"Even if my blood is spilled, my community's land is going to be titled."

A year has passed since the assassination of Indigenous Earth defender Arbildo Meléndez, a leader of the Cacataibo people in the Peruvian Amazon.

On April 12, 2020, Arbildo went into the rainforest to hunt and never returned with food for his family. The next day his wife, Zulema Guevara, went searching for him and found his body. Zulema has been demanding justice for her husband ever since.

Before Arbildo was murdered, he presented his case to the United Nations. The Peruvian government was also made aware of Arbildo's struggle to title the ancestral territory of the Cacataibo people. This process turned him and his young family into targets, and they began to be threatened and harassed by drug traffickers who wanted to use this same territory to plant coca and build clandestine airstrips.