THROUGH CAGE BARS, AN EXOTIC PEEK INTO DRUG WARS

CALI, Colombia - Of all the animals that come to die under Ana Julia
Torres's saman 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's sanctuary houses hundreds of animals rescued largely
from drug traffickers and paramilitary warlords, as well as from
circuses and animal-smuggling rings, offering a strange window into
the excesses and brutalities carried out in this country's endless drug wars.

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 Jabon, 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.

But some of the most striking animals at Villa Lorena, located up a
dirt road in the slum of Floralia, are the great cats that once
belonged in the private zoos of drug traffickers, who still seem to
find inspiration in the example of the dead cocaine baron Pablo Escobar.

Indeed, descendants of the hippos once owned by Mr. Escobar still
roam the grounds of Hacienda Napoles, his once luxurious retreat,
where he amassed a private collection of exotic species, including
rhinoceroses and kangaroos.

Ms. Torres's sanctuary surpasses Mr. Escobar's menagerie in its
diversity. About 500 iguanas roam its trees and pathways near corrals
for peccaries, flamingos, mountain goats and peacocks. Cages house
toucans and spider monkeys. Ms. Torres closes the sanctuary to all
but a handful of visitors.

"The animals here are not meant to be exhibited," she said before
leaning through cage bars to embrace and kiss on the lips a roaring
lion named Jupiter, who was recovered from a circus where he had
suffered from malnutrition. "They need to be protected, and have a
right to live in peace."

Some of the animals under her care found anything but peace before
arriving at Villa Lorena. Several years ago, she nursed back to
health a spider monkey called Yeyo, found by the police in a puddle
of his own blood after being beaten by its owner. While Yeyo lost an
eye from the abuse, he lived quietly at Villa Lorena until his death, she said.

Then there is the lion named Rumbero, rescued from a drug trafficker
near the city of Manizales. Rumbero's eyes have an empty, glazed
look. Ms. Torres said he was forced to consume marijuana, ecstasy and
other substances at bacchanals in Colombia's backlands.

At almost every turn at Villa Lorena, animals display indignities
suffered at the hands of man. A caiman with a severed limb stretches
under the tropical sun. A macaw with a sawed-off beak flutters in its
cage. Luis, a cougar who once belonged to a drug trafficker, limps
around his cage, the result of having a front leg cut off.

Ms. Torres speaks of each case with passion, somewhere between
outrage and desperation, bringing to mind the episode in Nietzsche's
life when he broke into tears and threw his arms around a horse on
the streets of Turin while attempting to save it from a coachman's whipping.

"We've received horses here, too, including one that a man in Cali
tried to burn alive after dousing it with gasoline," she said,
motioning to Villa Lorena's burial ground near the chimpanzee's cage,
where workmen bury all the animals that die at the sanctuary. "It
didn't make it."

For others in animal-rights circles here, Ms. Torres's sanctuary
raises issues that are both philosophical and practical. "Animals are
not like human beings, who can adjust to being in a wheelchair," said
Jorge Gardeazabal, a veterinary surgeon at Cali's zoo.

Dr. Gardeazabal, citing the example of an ocelot with a severed leg,
said that he preferred euthanasia in such cases, since the ocelot
would be unable to carry out its genetic instinct to flee with
quickness when it sensed fear. Still, he said he supported Ms.
Torres's sanctuary. "But it's an activity that should be regulated by
the authorities," he said, to ensure the well-being of the animals
and those who work with them.

While Ms. Torres receives help from Cali's environmental police, who
deliver rescued animals to her doorstep, she shuns government
financing and other involvement with the authorities. She relies,
instead, on private donations and food given to the sanctuary by
grocery stores.

Eliecer Zorrilla, an official with Cali's environmental police, said
the hands of law enforcement were largely tied when it came to
limiting the traffic in exotic animals, even those that were abused
and ended up at Villa Lorena. Colombian law does not include prison
terms for people found mistreating animals or owning a rare species, he said.

Mr. Zorrilla added that his officers could seize wild animals from
their owners only when they were in the process of being transported
or traded. "We have no idea how many other wild animals, from this
continent or others, are being mistreated in captivity," he said.

In an ironic twist, man's clash with nature is also what sustains the
animals in Villa Lorena. Roadkill, largely in the form of horses hit
by cars, provides much of the meat for Ms. Torres's carnivores.
Workmen butcher the donated horse meat and toss it into cages, where
it is quickly consumed.

Ms. Torres said that it took time for Dany, the man-eating Bengal
tiger, to get used to his new diet. He roared with startling vigor
one recent afternoon when it came time to eat; steel bars separated
him from the laborer throwing him raw flesh. "Dany's one of the few
animals here that I cannot embrace," said Ms. Torres. "At least not yet."