The Seaports.docx

8/11/2019 The Seaports.docx

1/21

This text was taken from the book, La Reconquista del Pacfico: Invasin, Inversin, Impunidad,written by Gearid Loingsigh for PCN (Black Communities Process) in Colombia. Andtranslated by the Colombia Solidarity Campaign. Its publication and circulation is authorised aslong as this note remains unaltered.

The Ports: Importing TerrorThe ports of the Pacific are very important to the Colombian economy, and they have been so for a longtime. Their importance is not new, nor are the plans to expand their cargo capacity, which date back atto least the start of the 1990s, if not before. It is another example of the re-conquest, the investment/invasion of the zone. In the case of Buenaventura, there are plans to expand the cargo port, and toconstruct a new port in Baha Mlaga for vessels that require a greater draught, by increasing the depthof the access canal to the port, and so allow larger vessels with a greater hold capacity to enter. The dualcarriageway project between Buga and Buenaventura is linked to these plans. These initiatives arepresented as beneficial to the community. At the simplest level, the new Buga-Buenaventura road ispresented as something that will reduce travel time for citizens, just as the La Linea tunnel project ispresented as connecting people to Bogot more quickly. None of this is true. These works follow adifferent logic.

Conpes 34911 State Policies for the Colombian Pacific u nder the heading New Motorways forCompetitiveness states that: the Buga -Buenaventura Dual Carriageway has been identified for thePacific region in the programme. This programme seeks to turn the countrys principal routes for theforeign trade (the bold is not in the original document) into dual carriageways, one of which is theBogot Buenaventura road. 2 The key words here are competitiveness and foreign trade . Its not theonly roadway plan, in the same document the roads connecting Tumaco with Esmeraldas, Medelln withQuibd and the Pan-American Highway from Darin are also mentioned.

The National Development Plan 2010-2014 is very clear regarding the aims of these plans.

Along the Bogot Buenaventura axis, there are conditions for the creation of an area thatcould stimulate the economic flows between Bogot D.C. and the regions of Cundinamarca,Tolima, Huila, Eje cafetero [the coffee region] and Valle del Cauca. The Bogot Buenaventuraarea is strategic for the exports and imports of the centre of the country and the departmentswhich require access to the Pacific Basin markets .3

In this vision the inhabitants of the zone are of little consequence; in fact they do not even appear in theNational Development Plan. This axis is connected with others, in such a way that none can beconsidered in isolation. The state has an integrated vision of creating a road network connecting thePacific Coast with Caracas and other regions, with Bogot at its centre. Bogot is like the hub of awheel with each additional road project adding another spoke.

The core concept of the Villavicencio - Puerto Gaitn - Ro Meta Ro Orinoco integration is tochannel the economic flows from Venezuela and Colombia and to facilitate the access to the

1 Translation Note Consejo Nacional de Poltica Econmica y Social national agency in charge of economicstrategy periodically publishes reports and policy documents2Conpes 3491 (2007) Poltica de Estado para el Pacfico colombiano page 573DNP (2010)Plan Nacional de Desarrollo 2010-2014 Prosperidad Para Todos, Tomo I, DNP, Bogot page 55


2/21

Pacific Basin through Buenaventura. This concept is also important because it makes possiblethe creation of the necessary infrastructural, communication, technological and sustainableenvironmental conditions to take advantage of the economic potential of the Altillanura [HighPlains].4

In a footnote they explain what is meant by the economic potential of the Altillanura. According to the

document:...the Altillanura encompasses between 11 and 12 million hectares of the departments ofVichada and Meta. The aim of the government is to transform 5 or 6 million hectares of this,creating a type of Brazilian Cerrado 5 that contributes to converting the country into a powerful,global agricultural hub. The products targeted for development include cocoa, soya-corn,poultry, cattle livestock, plantation rubber and palm. 6

As can be seen, all this is linked to other projects including the Colombian states agricultural policy andplundering of other parts of the country. This is something that we should bear in mind when we look atviolence along the dual carriageway: such vision and planning go beyond the thinking of H.H., theinfamous serial killer and number one capo of the Calima Bloc of the AUC, who has been portrayed as

some kind of hero by the media and NGOs for his declarations which contrast with the deathly silence ofthe other AUC murderers. It is worth remembering that he is a criminal mercenary at the service of thestate and its economic projects who does not deserve the respectful treatment which some mediachannels and left-wing journalists have given him.

Dual Carriageway

The Buga-Buenaventura dual carriageway is a project aimed at connecting Buenaventura to Buga, therest of the country, and finally to Caracas. The project is included in this document under the sectionThe Seaports for the simple reason that if it were not for the ec onomic necessity of the state to

improve the transport from Buenventuras port, this road would never have been built. The constructionof the road is linked exclusively to the needs of the port. Hence, one must also understand, in the sameframework, the violence and the terror along the roads route. There are some that try to put theattacks of the paramilitaries in the context of the kidnapping at La Mara by the ELN7. However, its nottrue the same paramilitaries have tried to use the La Mara issue as an excuse for everything, from themassacre of El Naya to their assault on Buenaventura.

But the AUC were not a reactive force, instead they had their own strategy and alignments. They werepart of a state terror strategy against the popular moveme nt (and as such, they werent really acounterinsurgent organisation). The kidnapping at La Mara could explain the participation of somepeople in the financing of the AUC but it does not explain the decision of the AUC to take over the zone.At this time the AUC was advancing on some of the big cities of the country in zones far fromLa Mara .

4Ibid5 Tr Note http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerrado6 DNP (2010) op. cit. page 107 The La Mara Kidnapping in May 1999 was a mass kidnapping initially of almost 300 people carried out by the ELNin the church La Mara in an affluent sector of Cali. Many of those kidnapped were taken into the mountains nearCali. It is regularly used as an excuse by the right for financing the paramilitaries in the region.


3/21

In 1998 the first massacre of Zaragoza took place. At that time, the community did not understand themotive behind the massacre, and as such, did not know how to contextualise it. When the firstmassacres started, the people were not aware of the dual carriageway project. As one inhabitant of thearea explains First the paramilita ries came and finished off all our family. In 2002 they came out withthe story that the construction of the dual carriageway was going to start. But first, the massacresstarted and most of the people left the area .8In the first massacre of Zaragoza the paramilitaries did notleave behind any proof of their participation in the crime nor did they suggest the reason for it. It wasnot until 2000 that the paramilitaries made it publicly known that they had been in the area and what itwas they had come to do. They started painting the houses in the area with the name of the Bloque Calima which was already under the command of alias H.H. The paramilitaries carried out another dualcarriageway massacre on 11 May, 2000.

On the 26th of August the paramilitaries returned and committed another massacre, but it would not bethe last. The people fled the area. The property through which the carriageway route passed werecollective territories and because of this, the road authority, Invas was forced to conduct a preliminaryconsultation with the community. It seems that they carried out a preliminary consultation in their ownway, which does not seem to be a real consultation. Moreover, when they arrived to undertake the

consultation, many of the people had already fled the area. As a result, there were less people toconsult, less people able to say no, and of course, less people to compensate. Invas presented the dualcarriageway project as a development for the community, bringing the community employment andother benefits. However, as is the case with almost all invasions justified as development, sources ofemployment and income were stripped from the community. The informal car washers who worked inthe area could not work; they could not even work in the new car washing enterprises. As the dualcarriageway project progressed, so did the massacres. One of the last massacres was the third massacreof Sabaletas, a community hit hard by H.H. and his mercenaries.

