‘I always hear them before I see them’: Drones strike fear in Colombia

Key points

• Whenever a low, bumblebee-like thrum cuts through the quiet of Sandra Montoya’s home near Tibu in Colombia’s Catatumbo region, the sound stiffens her body.
• She instinctively reaches for her young son.
• The noise always emerges from a small mountain behind her home, part of a tree-quilted landscape stitched with winding rivers along Colombia’s border with Venezuela.
• "I always hear them before I see them, if I see them at all," she says.
• "Usually, black dots appear in the distance, sometimes coming towards us." Drones — some laden with explosives — regularly trace across the skies above Catatumbo, a region long marked by clashes between rival armed groups and the state.