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Barrancabermeja
Entry 12 of 28 | show all | print this entry |
This entry will be dedicated to our first two days Barrancabermeja, Colombia's oil capital and the political and commercial center of middle Magdalena Region.
Where were staying was right in the middle of the commercial district. When you walk out, to the right is toward the port and sketchy especially at night. To left, along the sidewalk, there were dozens of kiosks that could be locked at night, but during the day sold shoes, clothes, fruit, hardware, whatever. Regular stores with the same stuff were opposite them. As you walked along, people would yell A La Orden, which could be translated to at your service, what are you looking for, something like that. They do this whether you show any interest or not, and it becomes extremely annoying, though they are desperate for your business, but like in English there are many ways to say this, but everybody says the same thing. A couple of blocks away was a typical Latin American market, with fruits, veggies, grains, meat, etc, usually with old women running their own stall. Inside it is dark, with an organic odor than emanates as much from the food as it does the people. Fernando eats tamale, chicken and rice wrapped in a leaf and I eat bananas and mandarin oranges for breakfast.
We begin our search for the contacts I have accumulated while in Bogotá. I met a guy from Barranca (Barrancabermeja for short) in Bogotá who said that when I arrived I should get in touch and he could help me organize some trips. I had emailed and called a few days earlier, but never received a response and I tried calling him again and there was no answer. We take a taxi to the Defensoria del Pueblo´s (Town defender) office, Jorge Gomez. He is not there and we are told to call after 2PM. Just a few blocks away is the Corporacion Nacion. I have no idea what they do; I received their contact info from an American journalist I met in Bogotá. Unfortunately, nobody is there, but we find a person on the street selling minutes and call a cell phone. Jaime Meza answers and says to come at 2. We do and are led upstairs and talk with Francisco Campos for about an hour. Essentially, it is a human rights organization that helps aid displaced people and makes reports about violations in the area, of which there have been countless in the last 20 years. The biggest current thing going on the region is the demobilization of the paramilitaries, who had taken the region from the guerillas in the last 5-10 years.
The following is a brief history of this struggle from my understanding. Essentially, the guerillas are a few Marxist groups, most noticeably the FARC who feel the poor and disposed have no political voice and hence armed struggle is the only answer. From the 60´s to the 80´s they had growing support and success throughout the country. Some of the groups actually formed in the Middle Magdalena Region. This region is also home to many large ranches, where wealthy landowners have thousands of heads of cattle (to feed Colombians meat obsession) and they were being terrorized by the guerillas. The state has always had a small presence in the region, so with their own funds initially, they hired armed thugs, the paramilitaries to hunt down not only the guerillas, but the people who supposedly gave support to the guerillas. Drugs also became a big part of the picture, as both groups provided security for the drug lords who grew and processed the cocaine in the mountains surrounding the river. This tremendous violent struggle has victimized the region severely, but since 2001 and 2002, when the guerilla were finally marginalized (with the help of the state, funded by Plan Colombia, the USA gov´t multibillion dollar military and coca eradication package), relative peace has occurred. Colombia's president Alvaro Uribe, supposedly with intimate ties to the Paramilitary has helped orchestrate this demobilization and peace process. Essentially, the paramilitary are allowed to continue legally, either by joining private security firms or the Colombian army, and even the committers of the worst atrocities are given a slap on the wrist, punishment of a petty thief. Is this impunity the only way to achieve peace and if so, is it worth it and is it working? To figure this out is a big reason why Fernando came on this trip and it certainly interested me as it is one of the most hotly debated political issues of the country.
Francisco gave us some more names to contact and most importantly that the river region is safe to travel. He suggested a few towns that are okay to stay at Puerto Wilches, Santa Rosa, and el Banco. Before he told me this, I was still unsure about security, knowing the region had suffered some of the worst conflict in the country. Downstairs, we accidentally met one of the contacts he mentioned, who said he could organize a tour of the refinery for us and would call us tomorrow. I got in touch with my original contact, but he said he was out of town and would return in a few days but gave us the contact of a person that worked in the Program of Development and Peace of the Magdalena Medio, one of the most important actors in the region. We called the Defensor´s office and made an appointment for tomorrow.
On our way back to the hotel, we walked by that jungly park and smelled sewer next to an army battalion. We also passed by a governmental welfare organization and out of curiosity walked in. A woman with four young kids was inside. The woman had little control over them and one of them sat on her lap and played with my hat. She was upset because her children were sick, asthma, epilepsy, and the state was not helping her. We talked with one of the bureaucrats and essentially their role is to give the displaced (by violence and conflict) enough resources to live for 3 months after they have been displaced. Fernando called it a band aid on a gaping wound.
The next day we never got our refinery tour because we never got a call and all efforts to get his number were in vain. We did visit the office of CorMagdalena near the port. At first it looked completely run down, like everything else but then I turned my head and saw a modern office building. It is the gov´t organization dedicated to engineering projects along the Magdalena River in order to recuperate it and make it more productive. They do things like build levies, dredge, clean up, and plan a ferry terminal for Barrancabermeja. Right now the port is just a garbage laden mud hole. The woman who was supposed to help us just gave us literature, which is not what we wanted, but the office was too cool to leave so quickly, so I perused a rather informative manual of the river, though most of the literature was engineering numbers and stuff. Not surprisingly the place felt rigid and not very open, they have archives you can research, but everything is done by the book, their answers read straight out of those books. Hard to believe these highly educated people work and exist in the same place as the fisherman and street people. We did learn that in the past a few CorMagdalena employs have been kidnapped and a couple even killed, so they do get out in the field for better or for worse.
I first heard about Jorge Gomez, the Town Defender, while still in the US, from Cecilia Zarate, head of the Colombian Support Network. When I thought of Town Defender, I pictured a superhero single handedly protecting the innocent townsfolk from large armed men, something like Robin Hood or Superman, but Colombian with a sombrero and a six-shooter. This isn't Jorge Gomez. He is a mild mannered man of about 60, who summed up the last 500 years of history of the region in about 30 minutes, and also assured us we should not have any security problems. He talked little of his work, but he also documents and assists victims of human rights abuses. Seems as though there cannot be too many people doing this kind of work.
The evening was dominated by Fernando's health problems. We spent about half an hour searching for an open drugstore and finally found one in a district with a central plaza and church and generally much more pleasant then where we were staying. He got cream for irritated armpits (he used Axe deodorant) and muscle relaxant for his back.
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