It was the case that H.H. did not want anybody, any functionary left alive after the massacre. Itwas the 14 th of July 2003. The events occurred in the morning, and as I was the Ombudsman Iwas notified the following day at 9am. I dont have the exact figure but I think more than 9

people died, massacred in the most nauseating, revolting way that one can possibly kill a humanbeing. I myself had to go there and see the pools of blood. Its one of those things that hurtsbecause all there is, is speculation about what happened. The National Army is an entity which isnot authorised to identify perpetrators of a crime that is what the judicial bodies are for... andthey have always pointed to the self-defence groups [AUC]. This crime marked my life as aperson and functionary.. Many people get these jobs of defending human rights, because afriend, godfather, a political contact asked them. But when they take up their position theyrealise the responsibility attached to carrying out their job; many tend to withdraw from therequired tasks of the post. Many things have remained in impunity and today the Ombudsman sOffice is obliged to explain to the community why this has happened. To date two Ombudsmenhave come and gone and the entity has never addressed these cases. 9

All the massacres related to the dual carriageway have remained under the most absolute blanket ofimpunity. When we say remain in impunity, we not only refer to the fact that the murderers are freeand at large (with the exception of the AUCs ex -leader H.H.), but that the reasons driving the massacresare not acknowledged. Here we state that the massacres are linked to the dual carriageway, but apart

8 Testimony.9 Interview with an ex-Ombudsman of Buenaventura.


4/21

from the victims, not many dare say this and increasingly there is pressure to separate the reports ofmassacres from large scale projects i.e. one can report a massacre, but one cannot state that it is aresult of the implementation of one or other project. One only has to look at the violence produced bythe current mining invasions. Very little is said about it.

The port of Buenaventura is the epicentre of violence and of the states development projects. It also

has its own developmental plan, which is the expansion of the port. Buenaventura has been animportant port for a long time, since the first half of the 19 th century.

According to Gartner, around 1925, more than one fifth of the external commerce and close to 15% ofexports of coffee passed through Buenaventura. 10 Since then, Buenaventuras importance to theeconomy has risen. It is the principal multipurpose port of Colombia. Between 1990 and 2004Buenaventura accounted for an average of 42.5% of exports via the countrys maritime terminals .11 Themain destinations for its exports were Peru and the United States. In the same time periodBuenaventura played a role in maritime imports, accounting for 56.6% of them. 12 The main exportsfrom the area are agricultural primary products, such as sugar and coffee. The beneficiaries of theexports are not from the municipality, but from the big sugar mills in Valle del Cauca and large coffeeharvesters from the Eje.

This is not new, throughout their lives the people of Buenaventura have not benefited from theexported wealth . As Gartner says Buenaventura throughout the 20 th century showed sharp contrastsbetween the wealth that passed through it and the benefit accruing to the residents .13 The loading porthas not benefited the Buenaventura population in the slightest.

Valle del Cauca, despite being part of the Pacific Coast, a region with very poor areas includingChoc and Nario, is one of the areas with the best socio-economic indicators, similar to thoseof Antioquia and Bogot. However, paradoxically, Buenaventura municipality of, which gives itits costal character, does not reflect the good results of the department to which it belongs,even though the city is home to one of the most important ports of the country.

Currently, Buenaventura is the poorest municipality of Valle del Cauca. The percentage of thepopulation with unsatisfied basic needs (UBN) is three times higher than that of Cali.Buenaventuras meeting of basic services is below the departmental average. The low levels ofliteracy are more comparable with those of Choc than those of Valle del Cauca. 14

Effectively, Buenaventuras UBN is high, and although it is lower than that of Choc, it is still very high,as can be seen in the following table. The table shows that there is a social gap between Buenaventuraon the one hand and Valle del Cauca and Cali on the other.

Place Buenaventura Choc Valle delCauca

Cali

10 Prez, G.J (2007) Historia, geografa y puerto como determinantes de la situacin social de Buenaventura,Documentos de TrabajoSobreEconoma Regional, No 91, Banco de la Repblica, Cartagena, page 711Collazos, J.A. y Borrero, S.(2006) Las Sociedades Portuarias Regionales en el comercio exterior colombiano: Unaresea sobre la importancia del Puerto de Buenaventura 1990 2004, Banco de la Repblica, Cali page 1512 Ibid, page 1913Gartner cited in Prez, G.J (2007) op. cit. page 714Prez, G.J. (2007) op. cit. page 2


5/21

UBN (% ofpopulation)

35.85 81.94 14.06 11.01

In Cali, there is not much difference between the rural zone and the city, but in Buenaventura, the rural

area has an UBN of 47.32 compared to the urban zones 35.42 . These figures are somewhat misleading,as according to the DANE15 only 17.67% of the population lacks access to public services. Water access issaid to be high, but this is not true. Almost every resident has access to water services, but the water isavailable for only a few hours and it is frequently unavailable at all. In some areas water arrives at 7ambut by 8 am its gone. It is common t o see large 200 litre capacity drums in peoples homes for use in thekitchen, because they never know when the water will come and go again. Some people store theirwater in a large basin,16 using it for washing clothes, showering and consumption. This water is stagnant,exposed to the air, mosquitos, etc, and thus is not suitable for human consumption. In fact, one couldsay that due to the constant water shortages which leave the water pipes empty, exposing them topossible sources of infection, the water in Buenaventura is not suitable for human consumption whichcan be seen by the fact that most people boil their water. Sometimes it said that the poverty of thePacific is due to the lack of industrial development. However, Buenaventura is a city with one of thelargest loading ports in Colombia, but in spite of that it has a high UBN rate and substandard services.

Another area in which their are stark difference between Buenaventura and Cali is in health. The healthsystem in Buenaventura is a bad joke. The main hospital is an old building: one enters and sees funguson the ceiling, rotting wooden doors and dried blood on the seats. These characteristics constitute ahealth hazard. Regarding the dried blood, while diseases such as HIV die within minutes of being out ofthe body, hepatitis C can infect up to three months, even with microscopic droplets. The doctors abusepatients by leaving them connected to needles as a method forcing them to pay. The author himself isaware of this as he experienced it first hand. This aspect of health care is not just a question oftreatment, but of human lives. The infant mortality rate in the municipality is high. The infant mortalityrate measures the number of live births that die in their first year of life. The rate is measured as the

number of deaths per thousand babies.Infant Mortality Rate2010

Place Buenaventura Choc Valledel

Cauca Cali Rate perthousand

30.69 43.93 13.38 9.40

As shown in the table, the mortality rate in Buenaventura is three times higher than that of Cali. Bothmunicipalities are in the department of Valle del Cauca but Buenaventura, in terms of its infant mortalityrate bears more resemblance to the poorest department of the country, Choc. These are not just

figures, but lives. It means that in the largest port of the country through which the rich sugar mills,coffee harvesters and drug barons export their products, almost 31 babies in every thousand die before

15 Tr Note. DANE is the National Administrative Department for Statistics charged with compiling stats on allaspects of life in Colombia.16 Tr. Note. In Colombia many houses have a type of basin o sink made of cement into which water flows, this ispartially covered by a type of cement washboard where clothes are handwashed.


