Assassins murdered the third native Colombian leader since President Ivan Duque’s failed meeting with indigenous representatives last week.
Jhon Jader Cayapu, a community leader from the Cauca province where local leaders were meant to meet with the president, was found dead on Monday on a road in the rural municipality of Corinto.
The attack comes just days after a pamphlet signed by the “Aguilas Negras” appeared throughout the northern Cauca region in which the group offered to pay $30,000 for the killing of indigenous leaders.
The pamphlet appeared a day after Duque refused to meet with the organizers of the “minga,” the local indigenous people’s mobilization that had the Pan-American Highway closed for weeks.
Duque bails on meeting with native Colombians
According to the national indigenous organization ONIC, 50 indigenous, farmer, and Afro Colombian leaders have been assassinated throughout Colombia so far this year.
In Corinto, a municipality with less than 32,000 inhabitants, there have been 29 assassinations this year.