Peace Candidate Ana Libia Guetio Missing After Campaign Event in Cauca

Ana Libia Guetio stepped out of a campaign event in El Tambo, a rural municipality in Cauca, and did not come back. No one has heard from her since. The disappearance of this indigenous peace candidate—a Nasa woman from the municipality of Suárez who represents victims of forced displacement—has set off alarms across social organizations and government authorities in a region where armed conflict has left deep scars.

Guetio, 51, is one of 396 peace candidates running for Colombia's Transitional Special Constituencies for Peace, a mechanism designed to give victims and marginalized communities direct representation in the legislative process. She represents the Alto Patía–Norte del Cauca district and carries the specific mandate of speaking for those displaced by violence. Her background is clean by any official measure: no sanctions from the comptroller's office, no traffic violations, no criminal convictions, no state contracts, no backing from traditional politicians. She had never run for office before. There were no documented threats against her, no recent incidents of violence in her name.

When she was elected as the representative for the forced displacement victims' constituency to the National Victims' Table in December 2021, Guetio introduced herself with clarity about her purpose. "I come from the department of Cauca, born in the municipality of Suárez, in the village of La Estrella," she said. "I represent the Afro woman, the peasant woman, the indigenous woman; I am Nasa, born in territory." She spoke of her work over the previous two years reaching the most isolated populations—places where people still traveled on mountain paths, where government institutions rarely ventured. Her ambition was straightforward: to ensure that institutional support actually reached those forgotten corners.

Guetio had become a fixture in spaces of collective healing and memory-building. In 2022, she participated in a dialogue gathering that brought together 53 representatives from victim participation tables, an effort to gather input for Colombia's Museum of Victims' Memory. At that event, she created a small sculpture from modeling clay representing her community's struggles and resistance in Suárez territory. She wanted it preserved in the museum—a physical record of what her people had endured.

In the weeks before her disappearance, she had been holding community meetings as part of her campaign, focused on defending the rights of conflict victims across northern Cauca. Then came the event in El Tambo. After she left that political gathering, contact ceased. No calls, no messages, no sightings. Social organizations activated emergency protocols. Human rights defenders and authorities began searching for answers.

Her vanishing arrives at a moment of deepening anxiety about the safety of political activity in territories where illegal armed structures still operate. The Cauca region remains contested ground—multiple factions compete for control, and the presence of armed groups creates a climate where public leadership carries real danger. Guetio's disappearance is not an isolated incident; it is the latest evidence of a pattern that threatens the entire peace process. When candidates who represent victims cannot campaign safely, when indigenous women who speak for the displaced vanish without trace, the question becomes whether genuine political participation is possible in the regions most damaged by violence.

Authorities and human rights organizations are calling for urgent institutional action to locate Guetio. Simultaneously, there are growing demands to strengthen protection mechanisms for territorial leaders—the activists, organizers, and representatives who work in places where the dispute over land and resources continues, where armed actors remain present, and where speaking up still carries the weight of genuine peril.