6/21

reaching their first birthday. It is mass murder, they die due to the negligence of the political and healthauthorities. Buenaventura does not have sophisticated public hospitals, so serious complications aretreated in Cali, if one manages to get there, that is, if the poor have the money to do so.

There are two aspects to this. One is that the elite in Cali, both the traditional elite and the narcotic elite,have the same disdain towards the city and its population and only see the city as an avenue for their

merchandise to reach international markets; they do not feel any need to safeguard the welfare of thepeople. As long as the loading port is up and running, nothing else matters. The other reason is that thesame port-based activity generates very little wealth for the people and very little employment. Eventhe apologists of the port expansion recognise that the loading port does not have the capacity togenerate sufficient employment for the population. The port -based activities, due to their character,are not a major source of employment. In most cases, employment requires a certain level of trainingwhich is lackingin the city. 17The port activities could not generate sufficient employment even if thereexisted an adequate quantity of qualified workers. The retail sector employs far more people . In fact, its precisely in the area of employment where we see how little is promised by the ports expansion plans.The situation of the port workers has gone from bad to worse in the last 20 years. The first step inexpanding the loading port was to privatise it. This occurred not only in Buenaventura but also in the

other ports of the nation, including Cartagena, Santa Marta, Tumaco and Barranquilla. This has occurredpartly because of the rise of worldwide neoliberal policies and because of the policies of Csar Gaviria inColombia. The apologists of this policy explain it as follows:

The Colombian ports must be liquidated due to the accumulation of administrative, operativedeficiencies and cost overruns. The low operative performance harms a great number ofshipping lines, a situation which has caused, on various occasions, congestion in the ports, whichin turn periodically damages the commercial relations of the country. 18

Its laughable to think that the suggested cost overruns are the motive. In Colombia, those who overrunmost with public funds are private firms contracted to build ports, roads and air traffic control towers.Embezzlement is very common in the private sector, even the construction of the Buga-Buenaventuradual carriageway involved embezzlement of funds. Furthermore, in the concessions for the port, thestate continues to have responsibility for maintaining the depth of the access channels and theirdredging. 19 If cost overruns and inefficiency were really motives, then the dredging of the channelswould have also been privatised. The state handed over operations that could generate profits and keptoperations that generated losses. The real motive was ideological, that the state should not haveprofitable or potentially profitable enterprises; these enterprises are to be handed over to friends of theelectoral campaign or others of their ilk. Poor management is resolved by replacing it with goodmanagement and modernization. The increase in containers is solved by introducing new, modernmachinery that is up to the task, something the state did not want to do. Once privatised, money wasput into these initiatives. This is story is international; a state company is left to accumulate a series ofdebts and problems, which then become the excuse to privatise it. Once privatisation has taken place,everything is resolved with new investments. Nevertheless, the private sector was involved in theinefficiency of the loading port and continued contributing to the inefficiency of the management of theport, so mucho so, in 2006, the Minister of Transport Andr Uriel Gallego gave the Regional Port Society

17 Prez, G.J. (2007) op. cit. page 2618 Collazos, J.A. y Borrero, S.(2006) op. cit. page 419 Rosas, L.M. y Velsquez R. (2006) Polticas De ExpansinPortuaria, Universidad de ICESI, Cali pg 29


7/21

of Buenaventura (Sprbun) a 60 day period in which to resolve the congestion problems facing the port. 20 The magazine Semana complained about the hold -up of the project to improve the efficiency of theport and the cost overruns. When the private sector generates cost overruns in Colombia, it isunderstood as its way of extracting more public funding, or simply as incompetence.

The payroll was another excuse. Undoubtedly, the union s collective agreement is a drain on the

company, this is normal for all businesses, but the problems in managing a collective agreement belongto the company and, not the workers. A report from the UNDP points to the participation of businessassociations (the Merchant Fleet of Colombia, the National Federation of Coffee Growers, FENALCO,ANDI etc) in taking decisions on the Executive Board of the company, as per decree 1171 of 1980 asbeing partly responsible for the mismanagement. Amongst the decisions taken by these companies wasthe freezing of tariff charges. The participation of the business associations in decision-making was inadherence with the recommendations of UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade andDevelopment).

Nonetheless, in the Colombian case, the legislation surpassed the recommendation, to the pointthat the main users of the port (Merchant Fleet, Coffee Growers Federation, etc.) became afundamental part of the decision-making process of the business. This demonstrates theasymmetries of power that exist between the different sectors and their real possibility ofinfluencing the design and implementation of public policy, which seems to be a constant factorin the formation of the Colombian state given that on many occasions it legislates to favourbusiness and corporate interests over those of the common good. 21

That is to say, that the problems of the loading port went even beyond the collective agreement, andthe private sector, which had a lot of power on the executive board, was more to blame than any othersector or entity. Nonetheless, it was decided to call on the priv ate sector to rescue the loading portand exclude the trade unions. It must be noted that the administrative problems continue in the portand two decades later the problems that privatisation was supposed to resolve still persist.

One of the impacts was the destruction of the trade unions, the neglect of the collective agreement andthe implementation of sub-contracting cooperatives in which workers have no rights or social securityand whose wages depend on the level of production i.e. workers are paid on a piecework basis just likethe sugar-cane workers whose produce the port exports. The workers lack any form of social benefitsand work long days, that is, when there is work.

The difference between the security that port workers had before 1993 (before the privatisationof the port area when workers were still protected by trade unions and agreements) and thedegrading labour conditions existing today are enormous. It is no exaggeration to say, they bringto mind scenes from 19 th century novels narrating the abuses of management and theexploitation of workers, but not this time, in the cold London of Charles Dickens but in the bellyof the boats of Buenaventura, at 30 degrees Celsius in the shade. 22

Besides the long working day, the temperature, the lack of rest (whoever takes a break does notproduce and consequently does not earn any money), there is the job insecurity. Workers are not

20 Semana (12/09/2006) Gobierno controlar puerto de Buenaventura si la Sociedad Portuaria no lodescongestiona www.semana.com.co21 Ibd footnote page 8, page 19022 Aricapa, R. (2006) Las Cooperativas de Trabajo Asociado en el Puerto de Buenaventura: Caos y degradacinlaboral, ENS, Medelln page 5


8/21

protected by a collective agreement. There is nothing guaranteed for them, not even their wages. Whenthere is little work such as during the Christmas period, they earn very little and their nett wage can fallas low as 70 thousand pesos per fortnight. The purpose of all of this is clear: to make the companyprofitable. Its worth highlighting that the owners of the loading port are not from Buenaventura. Notonly is the wealth generated in the country taken out through the port, the profits are also taken to Caliand Bogot.

