Buenaventura, Colombia , a port city located 215 miles southwest of Bogot? (see GoogleEarth map), has yet to experience the improved security, economic, and political conditions that many of Colombia?s cities and residents have enjoyed under the Uribe administration. In Buenaventura, drug traffickers, rightists, and leftist militants remain firmly in control with local police forces powerless to counter them. The city?s robust port facilities and access to the Pacific Ocean have transformed Buenaventura into Colombia?s principle drug trafficking hub, with rival cartels and militants struggling violently to gain control of the strategic city.
Authorities seized some 20 tons of cocaine in and around Buenaventura in 2006, a third of all the cocaine captured along the Pacific coast that year. Additionally, the city?s homicide rate has more than doubling in just two years to top 300 in 2006. However, homicide rates do not adequately portray the level of violence engulfing the city, as they do not represent the untold number of people that have simply disappeared or those who have refused to report casualties to authorities.
Economic destitution and bleak futures create an environment in which residents link up with drug traffickers and/or paramilitary and leftist groups. According to the Colombian government, some 80 percent of the local population survives on less than US$3 a day. The city? rampant population growth and lack of inhabitable land has forced residents to construct sprawling shantytowns where militants and drug cartels conduct recruitment drives and offer impoverished residents a ?better life.?
Buenaventura?s highly corrupt political establishment often turns a blind eye to illegal narcotics operations for kickbacks. Local police forces are understaffed and outgunned by militants, with a sizable percentage acting as hired guns for these groups. FARC and AUC forces have split the town in two, with both sides acting as a provider of law and order in their districts. In October 2006, President Alvaro Uribe openly demanded the arrest of the city?s top security official for his known participation in drug trafficking.
Although the Uribe administration and Colombian military have depleted the ranks of the FARC since 2002, while simultaneously overseeing the demobilization of the AUC, both forces began to regroup in late 2006. The continued growth of illegal narcotics operations in 2007 will provide both the AUC and FARC with the financial means to expand their operations and to reengage the Colombian military. TRC anticipates a violent year for Colombia, as the FARC stage dramatic attacks against the Colombian military. Additionally, the continued rearming of AUC forces will likely mean the cessation of the current demobilization program.
