A tourist walk along the Pacific coast this Thursday turned into a nightmare in the open sea. Two passengers, posing as tourists, assaulted their fellow boat excursionists in the waters near Buenaventura with firearms. The ship was heading to the beaches of Juanchaco when two men robbed the thirty travelers and made them jump into the ocean. To save themselves, the victims, including three minors and several foreigners, swam approximately 15 minutes to shore. Upon arrival, they reported the disappearance of a crew member of the boat, according to the Colombian Navy. Hours later, the man was found dead by coast guards.
The robbers, who have not been arrested, took the ship named Brisas Dos, which belonged to the company Transportes Flórez. The National Navy informed EL PAÍS this Friday that it has no information on the whereabouts of those responsible, nor on their identities. The Police and the Prosecutor’s Office have not responded to queries in this regard until the time of publishing this article. The losses in the theft exceed 400 million pesos, according to a statement issued this Friday by the Association of Maritime and Fluvial Transporters of the Pacific.
High-seas holdups are not a new phenomenon in Buenaventura, the country’s largest Pacific port. Numerous tourist boat robberies have been reported in the area over the years. In June 2022, an almost exactly the same crime occurred near the Maguïpi sector —precisely where the assault this Thursday took place. According to the National Navy, a group of pirates intercepted a boat in the early morning hours and robbed the passengers. On that occasion, the authorities arrived in time to rescue the victims — who had jumped into the water — and prevent the thieves from taking the boat. However, they failed to capture those responsible.
Despite what happened this Thursday, several sources consulted explain to EL PAÍS that maritime robberies in the area are not as common as they once were. Miguel Ángel Valencia, a promoter of a travel agency that has been operating in Buenaventura for more than two years, explains that the naval force “has been controlling the situation.” For Valencia, the robbery this Thursday was something that surprised him ”. “It’s not common for it to happen,” he says. Another nautical tour operator who has been working in the port for more than 10 years and prefers to remain anonymous agrees with Valencia. “We don’t know why that happened, but it’s not normal,” he says. The Navy agrees that the attack was an exception.
However, not everyone in Buenaventura agrees with this version of things. Javier Torres, candidate for mayor of the city and president of the Association of Maritime and Fluvial Transporters of the Pacific, assures that there have already been three similar robberies this year. The candidate from the left-wing Fuerza Ciudadana party says that last month 20 armed men stole two boats near the Piñal bridge, which connects the island where the city was born with the mainland. He affirms that this crime was never solved and that many crimes are not recorded: “People are not motivated to denounce it because it does not have an effect. And if you dare to denounce, the gangs will come looking for you”.
Torres, who was a member of the leadership of the civic strike that froze the port in 2017, has spent 14 years demanding the situation of insecurity experienced by sailors on the Pacific coast. He explains that the daily robberies have disastrous effects for the economy of one of the cities with the highest poverty rates in Colombia. “Commerce is affected, restaurants are affected, hotels are affected, and of course the image of tourism is affected,” he says. What’s more, he adds: it can be a matter of life and death. “When a person takes a boat and throws people into the sea, that is a mass murder attempt. People can die from hypothermia or because they don’t know how to swim.”
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Buenaventura is a city of contrasts. From the tourist pier, passengers board boats bound for nearby paradisiacal beaches such as La Bocana, half an hour away, or Juanchaco and Ladrilleros, about three hours away. Visitors get to know the whales, the black sand beaches and the cliffs covered in jungle vegetation. Your nature is worthy of the catchphrase Colombia is a country of beauty. However, violence plagues the city and, despite the occasional advances in total urban peace, sometimes it directly hits these tourists. It was precisely what happened this Thursday.
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