The loading port is chaotic, in terms of labour, which only favours the company and increasinglyimpoverishes the workers.

It only directly hired executives and workers in the administrative areas (currently around 200),while most of the operations and logistics of loading and unloading are contracted out to thirdparties, of any nature, who are in turn authorised to engage a workforce through contractors,temporary employment agencies and associated work cooperatives, known as CTAs.

The first point about this chain of subcontractors is that it is well oiled and fed by an over supplyof labour. Calculations show that to load and unload the 11 million tonnes which pass throughthe port, 3-4 thousand workers are needed including labourers, stevedores,

winchmen, tallymen, grapplers. At a rough count, about 8,000 men (and women) hang roundthe port willing to do any work at any price. The result is cheap labour at bargain prices for theport operators, allowing them the luxury of cutting wages and breaking laws by using only thoseCTAs, agencies and private contractors who accept their conditions. 23

This way of doing business does not produce cost overruns, instead it pits worker against worker in adeadly race to the bottom; the one who reaches starvation wages the quickest gets the job, untilanother worker is willing to reduce the wages even more. This is seen even in the off-loading jobs of thesame ship. As the trade unions explain in what they call workforce prostitution, For exampl e, there arebulk cargo ships that arrive, and on one large ship the workforce consists of four contractors, and thusfour different cooperatives and different pay rates all offloading the same produce .24 This set-up affectsthe families of the workers and in turn the rest of the city. The loading port is sort of an enclaveeconomy. Previously, the good salaries would be redistributed amongst the citys businesses: highersalaries, higher consumption and higher impact on the rest of the economy. But the current systemreduces everything, except for the white elite that administers the system, who are able to spend asfree as they please in Cali.

Not only did the workers lose the right to be employed directly but they also lost other related rightssuch as health care and social security. As a spokesperson for one of the ports trade unions, SindicatoUnin Portuaria, explains In order to work in the port, one has to take out professional and health riskcover on the ships, which people do to some degree. Its like this: I offload this ship, for which I havesocial security insurance which is only valid for the time that I work on the specific ship. 25 Thus, bothwages and social protection rights are executed on a piecework basis. When the corporation Colpuertosexisted, the state provided the opportunity for the workers children to study in a high school and toattend university on a state scholarship. When the port was privatised, these benefits disappeared. Thepossibility of studying was a non-monetary benefit that makes a great contribution to a familys budget .The public schools are a disaster in Colombia: poorly financed, poorly managed and filled with people

23Ibd page 1424 Interview representatives of Sindicato Unin Portuaria.25 Ibd.


9/21

who are unimportant to the upper class of the country. Thus, the possibility of social progress andmobility is sought outside of education provided by the state, which is expensive. The idea ofscholarships for university is a dream for the majority of the population. Keeping in mind the lowparticipation in higher education of black communities, the damage caused by the loss of any type ofscholarship is incalculable.

It is no wonder that the CTA system not only had the support of the Unin Portuaria Company, but thatit set up many of the so called cooperatives, managing them as it saw fit. In some cases the portoperators are responsible for the cooperative s arrangements and accounts , and the workers dont havemuch to do with the process. Some trade unionists also set up cooperatives. Some, in order to attainsome type of employment; others to take advantage of the misery of former members who lost theiremployment with the privatisation of the loading port.

The impacts are still being felt. The Buenaventura Chamber of Commerce published a report whichindicated that while unemployment fell in the rest of the country, in Buenaventura it exceeded 42% in2010. In addition to this, the report noted that 336 businesses closed down in 2009 and another 289 didthe same in 2010. According to the report the majority of these firms were micro-enterprises (99%)which were concentrated in the poorest areas of the city. In communes 1,2,3, 4 of Cascajal Island, 156businesses closed down in 2009 and 136 in 2010. The value of lost trade due to the closures was 8,116million pesos, a very significant figure considering the nature of the enterprises. 26 The relaxation of lawsrelating to terms of employment has led to a rise in micro-enterprises and informal companies, and thefailure to create stable sources of employment in Buenaventura. The differences between the loadingport in the days of the state corporation Colpuertos and that of privatisation is obvious. After only a fewyears the number of permanent workers fell from 3,000 to 600, while the number of temporary workersfell from 4,000 to 3,000.27 This decision was taken based on the idea of destroying the trade unions andreducing the cost of the workforce. The average salary in the port slumped from 1,947,036 pesos in1990 to 567,128 pesos in 2002.28 Since 2002 it has continued to fall, and today many workers do noteven earn the minimum wage. One must remember that the workers affiliated to the cooperatives mustpay high overhead costs and their average salary is not real. Hence, the complaint of the Chamber of

Commerce regarding the shutting down of microenterprises owing partly to a decline in demand shouldnot surprise us. Its a foreseeable consequence of the privatisation of the maritime port.

Of course, there are some who will say that it was necessary to modernise the port, because times havechanged, ships are larger, the volume of trade is greater or that the port must undergo reforms to makeit competitive in attracting higher volumes of trade. The trade union, Sindicato Unin Portuaria says thatit is not opposed to development.

Development does not have to take the form we are seeing. A dock of opulence, impoverishedworkers, diseases, a thousand and one difficulties in hospitals and a thousand and one obstaclesto be tended to. The business partners and shareholders of the Port Company enrich themselvesat the expense of the workers, there is no other explanation. 29

26Cmara de Comercio Buenaventura (2010) Perspectivadel Sector Comercioen el PeriodoEnero-Septiembre delao 2010. Un Diagnstico del Cierre de Empresas y Negocios en Buenaventura en el ao 2010. Cmara deComercio de Buenaventura, Buenaventura.27Jimnez P, N. y Delgado M, W. (2008) op. cit. page 19828Ibd29Entrevista Voceros Unin Portuaria op. cit.


10/21

The thing is that the discourse of modernisation of the ports has some elements of truth to it, such asnew technology, changes in the size of the ships, etc. However, the technological changes are notmerely technical matters, they are ideological. In any industry the changes in production are introducedto generate greater gains for the firms, to increase their profit margin. This is the ideological basis thatsustains all the changes. Within this ideological attack there is an attack on working conditions, to tearapart conventions, to ignore rights already won, and to break the trade union movement. At the end ofthe 1980s a war broke out against the port trade unions around the world, introducing technologicalreform accompanied by worsening working conditions. What is happening in Buenaventura is amanifestation of the capitalist attack against the port workers trade union movement on a global scale.The alternative to this is not to return the ports to the nation, but to entrust the ports to the workersand the community. In Colombia, whoever dares declare that workers or communities should managesomething to their own benefit pays for their audacity with a bullet.

