One day in mid-September, Alejandro Carranza, a Colombian fisherman who, his family said, had long plied the Caribbean in search of marlin and tuna, called his teenage daughter. He told her he was going fishing, she said, and would return in a few days.
He never made it back.
The day after he left, on Sept. 15, his family, fellow fishermen and Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, say Mr. Carranza was killed in a U.S. military strike on his boat. The furor about what happened to him has ignited a feud over the huge U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean and the legality of the deadly attacks on nearly 20 vessels since September.
“I never thought I would lose my father in this way,” said Cheila Carranza, 14, this week, holding back tears as she gazed at a photo of him on her phone in her grandmother’s crowded home, where she lives in one room with her mother and two siblings.
As the death toll climbs from U.S. strikes on boats in waters near Latin America, tensions are increasing with Colombia, which had long been a top U.S. ally in the region. So far, 19 U.S. strikes have killed at least 76 people.
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