A soldier patrols one of the streets next to the port of Buenaventura (Colombia). JOAQUIN SARMIENTO (AFP)
As Colombia listened to congressmen insult each other in the recent debate over marijuana regulation last bank holiday Monday, the day ended in the most violent way in a city feeling the direct effects of the War on Drugs: the port of Buenaventura, in the Pacific. This weekend alone, five people have been killed in clashes between gangs vying for control of the drug trade. A balance not new in this city where violence has been repeated over the past two decades, but worrying given that it is considered a “laboratory of total peace”: the anti-violence policies of the Government of Gustavo Petro, following a truce between the Los Shottas and Los Espartanos gangs. Over the same weekend, more than 300 people were displaced from their homes by fighting in the neighboring department of Chocó. Their homes were in the same area where the executive branch organized a “humanitarian caravan” a few months ago to put an end to the violence. But neither the caravan nor the truce have managed to stop the war in a region that continues to wait for the government to lead the way to full peace.
Arlington Agudelo, a minister in the Buenaventura government, says homicide figures in Colombia’s busiest port are dramatic compared to the first six months of 2022. “In June last year there were eight murders, this year already nine,” he says. “And for the whole of last year we’ve had 74 homicides, while this year we’ve had 54,” he adds. The year had begun relatively quietly until the homicide count rose again to 12 in April and reached a very dangerous peak of 21 homicides in May.
The official says disputes over territorial control between Los Shottas and Los Espartanos continue, and there is also harassment of young people who deserted from one group or the other. He believes it is important to revive the dialogue table, taking advantage of the fact that the ceasefire was not officially broken. “This peace process must be pushed forward because the groups say they want to sit at the table. We have asked that new delegates can be included in the process but have received no response,” says Agudelo. “The High Commissioner for Peace has served the dish, but it’s time someone started it.”
A reality seems to live in the Colombian Pacific region that corresponds to that of the Colombians in the Andean zone: while the cities of the mountains and their valleys were debating the scandal of Armando Benedetti and Laura Sarabia, on this jungle coast a woman named Delfina Murillo died the panic, he felt when he heard the bullets near his house. “It’s one of the many deaths that aren’t recorded in the violence statistics but are equally a result of the war,” a representative of the territory where Delfina lived told the San Juan (Acadesan) General Community Council. in the chocolate department.
According to the Ombudsman’s Office, this department, with a majority Afro-Colombian population, is the one to have suffered the most lockdowns so far in 2023 with 70 incidents. “El Chocó is the epicenter of detention events, with 79% of cases,” noted Ombudsman Carlos Camargo at a public hearing in Quibdó. The company also pointed out that state institutions are increasingly withdrawing in the face of armed groups: four mayors have had to leave the country in recent months.
Delfina Murillo lived in an area where communication is not by road but by rivers and which for a little over six years has been the scene of a conflict between two armed groups: the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the Self-Defense Forces. Gaitanistas from Colombia (AGC or Clan del Golfo). “Initial information indicates there are at least 357 people in San Miguel,” Acadesan said in a statement on a bank holiday Monday, referring to the city center where hundreds of citizens fled to over the weekend because of the clashes. Three weeks earlier, he says, instead of 300 displaced people in the area, there were around 1,500.
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“It follows the same confrontational dynamic as it has since 2017 [año en el que las FARC salió del territorio tras firmar la paz]’ says a person who works with Acadesan and prefers not to reveal her name for security reasons. “War is raging in San Juan between the AGC and the ELN, and from time to time public authority intervenes,” he adds. For this reason, he says that the new ceasefire between the army and the ELN is to be welcomed, but it will not change the dynamics at all in this area, where the population is not displaced by confrontations with the state.
Given the seriousness of the situation, the government, together with the ELN, organized a “humanitarian caravan” in the region in January, temporarily reducing killings, clashes and displacement. But when that massive presence ended, the violence returned. A social leader in the region, who also prefers to keep his identity a secret, has doubts about reports that the ELN has lost ground in recent months due to AGC attacks. “One hears that the ELN brings in people from other regions to strengthen themselves. There have been confrontations for two years and they will not be resolved [del Chocó]I wouldn’t think the ELN is weakened,” he says. Likewise, he says that the explosive mines, the fighting and the presence of the two groups made it impossible to farm, hunt or fish. “An actor sees someone fishing at night, doesn’t identify them, and kills them,” he says.
Acadesan – one of the country’s largest local councils – has called for new protective measures from the national government, and Vice President Francia Márquez’s office has tried to coordinate various ministries to respond with health, education or road measures. What the community is demanding most, however, is a multilateral ceasefire, a goal that the government of total peace has eluded. “I know they’re working, but they’re not getting results,” says the person who accompanies Acadesan.
Three leaders interviewed at the Quibdó hearing agree that life in the midst of conflict is something they’ve been used to for years: they don’t believe things are worse now, but rather that nothing is in the solution of what has happened since progressed prior administration. “The only thing that has changed is the tone of the government, which now has the will to negotiate,” says one of them.
At 12, Chocó is the second department with displacement events this year. The first is Nariño, the southernmost department in the Colombian Pacific, where 20 cases are reported, according to the Ombudsman’s Office. Most of these movements in Nariño affected the indigenous Awá peoples of the community of Tumaco on the border with Ecuador. This time due to a conflict between the ELN and a group of FARC dissidents called the 30th Front.
The majority of the combatants in this war, says a local activist, who prefers not to be named, are unemployed youth. “Here, people continue to have hope for the government of change, but they continue to hope that it will start to govern,” says this man, who has asked to withhold his identity due to the risk. “We know that there are many difficulties, but the war machine rests on the shoulders of the youth, so total peace must be achieved, but they must also be given opportunities,” he adds.
For decades, the Nariño-Pacific region saw the near-absolute power of the extinct FARC. The peace process and the end of this guerrilla group atomized power so that the groups now compete with each other for control of a gateway to the sea that allows them to dominate the drug trafficking market. In March 2011, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) called for precautionary protection measures for the Awá people, noting even then that there were high levels of displacement and anti-personnel mines in the area. But no humanitarian siege, ceasefire, or military operation has managed to calm the intense war in the hardest-hit areas.
Quibdó, the capital besieged by blackmail
Extortion is the main concern in Quibdó (population 129,237), the capital of Chocó and the site chosen by the Ombudsman for his public hearing on Friday. The AGC controls the northern neighborhoods, while the ELN – or their allied criminal gangs – controls the south. Two of the social leaders interviewed, one from each zone, report that payments to groups have been part of the daily lives of merchants for around 20 years. It is not possible to cross the invisible lines that separate the city: “You cannot go to the other side because one is a military target, you assume that you are passing information to the other group .”
Both leaders contrast with other rural politicians in their views on what a stronger state presence should entail. One from Quibdó defends that social institutions – like family welfare – work well and that the real priority is to have more public forces to fight racketeering. The other comments: “The police pass by for a moment, a wheel goes by and it opens.” “As soon as they turn around, the armed groups make their presence felt,” he says. Those in rural areas, on the other hand, believe that public authority is “exposing communities” and that the solution lies in more social investment and infrastructure.
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