As has been observed, another consequence of the changes is the rise in violence in the port;Buenaventura has a homicide rate above the national average. Jimnez and Delgado affirm:

.. .the media do not analyse the relationship between the consequences of privatisation of theport and the current violent environment in Buenaventura. Whilst the violence in the port is dueto multiple structural factors of a regional and national character, privatisation can beconsidered as one of the catalysts, since there are no other economic activities parallel to thatof the port (e.g. the consolidation of the industrial zone), port-related activity became theprincipal source of employment, which makes society more vulnerable to the structural changesof the development model. 30

These factors cannot be ignored, nor can the invasion of the paramilitaries. They entered in 2000 andthe murder rate has risen ever since. Its not that the Pac ific Coast is violent in itself. One has to exploresocio-economic matters, including the lack of employment, as well as the presence and interests ofexternal forces, such as the narco-traffickers who offer relatively well paid jobs and the presence of theparamilitaries. The paramilitaries increased the homicide rate in all the regions of the country,particularly in 2000 and 2001, when they stormed many large cities such as Barrancabermeja in theMagdalena Medio, the poor districts of Ccuta in the North of Santander, and also Buenaventura.

Port Violence

When we look at the violence in Buenaventura, we find high levels of murder and forced displacement,but what never qualifies as violence are development plans. These plans are not violent solely justbecause they are linked to paramilitary violence, but they are violent in and of themselves. When agovernment proposes to expel a segment of the population in the name of so-called development, thisis violence. Even if the paramilitaries do not kill anyone, the plans themselves are violent. We fall short

in our definition of violence; reducing it to the bullet wound or chainsaw is a mistake.The government s emphasis is not social aspects, but rather on the economy which is understoodexclusively in terms of, the loading port and other related structures. The master plan for the loadingport forecasts expenditure of almost 450 million dollars on infrastructure and equipment. Amongstvarious plans for the city, is the expansion of the current loading port and the construction of the TC

30Jimnez P, N. y Delgado M, W. (2008) op. cit. pg 209


11/21

Buen (Container Terminal of Buenaventura), due to the congestion of the port. The Buenaventura portalready operates at more than 75% of its capacity, the maximum recommended level according tointernational standards. The government proposed to sort this problem out by extending the physicalspace of the loading port and thus invading the surrounding neighbourhoods. TC Buen was built and hascaused multiple problems for the community, such as noise, dust and contamination and before the

project started, one of the most dreadful massacres was committed the Punta del Este massacre.The community of Punta del Este mobilised on April 4th 2005 to protest against the problems regardingthe port, demanding the construction of a pedestrian bridge so they could move around with a certaindegree of security. The demonstration was suppressed by the police who launched smoke grenades andattacked protestors, causing the death of a boy and the loss of an eye of a young-man from the area. Adeath and a serious injury for a bridge. Given all the money that the state wants to spend, there wasnone for a bridge instead the state preferred to take the life of a child. Fifteen days later the communitysuffered another tragedy: a paramilitary arrived and invited some youths to participate in a footballgame, offering 200 thousand pesos to the wining teaming. Four kids refused to go, as they weresuspicious of the person who made the invitation. Nonetheless, twelve kids did go.

That night, an air of apprehension gripped the neighbourhood. In the early hours of the nextday, friends and family of the victims turned to different civil and military authorities to reportthe disappearance without receiving due attention nor the measures required to locate the kids.Nonetheless, Colonel Jairo Mauricio Villamil, the operational sub commander of the police inthis department, had the cheek to state that the information on the disappearance had beengiven too late. Thus on the 21 st of this month (three days after the disappearance), the bodies ofthe kids appeared floating in the Las Vegas tidal inlet, in the spot known as Tecnoborda, in ElTriunfo neighbourhood. Their bodies were bound, with signs of torture, their eyes ripped out oftheir sockets, with coup de grace wounds in their skulls. Its clear that the twelve kids weretransported through the city and that no authority noticed it even though the municipality

remains militarised and some extraordinary security measures are in place. The place where thebodies appeared has been established by the AUC paramilitaries as a permanent torture andexecution centre. Civil and military authorities have abstained from investigating the sitespreviously established and organised for this purpose. 31

It is an oft repeated story in Colombia. Everyone knows where to find the paramilitariesslaughterhouses; everyone except the security forces and the judicial and political authorities. Themurderers move their victims through the town without a care while the military and police come outwith stupid explanations, like that of colonel Villamil, who claimed that the information arrived too late.Its always like t his, some military officer saying that if there was more time, he could have showed hisbravery. Herein lies a question that must be asked about all the countrys m assacres: what did the

military know and when? I mean, its not easy to transport twelve people through the city without somesort of collaboration from the security forces. They did not delay long in trying to denigrate the kids. Thenewspaper, El Pas, on April 30 th of that year, tried to present the massacre as a drugs vendetta. Themayor himself showed his disdain for the people of his city by denying them the right to a vigil.

31 Cinep (2005) Revista Noche y Niebla No 31 enero junio 2005 page 169


12/21

Claiming environmental problems, family wakes or meetings were not permitted. The peoplewere only allowed to go from the morgue to the cemetery; they were prevented from holdingcommunity acts and rituals of collective mourning, which is part of their ancestral culture. Asalways, the mayors office with showing complete indifference and rudeness says that itscarrying out investigations regarding the possibility of the kids being involved with the guerrillas,

and that we will just have to wait and see.32

With this, the mayor expected to make the victims invisible. However, he should not have claimedenvironmental reasons, rather he should have summoned an act of solidarity with the victims, a lying instate to send a message of rejection of the massacre. The mayor knew better than anyone not to talkabout the issue, and at stake stood the expansion project of the loading port, the AUC and militarypowers. Through cowardice or cynicism, the mayor opted not to show solidarity with the families of themassacred and he also tried to distract them from the true motives behind the massacre. Others tookup the flag of solidarity, empathy and courage, in the face of the cowardice of the mayor, as illustratedin the following account of the time:

The community, led by its women, marched again. From the grounds where they last saw theirchildren, a small river of people with handcrafted coffins, crosses and banners, wound its waythrough Buenaventura up to the CAM, 33 singing funeral dirges and chanting slogans: N either awar that kilsl us, nor a peace that oppresses us. Dead and buried and denigrated to boot .Dont investigate the dead, but th e living who killed them. We women dont give birth to sonsand d aughters for war And where is justice ? justice where is it? this year 110 are dead andimpunity reigns. We women demand to know the truth.

The march started with pain and fear, with certain sort of weakness, but with each step thevoices became stronger, every song burst forth from the broken hearts of all the women, boysand girls, who made up the majority of the march. The voices of the men accompanied this actvery discretely.

The march ended in the small square of the CAM. At the foot of a statue of Bolivar that seemedalmost as indifferent as the government secretary of Buenaventura, who came down with anexasperated look on his face to say that the doors of the mayors office have always been opento the community. The twelve coffins of the kids and the coffin of the boy killed by the riotpolice were bathed with sawdust in a painful and emotional act, accompanied by the womensand mothers sad voices, heart -breaking cries, supporting hugs and prayers from the priestsfrom Christians for Life and Afrocolombian Social Pastoral Care.34

Of course, the TC Buen project is not the only one for the port. There is a plan for the construction of aseafront promenade. The presentations of the state usually only show the first part of this plan, but it

has three phases. Once completed, half of the beaches of the Cascajal Island will be occupied by theseafront promenade and the other half by the loading port zone. The seafront promenade is presented

32 Domnguez, B. (2005) Nuestros Pasos Y Abrazos Solidarios En La Caminata Y Entierro Simblico De Los JvenesMasacrados En Buenaventura , (electronic copy) page 233 Tr. Note the CAM is the Central Administrative Square where the mayors Office is found.34 Domnguez, B. (2005) pp 2 & 3


13/21

in glowing terms and compared to the redesign of the Barcelona marina in Europe, amongst other ports.The difference lies not only in the location of Barcelona but also in the use of the port. To redesign theport in Barcelona, there was no need to displace anyone, even though the rise in the cost of livingobliged some poor families to leave the zone when the project was completed. In Buenaventura theexpulsion of thousands of families is proposed. We must be clear about what forced displacement is

even when weapons are not used and it portrayed in a good light. They want us to believe, for the firsttime in history, that the state is concerned about the poor people living in what they now call high riskareas. Conpes 3410 State Policy to Improve the Living Conditions of the People of Buenaventura describes it in the following terms.

