Barranquilla: the capital of life?

Community leaders Miguel Arrieto and Johnny Agudelo were murdered in the metropolitan area of Barranquilla, highlighting the issues of insecurity faced in the city.

*Article written by Isabella Avila, Camilo Gomez & Sofia Moreno

Barranquilla, also called the golden gate, or the capital of life, is a city located 19 kilometers from the mouth of the Magdalena River, near the Caribbean coast of Colombia, and it is the capital of department of Atlántico. Barranquilla is well known for its carnival, its warm people, and its artistic tradition. Most foreigners consider this city a wonderful place to visit and for some to live. Barranquilla is a city of development, considering the number of jobs, buildings, and parks being created for a better life in the city, in comparison to other big cities of the country. Curramba the Beautiful (curramba la bella) is a relatively young city and day by day it keeps growing. However, all this development Barranquilla is seeing does not tell the whole story about how reality is here. These characteristics are overshadowed by the acts of violence, poverty, and criminal groups that have impoverished the city in recent decades. The image of the city promoted by the government is mostly biased towards the richer part, and it has left behind the rest of the city and surroundings.

Barranquilla is progressively improving the quality of life for its inhabitants. One example of this is seen in the creation of new universities such as La Universidad de Barranquilla, which is a free university for those of lower socio-economic capacity. Social interest housing projects and subsidies from the government have helped, as has investment in tidying up and expanding the parks and other recreational facilities in the city. However, this progress does not tell the whole story. For example, the violence on the streets keeps growing, and the insecurity that the citizens’ experience is undeniable. One of the biggest reasons for insecurity is the level of poverty that some areas present, and there is a clear contrast between the northern part of the city and the southern part, despite the fact that this sense of insecurity seems to permeate throughout. One important factor to have in mind when we are talking is the pandemic. Before the pandemic, Barranquilla closed the poverty level with 35.7% (DANE), and during this time a lot of enterprises closed, people stopped working and earning money because they couldn’t get out of their houses. Unemployment went up and so did poverty. Nevertheless, When the pandemic “finished” thanks to the reactivation, trade started to open again, people got new jobs and started to look for stabilization again, the poverty was reduced in Barranquilla by 5.5 percentage points, going from 41.2 % in 2020 to 35.7 % in 2022, which meant that more than 99,000 citizens had got out of this condition. However, it is important to point out that the majority of the population (58%) work in the informal sector (El Heraldo, 2023). Furthermore, there are other important issues present in the city.

Insecurity in the city is evident in many distinctive ways. Perhaps the most prevalent issue is robbery; one of the most pressing problems affecting the citizens of Barranquilla and the metropolitan area in different ways. Theft is the crime that most worries Barranquilla’s society There were more than 15,000 reports of thefts against private property in 2022, with an increase of 41% over the previous year, and this causes an alert that does not go unnoticed by the government; much less the specialization around the theft from financial institutions, which recorded 23 cases in 2022, compared to 11 in 2021. Street crimes, including the threat of violence via the use of guns and other weapons, is a reality throughout the entire metropolitan area, and there have been several high-profile armed robberies in commercial and residential areas in the more well-off north of Barranquilla. However, these street crimes disproportionately affect more deprived areas of the city, and public transport services and their passengers have often been targets. These street crimes are impossible to ignore for the residents of the metropolitan area. However, the violence and threats caused by more organized criminal structures seem to have become more common in recent times. According to the authorities' records the department concluded January 2023 with 74 murders in that month alone, 22 more cases than the previous year, when there were 52. Janiel Melamed, director of the Citizen Security Observatory says that Barranquilla and its metropolitan area have become the scene of a strong confrontation between criminal organizations, which has led to the consolidation of high homicide rates in recent years: "These criminal structures have been spatially distributed throughout the department, especially in municipalities with lower institutional capacities, either on the eastern side, in Soledad, Malambo or Santo Tomás, or on the coastal side, in Puerto Colombia or Tubará". However, the crimes of these organized criminal structures have impacted the civilian population in different ways.

Regarding the issues of violence in Barranquilla, we have multiple case studies that give us a worrying picture of the city. As was seen in the previous paragraph, violence in recent years has had a significant increase over the past years. There are multiple cases that allow us to reach this conclusion, but they can be summarized in certain situations that are repeated within the territory. For example, we have the extortion of bus drivers by criminal groups, the murder of social leaders in territories with little state presence and the narco-parties. The cases of extortion of bus drivers were a significant part of the violence in Barranquilla in 2022 with several bus drivers being indiscriminately murdered. The modus operandi of certain criminal groups is basically to offer a protection service for drivers belonging to bus companies, and if they refuse to pay, they use intimidation and in extreme cases murder to cause widespread terror in the companies. Situations like these had already occurred in past years such as 2012 and 2013 where the same cases had been perpetrated by the same groups that are attributed to those that occurred in 2022. The criminal group known as "Los Costeños" had the main objective to kill the drivers to intimidate the victims. The workers of the companies affected by these events coincide in the fact that these events have a clear intention to intimidate the business community, and this has given rise to many cases of worried relatives and others devastated by the events, showing that the problem in the capital of Atlantico has been aggravating. All of this started last July when Willington Hernández Borja who operated a Cootrab bus was shot. After that, until this day there have been more than 5 bus drivers murdered in the whole metropolitan area, Because of these issues, bus drivers made a strike asking the government for more security and for them to find the culprit of all these murders, as in addition, the universities and schools had to start remote classes once again because of the lack of mobility available to get to the schools and college campuses. Furthermore, the impact caused by these criminal groups also affected people who are sticking up and defending the rights and interests of the communities in the city and the metropolitan area.

