Colombia’s Surprising New Export

When Juan Guillermo Jaramillo set out to document butterfly species in the early 2000s, he had no idea his work would lead to groundbreaking discoveries

When Juan Guillermo Jaramillo set out to document butterfly and bird species in the early 2000s, he had no idea his work would lead to important discoveries. Amid violent conflict and environmental destruction, will an unlikely export bring new hope to Colombia? 

– by Joshua Collins and Daniela Diaz in Bogotá, Colombia 

The Butterfly Effect

Juan Guillermo Jaramillo has no formal training as a biologist or researcher. But that doesn’t stop him from leaving his house each morning, camera in hand, to add new photos to what he calls a “butterfly species directory.”

In the last year alone, a project he started with U.S.-based photographer Kim Garwood has identified hundreds of butterfly species as part of a “Butterfly Checklist” that has documented butterflies across Latin America — including an astonishing 3,877 different species in Colombia since the project began. In 2021, Colombia was declared the most biodiverse country in the world in terms of butterfly species, according to a study conducted by the Natural History Museum in London.

“In Colombia there isn’t much information about the vast numbers of butterflies that exist in our territory,” said Jaramillo. “I want to show this biodiversity to society, so that we don't continue destroying it.”

A Lucky Accident

Juan Guillermo revises his photos at home near Medellin, Colombia

Kim Garwood began making trips to Mexico in the 1990s to photograph bird species and document them. By the early 2000s, her work had expanded to Colombian butterflies.

“Juan found my work online and reached out to me, because he had all of these photos of butterfly species he couldn’t identify,” she told OZY by phone from Mexico, where she was conducting photography fieldwork. “And I started to realize that we had dozens of new discoveries on our hands. It was really like a ‘wow’ moment for us.”

That initial conversation quickly evolved into a yearslong collaborative partnership. By 2007, Garwood was making regular trips to Colombia and organizing bird photography tours with Juan’s help, while also collecting photos of butterflies in their natural habitats, which they cataloged and organized in an online databank.

“It really became a community project,” she explained. “And Colombians have been instrumental in the work.” Over 350 photographers are credited in the project’s comprehensive documentation, a catalog which includes more than 400,000 photos.

Garwood noted that Indigenous communities in particular have played a vital role in documentation. “I really can’t stress that enough,” she said. “They know things even lifelong experts in the region don’t.”

“They might have different names for a species we are seeking to document, but when we show them a picture, they might reply, ‘Oh sure, that species arrives in August, and stays until September. Come, I will show you where.’”

But Garwood also expressed serious concern that, in the decades she has spent investigating butterfly species, she has also seen much destruction of butterfly and bird habitats.

“It is an indescribable sense of loss to see that kind of destruction in person,” she said. “It’s common, I think, for a lot of people in the modern world to live in a state in which nature is somewhat removed from our daily lives. We often forget that we quite literally can’t survive without it.”

Discovery in Conflict Zones

Colombia’s 52-year civil war officially ended in 2016, when the government signed a historic peace accord with rebel group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Colombian biologists and environmental activists at the time hoped the peace accords could bring renewed opportunity to study Colombia’s rich biodiversity, which for decades had been hidden from investigators by security threats and the fog of war. 

And for the first few years after the accord, there was greater opportunity for research. Even the former guerrillas who laid down their arms en masse saw ecotourism as a means to peacebuilding — after all, no one was more familiar with the inaccessible jungle areas of the country, where they lived and fought for years. 

In the development of ecotourism projects, some ex-guerrillas became birdwatching guides in Antioquia, in northwestern Colombia, and rafting guides in Caquetá, in the south of the country.

But in recent years, the power vacuum left behind in formerly FARC-controlled areas went unfilled by the government, despite promises to build infrastructure and foster economic opportunity in communities that had been neglected by the central government in Bogotá for decades.

New criminal groups began to fill that void, including some guerrillas who decided to return to arms in the face of what they saw as broken promises on the part of the Colombian government. The result has been a resurgence of conflict in rural areas of the country.

Dreams of peace in Colombia began to evaporate, and so did the hopes of researchers who had sought to document the rich biodiversity. 

Jaramillo explained that the violence is a huge obstacle in his work to document new species in regions with enormous ecological potential, such as Putumayo, a conflict-ridden and biodiverse region in southwestern Colombia, as well as his native Antioquia.

