Latin American Studies

In Memoriam: Nancy Sánchez In Memorio

A journalist by training, Nancy Sánchez spent her life documenting human rights abuses and the survival strategies of everyday women and men in Colombian conflict zones.

Nancy began her human rights work in the Magdalena Medio working with CREDHOS, the Regional Committee for the Defense of Human Rights. She and her colleagues witnessed a scorched earth campaign being carried out by the military in rural areas, and paramilitary massacres in the city of Barrancabermeja. As part of their work, Nancy created an archive of unidentified bodies in the morgue, one of the only means for people to find disappeared loved ones.

After three CREDHOS committee members were assassinated, Sánchez moved first to the capital of Bogotá for work with Jesuit human rights group CINEP from 1994-1995, and then to the Putumayo region, where she worked from 1995-2000 as the Coordinator for Program for Peaceful Coexistence. Working with Father Alcides Jiménez and local community leaders, they documented abuses in the region and led workshops on community protection strategies. On September 11, 1998, Father Alcides was killed by the FARC in front of his parishioners while saying Mass. Nancy continued her human rights work as the U.S.-funded Plan Colombia was implemented in the region, when indiscriminate aerial fumigations of coca crops caused massive public health problems and devastation as people lost their livelihoods. One again death threats forced her to leave her work, and with the support of an Amnesty International Scholarship for Threatened Human Rights Activists, from 2001-2002 she completed Diplome Universitaire Droits de l`Homme at the Institut des Droits de L’Homme, in Lyon, France.

Upon her return in 2003, she began work with Asociación MINGA, a human rights organization, again in Putumayo. For the next decades, she was a central force for the Putumayo Women’s Alliance Weavers of Life, documenting violence in the region, creating security strategies for threatened women, and offering training and support to women and community leaders throughout the region. Returning to Bogotá in 2024, she began work with the Land Restitution Unit, conducting evaluations of land return programs throughout the country. She died in Bogotá after a short illness on February 17, 2026.

Sánchez’s work was internationally recognized with several human rights awards, including the 2003 Letelier-Moffit Human Rights Award from the Institute for Policy Studies and a 2012 Women Peacemaker Award from the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice at the University of San Diego. She maintained a long and close affiliation with Colby College, first as a 2007 Oak Human Rights Fellow and then through frequent visits to campus for public events and class visits. The service award from the Latin American Studies Program at Colby is named in her honor.

Nancy was a close friend and research collaborator, who first introduced me to the Putumayo in 1999 and made possible my subsequent research and analysis in the region. Nancy had an infinite curiosity about the world and an undefeatable sense of adventure. She was a courageous and a beautiful soul, gone too soon and dearly missed.

Winifred Tate

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In Memoriam: Nancy Sánchez

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