Through Cage Bars, an Exotic Peek Into Drug Wars

Of all the animals that come to die under Ana Julia Torres’s samán trees, the ocelots are among the most numerous. There are eight of them here, seized from the estate of a murdered cocaine trafficker, who apparently collected them in the belief that any self-respecting drug lord should always have eight ocelots in his dominion.
 
Ms. Torres looks after Dany, a Bengal tiger whose caretakers, employed by a paramilitary commander, said that he used to eat the flesh of death-squad victims; a lethargic African lion that had been fed a steady diet of illicit narcotics by its owner; and the ocelots that belonged to a drug lord with the nom-de-guerre Jabón, or Soap.

“Some of the cruelties I’ve seen make me ashamed to be a human being,” said Ms. Torres, 50, a school principal and animal-rights advocate who initially opened the sanctuary 16 years ago for animals, including a now deceased elephant, that had been discarded by traveling circuses around Colombia.
 
The creatures here, some 800 in all, range from the tiny kinkajou, a nocturnal mammal similar to a ferret found in Colombia’s rain forests, to baboons born across the Atlantic in Africa. Many of the former circus animals, including an old chimpanzee named Yoko, still find repose at Villa Lorena, as Ms. Torres’s sanctuary is called. Other animals, like a king vulture and a pygmy marmoset, one of the world’s smallest monkeys, were rescued in raids on wildlife smugglers who seek to profit from Colombia’s biodiversity.
 
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