For years, Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta operated under an unusual and quietly effective arrangement: a non-aggression pact between two of the region’s dominant criminal organizations kept violence and petty crime low enough that tourism could flourish around some of the country’s most spectacular natural attractions. That arrangement has now broken down. The Gulf Clan and the Autodefensas Conquistadoras de la Sierra Nevada, known as ACSN, are locked in an escalating fight for control of drug trafficking routes and extortion revenue across the region – and the consequences are increasingly landing directly on the tourism infrastructure that made the area one of Colombia’s most visited destinations.
A Boom That Became a Target
The scale of what’s at stake helps explain why criminal groups have found the region worth fighting over. Tourism to Colombia doubled during the Gustavo Petro administration, with more than 24 million visitors generating roughly $35 billion in revenue. On the northern Caribbean coast specifically, that boom created a lucrative extortion opportunity that organized crime groups moved quickly to exploit. According to the Colombian think tank Fundación Ideas para la Paz, ACSN alone extorts an estimated 95% of hotels, restaurants, tour operators, and shop owners across the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta area – a figure that indicates the criminal economy built around tourism isn’t a marginal side business for these groups, but close to a near-total capture of the region’s legitimate commercial activity.
That extortion revenue, combined with the area’s function as a crucial drug trafficking corridor even though it isn’t among Colombia’s highest coca-producing regions, and compounded by the Gulf Clan’s broader territorial expansion across northern Colombia since 2022, has driven the two groups into direct and escalating conflict. What began as a localized dispute confined to Santa Marta and its immediate surroundings between 2019 and 2021 has since spread progressively into La Guajira department, and more recently into Cesar and even Santander, as both groups intensify their competition for access to Catatumbo – a strategically vital corridor for drug and gold trafficking flows to and from Venezuela. The conflict monitor Acled has documented the resulting acceleration in stark numerical terms: armed group violence across Cesar, La Guajira, and Magdalena departments has risen from just 4% of Colombia’s total armed group violence in 2018 to 12% so far this year, with a 28% increase recorded in 2026 alone compared to the previous seven and a half months.
When Tourist Transit Routes Become Conflict Zones
The most direct impact on travelers has come through disruptions to the specific routes and gateway cities tourists rely on to reach the Sierra Nevada’s most celebrated sites. Violence has risen sharply in Santa Marta, the Magdalena department’s capital, and in Riohacha, La Guajira’s capital – both serving as essential transit points for travelers heading to Tayrona National Park, the mountain town of Minca, the Ciudad Perdida archaeological site, Pico Cristóbal Colón, and Cabo de la Vela. The picture has grown more complicated with the emergence of additional local armed groups layered on top of the primary Gulf Clan-ACSN conflict: the Los JJ gang emerged with backing from local politicians specifically to dismantle an ACSN faction in Riohacha, while Los Primos began as an armed wing of the Gulf Clan before breaking away to challenge the group’s authority around Fundación, south of Santa Marta. Most of the violent incidents Acled has documented in the area involve attacks on civilians perceived as affiliated with a rival armed group or accused of failing to comply with an armed group’s rules – a category that has come to include Indigenous residents, national park rangers, and local business owners alike.
The economic consequences have already become concrete rather than theoretical. Fighting between the Gulf Clan and ACSN in Aracataca in late February 2026 killed at least five people, displaced several hundred residents, and forced a temporary closure of Tayrona National Park – the Sierra Nevada region’s single most important tourist destination. A second, more disruptive closure followed in June, when ACSN responded to a military intervention by confining local communities and blockading the Troncal del Caribe highway, the primary route connecting Santa Marta and La Guajira, leaving hundreds of tourists stranded in the process. While violence inside the tourist sites themselves – Minca, Palomino, Ciudad Perdida, Pico Cristóbal Colón – has so far remained comparatively rare, armed groups have directly targeted tourism-adjacent businesses, including extortion-related attacks on transport operators such as Cootranscaribe, and the April 2025 kidnapping of a hotel owner and four employees at a well-known property inside Tayrona National Park itself.
Why the State Isn’t Positioned to Intervene
The outlook for the region depends heavily on where Colombia’s government chooses to direct its security resources, and current indications suggest the Sierra Nevada isn’t likely to be the priority. President Abelardo de la Espriella has pledged to end negotiations with armed groups entirely in favor of intensified military pressure, a shift likely to build on an already rising trend in security force operations and their lethality nationwide – but those operations have concentrated primarily in Meta, Guaviare, Antioquia, and Norte de Santander rather than the Sierra Nevada specifically. Even a notable exception, a military operation targeting ACSN leader “Bendito Menor” in Riohacha, appears unlikely to signal a sustained regional focus, particularly given competing demands on government attention: a powerful earthquake that struck western Colombia on August 10 has redirected significant government resources toward relief efforts in Chocó, Valle del Cauca, and Risaralda, further reducing the likelihood of expanded state intervention in the Sierra Nevada in the near term.
That combination – an unresolved and escalating conflict between two criminal organizations neither capable of decisively defeating the other, alongside a government whose security and disaster-response priorities lie elsewhere – points toward continued deterioration rather than stabilization. Further armed group-led blockades along tourist routes, similar to June’s highway closure, appear likely in the months ahead, and the reputational damage to Tayrona Park specifically risks spilling over into reduced visitor numbers at the Sierra Nevada’s secondary tourist sites as well – a concern the president of Santa Marta’s hotel association has already raised publicly. Additional escalation is also expected in southern Cesar, the entry corridor to Catatumbo, where both the Gulf Clan and ACSN are likely to intensify their competition precisely because the government’s security focus in that broader area remains concentrated on dismantling ELN and FARC dissident operations rather than on the Gulf Clan-ACSN rivalry itself – leaving both organizations comparatively free to expand their own conflict while state attention is directed elsewhere.
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