Botanist and ecologist Alberto Gómez worked with the Colombian government on its coca eradication program from 2002 to 2009, which involved aerial spraying of glyphosate, a powerful herbicide. Coca is the raw ingredient used to make cocaine. 

Gómez, who now works to preserve many of the same environments he damaged during his time with the government, pointed out that there are 40 species of flora that exist only in the forested Putumayo region.

“We were destroying our greatest national gift, our biodiversity, for a program that wasn’t working,” he said, referring to the spraying of coca plants. Today, Gómez and others hope that an unlikely new export can help reverse such destruction.

Colombia’s Future: Butterfly Ecotourism?

President Gustavo Petro, who took office in August 2022, promised on the campaign trail to rein in the country’s economic dependence on petroleum, and invest instead in sustainability-oriented tourism. Activists, researchers and ecotourism companies all hope that such efforts can be an engine not only for economic growth, but also for conservation of endangered habitats.

“We want communities to think beyond tourism just economically,” said Lorena Salazar, technical coordinator of the foundation Travolution, which encourages community-based tourism across Latin America. She said that a strong ecotourism industry could provide the funding and momentum for protecting forests, conserving water and preserving delicate habitats.

In the past, said Salazar, efforts to boost tourism often involved large international conglomerates building sprawling resorts, which often had negative effects on surrounding communities and ecosystems. She said that today’s ecotourism efforts are focused on a more responsible approach.

Garwood hopes that their new discoveries can lead to more sustainable initiatives. She explained that “birding” — tourism for bird photography — could easily be marketed toward butterflies as well.

She said that birding expeditions in Colombia have long been popular with foreign tourists, especially on Colombia’s northern coast. “And any good habitat for birding is good for butterflies as well.”

“I do this because I love it. We don’t make any money,” she told OZY. “But if we can bring awareness of the importance of these habitats to the global community, well, that’s a win for everyone.”

She added, “Especially the butterflies.”

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The Big Headlines in LATAM

It’s been a wild week for the family of El Chapo. Ovidio Guzmán, son of the infamous drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán has been extradited from Mexico to the US on drug trafficking charges, the US Attorney General said on Friday.

Guzmán has been accused by the U.S. of smuggling Fentanyl, as well as other drugs, from Mexico into the U.S. according to a statement by the Attorney General’s Office.

Also on Friday, El Chapo’s wife, Emma Coronel, was released from jail after serving time for narcotrafficking charges. She was sentenced to three years in jail in November 2021, a sentence which was later reduced.

She was also accused of having acted as a messenger for her husband both during his time on the run and behind bars, relaying orders to his cartel lieutenants and to his sons with his previous wives, who are known as the Chapitos (Little Chapos).

Guatemala continues to be plagued with all manner of electoral shenanigans after the victory of Bernardo Arévalo in the presidential elections. We broke down in detail all of the attempts by the political establishment to block his candidacy last month, but suffice to say efforts to block the center-leftist who ran on a campaign on reigning in corruption have been endemic.

The president-elect this week called for the resignation of Attorney General Consuelo Porras, a prosecutor and a judge for orchestrating an alleged coup plot against him.

The Organization of American States denounced the prosecutors' actions as illegal, while the U.S. government said they undermine the democratic transition of power.

Rafael Curruchiche, a prosecutor who led the raid on Arévalo’s office this week (and far from the first), said the actions were part of an investigation into irregularities that may have occurred during the first round of elections in June.

The dispute adds uncertainty to a process that has been marred by bitter legal battles and accusations of foul play. Arevalo will take office in January after winning the Aug. 20 runoff, having remained in the race despite repeated attempts by the prosecutor’s office and the judiciary to overturn election results.

Spanish Word of the Week

This week’s word is more of a phrase. And it is one that confused the hell out of us when we first heard it. Comer moscas

Literal translation: To eat flies

English equivalent: To speak aimlessly

We all have a friend that’ll start a story about going to the grocery store, but somehow manages to turn it into an hour long autobiography.

A person who comer moscas is a person who often goes off on tangents or speaks aimlessly.

We aren’t sure about the origin of this phrase. Why would eating flies be like rambling on and on? No idea. But here at PWS we try to comer moscas as infrequently as possible in our writing, as all good journalism should strive to do.

Thanks for reading piratas! Hasta pronto!