’s National Protection Unit (UNP). Calderón does not understand why Etelvina Ramos has not taken advantage of a protection system given the high-risk situation she is experiencing. According to her, she has not accepted this resource because she is afraid that her enemies will infiltrate the protection team..

In the midst of her environmental fight, Etelvina Ramos has also denounced the agreements that oil companies have made with municipalities to evade their environmental responsibilities. She has also spoken out against the pollution produced by illegal gold mining, which damages the Caquetá River.

Continuing her defense

From her home, in an undisclosed location, Etelvina Ramos moved to Curillo without warning to continue her work with the Association, but she avoids staying overnight in any small villages. If she were to abandon the region forever, the Association would be at risk of disappearing. After all she has fought for, she cannot abandon those who have trusted in her leadership.

Etelvina Ramos has been intimidated since 2017. That year, FARC dissidents tried to recruit her on three occasions, and when she refused, she experienced a death threat. In 2022, a member of the Sinaloa Cartel told her son: “If your mother shows up around here — one group or the other — she won’t stay alive.” Her family and friends always warn her that they are after her.

Etelvina Ramos’ mission is contrary to the interests of drug trafficking. Her goal is the creation and approval of a rural reserve that will include 29 villages in Curillo. This is a model that will allow for the community management of the territory and that, among other things, aims to create the conditions for the sustainable development of the rural economy.

“Illegal armed groups do not understand programs. They think that she is setting people up so that they go against them, but that is not true. She wants to strengthen the communities so that they receive what they deserve, so that they can survive with an economy distinct from drug trafficking,” said Dora Enith Vargas, Etelvina Ramos’ daughter. In a loving tone, she later added: “She’s the best person in the world — the most brave. Only a soul that good is capable of changing herself for the good of others.”

After seven years of planning, Etelvina Ramos hopes that the government will soon approve the reserve. With the territory demarcated by a national decree, she would implement strategies, alongside the communities, to avoid river dredging and mercury use, which are both activities inherent to illegal mining. In addition, she aims to provide land, with deeds, to farmers for subsistence crops and crops to sell, as long as the recipients comply with environmental commitments, such as planting native tree species and caring for tributaries. They would also need to voluntarily avoid spraying glyphosate on land and by air and replace illicit crops.

After a childhood and adolescence surrounded by coca, Etelvina Ramos has seen how the soil has lost its fertility due to non-stop planting. The landscape she once knew when she arrived in the region, with wild animals and expansive virgin jungles, has been transformed by large expanses of illicit crops. The sounds of nature turned into bursts of bullets and sobs for the dead. This part of the world’s lungs, the Amazon, has been contaminated by brutality, and ambition for money and power has become a tumor in its lungs.

How can we manage to eradicate a plant that drives such a large part of the economy of illegal armed groups? How can farmers be convinced to stop cultivating it? Etelvina Ramos, along with other social leaders, is working hand-in-hand with the National Territory Agency (Agencia Nacional del Territorio, ART) to implement the Integrated National Crop Substitution Plan (PNIS), which encompasses almost 100,000 families from throughout Colombia.

As a liaison in the area, Etelvina Ramos knows that it is important to have a road layout that would allow the communities to move their products to be sold, in addition to economic compensation for working to defend the environment. The goal is to achieve a balance between people and nature.

According to the worldview of the Murui Muinane ethnic group in the Amazon, when coca — which is so sacred to Indigenous people — falls into the hands of white people, it turns into blood and misery. In this case, this ancestral omen was fulfilled. Without even knowing the Murui Muinane people’s beliefs, and through her own pain, Etelvina Ramos came to the same conclusion. But she has faith, and without that, she could not continue. For her, faith is greater than fear.

Illustrations by Leo Jiménez. Leo Jiménez.

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This article is part of the project “The Rights of the Amazon in Sight: The Protection of Communities and Forests,” a series of investigative reports about the situation surrounding deforestation and environmental crimes in Colombia, funded by Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI). Editorial decisions are made on an independent basis and are not based on donor support.

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This story was reported by Mongabay’s Latam team and first published here on our Latam site on Feb. 20, 2024.