On May 13 2017, Mario Andrés Calle Correa, 40, was shot three times in the street outside his house in Valle del Cauca, Colombia. He was returning home that morning after buying some bread and delivering milk from his farm when his mother heard the gun shots that killed her son. He leaves behind an 18 month old child, his mother who he lived with, and his brothers.

Mario was the president of Astracava-Guacarí and the president of the Peasant Workers Association of Valle del Cauca. He was passionate about social injustice as he worked for the rights of peasant workers and he demanded that more interest be paid to the rural countryside and its community. He was involved in the promotion of environmental farming.

According to an Astracava-Guacarí spokesperson,” He was always critical of the government, of corruption, of the lack of public investment in the countryside, of the clientelistic practices of the governments in power, of the poverty of the peasantry, of the lack of spaces for the political participation of the communities and of social injustice.”