In Buenaventuras Territorial Ordi nance Plan (TOP) the problematic nature of the unstablesettlements along the Shore and the Railway line, and it sets out the need to advance the

processes such as the integral improvement of neighbourhoods and re-settling of the populations in the risky area or protected areas. This implies actions such as mitigation of risks,basic services, sanitation, public space, accessibility, mobility, social facilities and housing. 35

In other words, you have to evict people . Its curious that the state is only concerned about the qualityof the land area and housing when it wants to push forward with a project. In this light Conpes 3476speaks of the need to relocate 3,400 families from the zone. However, the number of families affectedby the promenade project exceeds the 3,400 families mentioned in the document. To show howcharitable they are, they came up with the following gem With the aim of avoiding new occupations o nthe Shore freed up through the re-settling and to contribute to the urban development of the city, inconjunction with the macro project, a project for a public amenity space called the WaterfrontPerimeter will be implemented. 36 As if they were doing something for the people in order to avoidnew occupations . They never ask why the people live there, why they choose these sites. There arecultural factors involved. The people arrived from the rivers and settled along the seashore and in someways replicated the lifestyle of the rivers. Many of them fish to supplement their income, they live as

they did on the rivers and create social bonds similar to those they had in other parts. However, we arenot just talking about displaced people, as the majority of settlements on the seashore have been therefor decades. The state proposes to expel them to build a promenade for the exclusive use of tourists, just as it has done with the beaches in Cartagena.

The grounds that the Seafront and the expansion of the port will occupy are referred to in the legislationas the Shore. 37 Buenaventuras Territorial Ord inance Plan (TOP) acknowledges the problems associatedwith taking decisions regarding these zones.

The Shore in decree 2324 of 18 September 1984. It is important to analyse Article 166 of this lawfor the following reasons:

A large part of the territory of Buenaventura consists of Shore land, and thus are public assets .The big settlements including neighbourhoods such as Lleras, Viento Libre, la Playita, San Luis,San Francisco, Santaf, and a good proportion of the rest of the municipal ities neighbourhoods

35 Conpes 3410 op. cit. pg 1136 Conpes 3476 op. cit. pg 337 Shore, is understood in this text in legal terms as the land between the high tide mark and the low tide mark.


14/21

are also built on public land, and consequently the people that live there cannot obtain deeds totheir property. Moreover, these zones are physical and environmental high-risk areas. Thissituation is a growing cause of conflict between the Navy and the communities, who argue thatthe process of reco vering land from the sea should be recognised, that for more than 50 yearsthey have been significantly changing the morphology of the city, especially that of the island.

Under this law the mayor cannot mandate the use of public assets (emphasis in the original) i.e.30% of the urban land that is currently occupied. 38

So, a good portion of the land is like a huge, national, vacant plot of land, over which one cannot assignownership titles. The land belongs to the state, not to the communities that have lived there fordecades. If one takes a brief walk through these neighbourhoods, one realises that there is not muchshore land, as the sea comes in to one part, but the majority of the neighbourhoods are situated onmore or less solid dry land. Bit by bit, the area was filled with waste, soil, whatever, and theneighbourhood already has solid streets with houses. Of course, at the end of the street there arehouses which rise up from the sea on poles, keeping them safe from the water. With time these housesmay become part of the reclaimed land. In fact, many parts of Buenaventura share this characteristic ofbeing reclaimed from the sea.

There is a clear ethnically black toponymy in the lands recovered from the sea. From the firstgenerations of black communities who occupied the Cascajal island it is accepted that in realityit was not one sole island, but a collection of small islands in close proximity to each other,which gave the impression that the islands are fragments like spread gravel. From this came thename of the place, Cascajal [Cascajo, gravel in Spanish]. This is how it is recalled in the collectivememory of the current generation of elders and others, in the black communities ofBuenaventura. That is, the original, natural configuration of the Cascajal island was really acollection of islands, each one coinciding more or less with each headland which are stillrecognised today as the hills of the neighbourhoods of Nayita y Mayolo, El Firme, la Sexta,Barrio Centenario, Calimita (where the Cathedral is located), Hidro Pacfico, new HospitalDepartamental, the old Hospital Santa Helena, Plan Padrinos and the Inspeccin de Trnsito andthe Colegio Pascual de Andagoya.

What existed then between this collection of small islands were marshlands or tidal areas, termsalso recognised by the black communities. The spaces between these tidal areas nearest eachother were gradually filled. A similar case is that of the current Valencia street, which is abovean inlet which was covered over by a sheet of cement and since then, the Cascajal island ispresented as one unit, in other words something which it was not originally. 39.

The communities dont just appeal to the areas past, as the Colombian bourgeoisie is not very nostalgic

or sentimental; they dont care much about the oral history and the processes of constructing the reality

38 OPOT (2001) P.O.T. Buenaventura Convivencia Pacfica desde la Diversidad Diagnstico General y Prospectiva Volumen 1, OPOT, Buenaventura pg 1839 Inhabitant of the area cited in Lpez, D. (2011) El etno topnimo de terrenos recuperados al mar en la ciudad deBuenaventura, (electronic copy) pp 5 & 6


15/21

of the communities. So, some put forward legal arguments that might have some weight in a legalprocess. According to the lawyer Eusebio Camacho:

By way of law 98, of the 7th of December 1922, the nation handed over the Cascajal island to themunicipality of Buenaventura. The lawyer specified that the island included the collection of itsdry land and shore areas. The lawyer added that according to law 185 of 1959, the municipalityof Buenaventura is authorised to recover land from the sea. 40

Even so, it is a political fight between different visions of society, the future, a fight over the meaning ofwellbeing, development and community. Its a fight between the rich and the black communities ofBuenaventura, but this is a national struggle and includes poor white citizens in many parts of thecountry, facing similar problems of so-called development and of course violence, a constant element inall development processes in Colombia.

The state is not willing to accept any link between its plans and the violence in the municipality.However, as we already saw in the case of the Buga-Buenaventura dual carriageway, these projectscoincide in time and space with massacres,. The following table supplied by PCN sheds light on this.

Massacres in the Buenaventura Municipality.

