He documented paramilitarism and investigated links between multinational companies and land dispossession.
On Tuesday morning, San Ignacio Hospital confirmed the death of Javier Giraldo, a Jesuit priest known for his social research and his work with vulnerable communities in Colombia. He had been hospitalized at the Bogota facility after suffering a domestic accident.
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Born in 1944, he studied philosophy and theology at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana and later earned a specialization in Regional Analysis at the University of Paris I.
His first years as a priest were spent in working-class neighborhoods in Bogota. There, he became familiar with the thinking of Camilo Torres Restrepo, the “guerrilla priest” who founded the National Liberation Army (ELN) and died in combat in 1966.
Unlike Torres, Giraldo chose the civilian path and found in the Liberation Theology his form of social commitment. Throughout his priesthood, he remained permanently affiliated with the Society of Jesus and worked on research into Colombia’s social reality.
Over the course of his career, the priest participated in the founding of the Center for Research and Popular Education (Cinep) and supported the creation of the Interchurch Commission for Justice and Peace in the 1980s, organizations dedicated to analyzing social dynamics and supporting populations affected by armed violence.
The Jesuit priest also worked directly with the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado, in the Uraba region of Antioquia, where he provided technical advice and followed collective memory processes for nearly three decades.
Giraldo was a member of the “Historical Commission on the Conflict and Its Victims,” a technical body created during the negotiations that culminated in the 2016 Peace Agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
Valiente, sincero y pleno de dignidad. El padre Javier Giraldo deja una huella indeleble en la historia de la defensa de los derechos humanos y la construcción de la paz. Siempre al lado de las comunidades marginadas, de las víctimas y de quienes más lo necesitaron.
Su legado… pic.twitter.com/JxUuwIfw6o
— Ana Teresa Bernal Montañéz (@anateresabernal) August 25, 2026
The text reads, “Courageous, sincere, and full of dignity. Father Javier Giraldo leaves an indelible mark on the history of human rights advocacy and peacebuilding. Always by the side of marginalized communities, victims, and those most in need. His legacy will endure. May he rest in peace.”
The Link Between Multinational Companies and Violence in Colombia
Father Giraldo was one of the few researchers who rigorously documented the origins of Colombian paramilitarism. Based on evidence gathered over decades, Giraldo argued that far-right paramilitary armies did not emerge spontaneously but were protected under Decree 3398.
Promoted after a U.S. military mission, this 1965 decree authorized civilians to be armed for the first time under the counterinsurgency doctrine. Paramilitarism thus allowed the Colombian state to exercise terror without paying the political cost of doing so on its own.
Father Giraldo was also a staunch critic of the 2005 Justice and Peace Law. For him, the demobilization of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) was a fiction, and its structures continued operating under new names, such as the Black Eagles and the Gulf Clan.
Much of his research was published in books such as “Paramilitarism in Colombia: Its Origin, Its Structures, Its Impunity” (2004); “Victor Carranza, alias El Patron” (2012), and “From Paramilitarism to Paramilitarism? X-Rays of a Violent Peace in Colombia” (2023).
Giraldo also demonstrated that multinational companies in Colombia, far from being mere victims of extortion by illegal armed groups, acted as active partners in the dispossession of land from peasants and the persecution of social leaders.
The most extensively documented case was that of Chiquita Brands, heir to the former United Fruit Company, in the Uraba region. Giraldo reconstructed how the banana company financed AUC blocs under the guise of payments for private security through the Convivir cooperatives.
According to his calculations, the scheme channeled US$1.7 million to right-wing paramilitary groups. He also documented the arrival of thousands of rifles and millions of rounds of ammunition through ports controlled by banana companies.
When U.S. justice authorities later convicted the company and ordered it to compensate victims, Giraldo considered the sanction insufficient. In Colombia, he recalled, no businessperson or local subsidiary had been criminally convicted. The Jesuit priest also denounced the same conduct among companies linked to oil, coal, and African palm.
“Father Javier Giraldo was a political, social, and humanist role model throughout our lives. I first learned of him through my mother, who always admired him. Later, I was fortunate enough to spend time with him in many places, from Uraba to Arauca, and to participate in powerful seminars on peace,” Senator Alberto Benavides stated.
“A beautiful and committed man: a follower of the Order of Camilo Jose de Cordoba, a revolutionary, a Catholic Christian, and deeply connected to the people’s causes. Father Javier Giraldo will always remain with us,” he added.
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Sources: teleSUR – El Nuevo Siglo
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