The murder of CINEP researchers Mario Calderón and Elsa Alvarado in Colombia showed that “pain transcends borders”
Photo: Mario Calderón and Elsa Alvarado.
On May 19, 2025, Colombia Informa reported: “On a day like today, in 1997, human rights defenders and environmentalists, Mario Calderón and Elsa Alvarado, were murdered in Bogotá. The crime, which continues to go unpunished, involved paramilitaries, the military, the Attorney General’s Office and the DAS [the Administrative Department of Security], as pointed out by former paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso.”
That article adds: “The priest Javier Giraldo recalls that Elsa wrote profound articles on the way in which ideology was manipulated in Colombia during election time. She is remembered as a jovial, creative person who is very committed to social causes and human rights.”
Father Javier Giraldo is the person who made the formal request for Peace Brigades International to open a project in Colombia (that began in 1994).
On May 19, 2023, the Colombia Support Network had also noted:
“[Their deaths are among] the thousands of crimes against defenders of the environment, social causes, and the communities that remain relevant after the testimony by the former paramilitary boss, Salvatore Mancuso, before the Special Jurisdiction for Peace [JEP]. Mancuso reported that the human rights organizations created inconvenience by filing complaints about the paramilitaries’ crimes before international agencies. That confirms the theory that CINEP was identified as a military objective, and that the murder of Mario Calderón was because of dislike and revenge against the Center. From Mancuso’s reference to the collaboration between governmental entities like the Attorney General’s Office and the DAS (now-defunct Administrative Department of Security), which furnished intelligence and support for the paramilitaries, we understand why the hired killers carried out the crime while wearing uniforms of the CIT (Technical Investigation Corps) of the Attorney General’s Office.”
And the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) has explained:
“The couple had worked for many years as researchers at one of Bogotá’s best known think-tanks and human rights organizations, the Jesuit-run Center for Research and Popular Education (CINEP). Both participated in an environmental project in a town neighboring Bogotá and taught in local universities. Their deaths have left many — among them environmental activists, human rights defenders, community leaders, professors, and Jesuits — in mourning, and deeply frightened.”
In this PBI-Colombia video, Yanette Bautista, the founder of the Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation, shares this memory: “When the colleagues of the CINEP were killed we got out of the church and the PBI people were beside us. We bent down and we were crying and when we saw them crying we understood the pain had gone through all borders.”
We continue to remember.
Image: National Center for Historical Memory.
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