Place Date Number of Victims

Seis de Enero February 2nd ,2000 03

Sabaletas May 11th 2000 11

Zaragoza August 26th 2000 04

Las Palmas September 9th 2000 07

Campo hermoso September 17 th 2000 03

Carretera Cabal December 12th 2000 12

El Caldas 2001 03

Olmpico February 2nd 2001 03

Citronela April 2001 06

Alto Naya April 4th 2001 106 (Killed andDisappeared)

El Firme Aprl 27th

2001 07El Triunfo May 9th 2002 03

Obrero May 11th 2002 08

40 Eusebio Camacho citado en Lpez, D. (2011) op. cit. pg 8


16/21

Lancha Mar May 23rd 2002 04

Pueblo Nuevo June 7th 2002 04

Vereda Triana August 26th 2002 07

Kilmetro 23 veredasla esperanza

Octobre 22nd 2002 05Vereda la Esperanza Octobre 23 rd 2002 05

Reten No precise date 03

Cascajal No precise date 06

Comuna 12 June 2003 04

Sabaletas June 15 th 2003 07

Barrio, 6 de Enero 2004 03

Nueva Frontera 2004 03La Delfina February 2004 03

Carretera SimnBolvar

February 2005 05

Barrio lleras Camargo February 13th 2005 04

Barrio la playita March 18th 03

Barrio la playita March 20th 03

Barri el triunfo April 16th 2005 12

Barri el caldas June 12th 2005 03

Barri lleras Camargo July 9th 2005 07

As can be seen, the massacres are not few in number. The link between the paramilitaries and thecountrys dominant sector s, such as the business associations and large companies, is no secret toanyone. Were not i nventing anything nor stating anything new. In the concrete case of the Calima Bloc,the supreme court, in its sentencing of Juan Carlos Martnez Sinisterra, states that prior to the arrival ofH.H in the area...

...there was a meeti ng in Mono Arcangels farm near Cartago, Valle [del Cauca], withentrepreneurs and representatives of the regions economic sectors suc h as the sugar barons 41,livestock breeders, traders etc. in which VICENTE CASTAO, alias ERNESTO BAEZ and aliasDON BERNA took part as well as narco-traffickers such alias DON DIEGO ,

41 It is mentioned that the self defence groups received the support of some sugar barons, although the largemajority of security chiefs were members of the Armed Forces or the Police and had the necesarry infrastructureto do their work.. (this footnote is part of the original text cited)


17/21

...the arrival of the Calima Bloc in the Department of Valle del Cauca was financed by the narco-traffickers of the Norte del Valle cartel and by the regions businessmen. 42

The violence unleashed by the paramilitaries in Buenaventura was of such magnitude that they achievedalmost total control of the city. Of course, some elements of the FARC remained in the port, but theviolence in Buenaventura is explained by the presence of the paramilitaries financed by thebusinessmen and drug traffickers. H.H. himself in his free version43 declared that if the state, thesecurity forces, the Army and the Navy had total control of Buenaventura as they say, then how comewe could operate freely in Buenaventura and thousands died in our confrontations with the 30 th Frontof the FARC in Buenaventura. We controlled the drug routes and they paid taxes to us 44 It was notonly practically complete control It was bloody and cruel. The homicide figures dont show the totality ofthe murders carried out by the servants of the businessmen. The AUC had their own way of getting ridof the bodies, serving to create even more terror.

...there were many homicides, massacres, and disappearances, as commander Veloza says.During the period I was in Buenaventura we maintained control over the sites, we would havestrategic sites under permanent control. He says we had weapons, yes we had weapons, but the job had already been done prior to that, homicides, disappearances, death, the terror created inthe community... often the victims were carried away in boats to the tidal inlets along the shorewhich were used as cemeteries. Frequently the bodies were dismembered, stomachs rippedopen and left tied there. These are areas are difficult to access It is very difficult to find thebodies in these zones, as carrion birds and the animals that are found on the shore take care ofthe bodies quickly. The tide ebbs and flows, the bodies decompose, disintegrate and the tidecarries the remains away. This makes it difficult to find and identify the bodies with anycertainty or be able to say that we are going to find a grave with 100, 200, 50, 20, 30, in thesecemeteries, it is very difficult. But yes, there were many disappearances and homicides inBuenaventura, its true .45

Other declarations in the free versions point to the control and visibility of the paramilitary presence inthe port and the degree of control over the communities. It is noteworthy that here the paramilitaryspeaks of the difficulty of finding mass graves with 100 or 200 people. This means that the bloody attackwould have created graves for that many people were it not for the decision to throw their bodies intothe sea. In the years following the AUC invasion, there were more than 500 deaths per year, accordingto PCN figures. The former Ombudsman for that time period confirms that between 2001 and 2004there was a shift in the violence. We no longer found bodies in the streets of Buenaventura, or themost isolated regions of Buenaventura. Instead they substituted murders with forced disappearance. Upuntil I gave up my post, there were more than 169 people including minors, of whom we do not knowthere whereabouts. 46 It must be noted that when it comes to forced disappearances we are always

42 Sentencia nica Instancia 30.097 Juan Carlos Martnez Sinisterra, Corte Suprema de Justicia, Sala Casacin Penalpg 843 Tr. Note. Free Versions are the opening statements of the accused in which they are free to make statementswithout being cross examined.44 H.H. cited in Sentencia nica Instancia 30.097 op. cit. page 61 45 Yesid Pacheco alias el Cabo cited in Sentencia nica Instancia 30.097 op. cit. page 6546 Interview with former Municipal Ombudsman of Buenaventura, Arlington Agudelo Rentara.


18/21

dealing with calculations, the exact number of forced disappearances is unknown. As Buenaventura is aport through which thousands of people pass every day, the number of disappearances could be muchhigher. As the paramilitary bosses say, they could and still can move freely around the city. In September2005, a committee visited the city and went to the neighbourhood known as Lleras Camargo, one of thereclaimed land areas that the state wants to clear out. The residents told the commission about the

massacre of July 2005.It occurred when the people were together playing dominoes. A group of 20 hooded menarrived, wearing military clothing, ordering everyone to lie down on the floor. As soon aseveryone was down on the floor, they murdered them. Moreover, the residents commentedthat the men in military clothing proceeded to steal the belongings of those they had murdered.

Five days before, a warning had been sent out about the paramilitary raid, as days earlier, someof the killers were filming the houses and residents of the neighbourhoods. Besides this, therewas a hooded person with them, who pointed out the people. Also the neighbourhood wasunder a curfew, and hours prior to the attack the official state forces had abandoned the zone. 47

As the report indicates the paramilitaries had total control over the zone. They walked around in militaryuniforms, something that should alert even the most absent-minded police officer. They had noproblems doing their rounds. Additionally, the group was large; 20 armed, uniformed men is not anormal thing and the community and organisations had already issued a warning some five daysprevious, which should have placed the security forces on alert. Instead, the security forces decided toignore the warning and leave the community at the mercy of H.H. s murder ers. This says everything youneed to know about the close relationship between the paramilitaries and the authorities and backs upthe free versions of the paramilitaries that say that they had the support of the Colombian state.

