Another indigenous leader was killed Tuesday in Northern Colombia, totaling two murders so far this week against the same Colombian indigenous tribe.
Unidentified gunmen burst into the home of Carmen Fuentes Tuesday morning and shot him twice in his bedroom. The motives behind the assassination remain unclear.
Fuentes, aged 42, was the leader of a community inhabited primarily by Colombians displaced by the country’s violence and had expressed a desire to run for the local city council.
Fuentes belonged to the Embera Katio tribe, as did Fernando Tequia, the governor of an indigenous community in Southern Antioquia who was killed in a similar attack Sunday. Tequia’s assassins and their motives have also not been identified.
People of the Embera Katio number about 70,000 and are widely spread across Colombia, ranging from the Northern Caribbean coast to the South of the country. No connection between Sunday and Tuesday’s murders has been established so far.