Another problem present in the territory is the assassination of social leaders. This is a worrying dynamic that has been affecting all Colombian territories since the signing of a peace deal between the government and the FARC in 2016. As of April 17th, 2023, there had been a staggering 1,461 social leaders murdered in Colombia since the agreement. Barranquilla and the department of Atlantico may only make up a very minor fraction of this figure, but the area is still affected. These people were known as social leaders of great relevance for their role in the resolution of conflicts in different areas of the country, however; they also were mothers and fathers that were killed by unidentified criminal groups to date. Johnny Agudelo is a clear example of this issue; he was a social leader located in Barranquilla and the voice of the people. He was fighting against the eviction of some communities in the surrounding territories, and when he was carrying out this work at a meeting and in front of other leaders, he was violently murdered in Soledad on October 30th, 2022. As a message to others to stop their cause. Another recent case in the metropolitan area of Barranquilla was that of the Pibe Soledeño; Miguel Arrieta was a social leader well-known for his physical similarities with the ex-soccer player El Pibe Valderrama and for his huge passion to help others. Miguel lived in Soledad, and this was the same city where he was assassinated on March 16th, 2023. Miguel was murdered at his business locale, and since the crime happened, the local population have been rallying around his family to show their support. There is a clear pattern for these criminal organizations and speaking up is sadly not a safe option in Colombia.

To conclude, Barranquilla is such a beautiful place to live, because of the warm people, the culture, and the development the city is going through. Nevertheless, we should never forget the bad side of Barranquilla where insecurity, poverty, murders, and extortion are negatively impacting the lives of many in and around the city. Insecurity in the streets, attacks against public transport, frequent shootings involving criminal organizations and the silencing of leaders and activists are issues that are far too serious to avoid. If the city wants to be identified as the capital of life, it needs to do more to justify the name.

References:

Ambivalencias en balance de seguridad en Barranquilla: bajan homicidios, suben extorsiones y hurtos. (s/f). Portal de Noticias. Recuperado el 20 de abril de 2023, de https://www.uninorte.edu.co/es/web/grupo-prensa/w/ambivalencias-en-balance-de-seguridad-en-barranquilla-bajan-homicidios-suben-extorsiones-y-hurtos

BBC News Mundo. (2019, junio 22). María del Pilar Hurtado: el asesinato de una mujer frente a sus hijos que indigna a Colombia. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-48732381

Gonzalez, S. (2022, noviembre 2). Asesinado mediador de desalojo en Barranquilla. HSB NOTICIAS. https://www.hsbnoticias.com/asesinado-mediador-de-desalojo-en-barranquilla/

Heraldo, E. (2023, marzo 25). Video del atentado: “sicario le disparó al ‘Pibe’ cuando arreglaba bicicleta”. El Heraldo. https://www.elheraldo.co/judicial/video-capto-momento-del-ataque-bala-que-acabo-con-el-pibe-soledeno-988449

INFOBAE. (2022, noviembre 1). Asesinaron a líder social que estaba mediando en las invasiones de tierras en la costa Caribe. infobae. https://www.infobae.com/america/colombia/2022/11/01/asesinaron-a-lider-social-que-estaba-mediando-en-las-invasiones-de-tierras-en-la-costa-caribe/

Mouthon, L. (2023, February 13). Informalidad laboral no da “tregua” en la costa Caribe”. El Heraldo. https://www.elheraldo.co/economia/informalidad-laboral-bajo-2-puntos-en-barranquilla-y-soledad-977949

Ortega, D. J. L. (2022, julio 8). Así le fue a Barranquilla con el índice de pobreza en el último año. El Tiempo. https://www.eltiempo.com/colombia/barranquilla/barranquilla-indices-de-pobreza-por-el-dane-685673

Z&uacute, A. B. (2023, enero 29). Apuntes sobre la Seguridad Ciudadana en Barranquilla. www.lasillavacia.com. https://www.lasillavacia.com/historias/historias-silla-llena/apuntes-sobre-la-seguridad-ciudadana-en-barranquilla/