When the paramilitaries arrived, they imposed their own law. The law of the murderers coveredeverything, all activity, they even got involved in the personal affairs of couples. Its cu rious that an

organisation like the AUC, known for its role in the prostitution business is concerned about fidelity anddomestic violence, and sorted out debts in its own particular way. They did as they pleased. They wouldtake the motorcycles of the residents to make their rounds. Sometimes they would return the bikes andsometimes they wouldnt . They had total control over peoples movements . One person gives anaccount of how it was impossible for a friend from a neighbourhood or area under the control of theguerrillas to visit her, because her neighbourhood was under paramilitary control. She was warned andthe people from the neighbourhood explained the rules of the paramilitaries to her as if they were theauthorities.

From then on, people would stop me and give me advice on the way things were. For example,when the paramilitaries arrived at your house to ask for something, well you had to give it to

them. They would say Hey, I need to go buy something, lend me your motorbike. The option ofsa ying no didnt exist. My sister -in- law says to me, Here you live in fear of what is coming next.

After the paramilitaries arrived things improved. But in what sense? In the sense that they killed

47 S/A (2005) Informe Visita De Observacin A La Situacin De Violacin De Los Derechos Humanos Y El DerechoInternacional Humanitario De Las Comunidades Negras Del Municipio De Buenaventura (copia electrnica) pp 5 &6


19/21

thieves. That they gave the order in the neighbourhood that any man who hits his wife wouldhave to deal with them, but the paramilitaries hit their own girlfriends. They were the law in theneighbourhood, they imposed order and their rules. Anyone who spread gossip would be introuble with them. The girls in th e neighbourhood couldnt look for boyfriends outside the areaand men from other areas werent allowed to come looking for women. It wasnt an explicit rule

that a woman couldn t have a man from somewhere else, but when he came in, they would startquestio ning him, looking at him. For example, I myself wouldn t risk bringing someone fromanother zone to sleep in my house.

You just dont know what to do , the young people go to bed normal and wake up asparamilitaries, you dont know who is who. You just assume that the all those standing on thestreet corner are paramilitaries. At least you know who the visible heads are, you know who theboss is, but that is it.

In order to study I stayed up into the early hours of the morning with the lights on. I was given apresent of a lamp because after 1.00 A.M., if they see a light on they would throw stones at thewindow shouting, get into bed as if I were spying on them. Neither was it convenient to leavethe door open. Im from a small town where thi s was the normal thing to do. I have no problemwith leaving the door open at 3am and going out but I was told that if I did this and theparamilitaries were around, they would assume that I was spying on them.

Once I had to leave my house to go to the Reten neighbourhood as I needed the internet to domy homework. I spent my time doing the report which was due the next day, and I left at 11.00PM. As I was coming in alone, one of the paramilitares that knows one of my relatives saw meand said, You. What are you doing here at this time? I responded, I stayed working in theReten and I lost track of time. He then said, Dont do that again. After a certain time of day,the territory no longer belongs to the residents. 48

It must be noted that this testimony mixed facts and dates from before and after the supposedparamilitary demobilisation, and does so with great ease as nothing has changed in the city. Thedemobilisation of the AUC has not changed the patterns of violence in the municipality. Variousparamilitary organisations such as the guilas Negras [Black Eagles] have taken over from the AUC andthey continue to control the neighbourhoods. Of course these groups are not united and they evencompete with each other, but we should remember that the construction of the AUC was also a longprocess involving disparate organisations. Carlos Castao united them, but only after almost twodecades.

After all this violence, only impunity remains. No one has been accused of the murders and forceddisappearances or taken to court. H.H, the principal boss of the Buenaventura paramilitaries finds

himself in the USA, due to his involvement with drugs; the river of blood that he spilled counts fornothing. Uribe and Santos prefer not to say anything. During the invasion led by H.H. it cannot be saidthat the state was proactive in receiving and processing the reports of the people. When the peoplemade a report to the police, they were sent to an Inspection, the Inspection sent them to the District

48 Testimony


20/21

Attorneys office, until finally they reached the Ombudsmans Office. No one wa nted to committhemselves to investigating the violence that the municipality was going through at that time .49

Buenaventuras violence is not easy to ignore. No authority can claim that th ey didnt know. One of theclear indicators of the level of violence is the forced displacements, as they dont always kill people . Aselective murder, carefully chosen for its importance or executed with such excessive cruelty cangenerate high levels of displacement without ever making the national news. Even Accin Social placesBuenaventura in ninth place amongst the municipalities with the highest rate of expulsion of thedisplaced.50 This is known, even the most corrupt politician doesnt have t o pause his embezzlement torealise that thousands of people leave the municipality to go to another, or that they move from onepart of Buenaventura to another due to threats and fear. Some leave the country, each month between1,300 and 1,500 cross the Ecuadorian border , most coming from the departments of Cauca and theValle del Cauca , where violence has increased in the last year, particularly in cities such asBuenaventura and Tumaco, on the Pacific Coast 51. Nowadays Buenaventura remains one of the largestfocal points for forced displacement in the country.

Here we have highlighted Buenaventuras port expansion project, as it a big city and contains the mostimportant loading port of the Pacific. But there are other plans that one must take into account as well.They arent yet at as an advanced stage but they run the risk of bringing the same violence and theyrepresent the same outsiders greed which promises to enrich the same wealthy guys. Conpes 3491 alsodeals with Tribug port.

Tribugs port conces sion: A 96 hectare port development project is planned for the cove ofTribug, with the capacity of moving 8.7 million tonnes per annum and with an estimatedinvestment of 800 million USD. The construction of the Las Animas- Nuqu highway is an integral

part of this project. 52

This port has all the same elements of the expansion of the port of Buenaventura, including the

expulsion of peasants due to the construction of the highway and according to the state the possibilityof an increase in tourism. Supposedly, the port will open up the Asian markets due to its capacity as ithas a greater draught than Buenaventura, so that larger ships can enter it. There are also plans for thesmaller ports such as Tumaco, which seek to take advantage of the proposed construction of aconnection with Belem.

There are other road construction projects as part of the development plans for the ports . The statesplan is not only to expand the loading ports of Buenaventura and Tumaco, but also to build deep waterports in Tribug and also Baha Mlaga, which is opposite Buenaventura, to create a fully interconnectedsystem. So the authorities are considering building a route from Tumaco to Esmeraldas in Ecuador; toimprove the route Medelln Quibd; the Darin Pan-American Highway, and even to make

49 Entrevista a ex Personero Municipal de Buenaventura op. cit.50 Vase Codhes (2011) Boletn de la Consultora para los Derechos Humanos y el Desplazamiento CODHES, Quitopg 551 El Espectador (20/06/2012) Colombia: cuatro millones de desplazados y 400 mil refugiados52 Conpes 3491 op. cit. page 64


21/21

improvements to many of the airports in the region. All of this is with the aim of facilitating theexploitation of the Pacifics resources and those of other parts of the country.

However, all of these plans are up in the air for the moment, but that doesnt mean that there wont beproblems in the future, but at the moment the real plan with real impacts, is that of Buenaventura. Thecommunities which may be affected by the development plans of other loading ports should look closelyat what has happened and continues to happen in Buenaventura. It will be a mirror image of their ownfuture, if they dont react in time.

Documents

The Seaports.docx