The urban war bleeds Barranquilla: chronicle of 14 murders in 48 hours

Friday, January 12. The afternoon heat devastates Barranquilla. José David Martínez Silva runs out of the grain market, completely covered in blood, his own blood. A few moments ago, he was shot 11 times. He advances 50 meters and collapses in the middle of a road. He won't get up again. Martínez, 27, is the first victim of a weekend of uncontrolled violence in the main city of the Colombian Caribbean, which until recently was the safest capital in the country. Over the next 48 hours, 13 more people will be murdered in a metropolitan area of ​​almost three million inhabitants. Twelve of them in the south, where a war between several gangs leaves a trail of death. The facts of some of these homicides show what is behind the crime wave.

Franklin De Ávila, 'Franklin Pegasus'

Friday. 9:30 p.m. The Police find a body on a trail in the municipality of Malambo, south of the capital of Atlántico. This is Franklin David De Ávila García, Franklin Pegasus. He is 24 years old, has an extensive criminal record and has been shot three times in the head. He was transferred to the Campbell Clinic in Malambo, where he died minutes later.

Details of his criminal past come to light. He was arrested for the first time in 2012, when he was 13 years old, for a theft case. A year later, he was caught for carrying weapons, a crime for which he was repeatedly arrested in 2018, now of legal age. In 2021, the Police accused him of his most horrific crime: the murder of ranchera music singer Richard Figueroa during a robbery in the nearby municipality of Soledad. After each capture he returned to freedom, and to crime.

Luis Trejos, professor of Political Science at the Universidad del Norte, explains that criminal competition has taken over the south of the metropolitan area. “It is a war between different gangs for control of as much territory as possible. This in order to obtain income through extortion and micro-trafficking, among other things,” he says by phone. The main actors are the Clan del Golfo, the Costeños, the Rastrojos Costeños and the Pepes. In the last three years, violence has increased to a level never before seen in Barranquilla.

Hernando Andrés Barraza, 'Nando'

Saturday. 4:45 p.m. Hernando Andrés Barraza Mejía, alias Nando, meets a group of people near a soccer field in the La Luz neighborhood, southeast of Barranquilla. Suddenly, a hitman arrives on foot and shoots. Nando, 24, is shot in the chest. He is taken to the Camino Simón Bolívar medical center, where he dies. According to the Police, he had three judicial notes in the last three years for carrying weapons, and another for kidnapping, from October 2022.

The urban war began during the pandemic, says Professor Trejos. While in the rest of the large cities of Colombia homicides decreased, in the Atlantic capital they skyrocketed. His hypothesis is that the confinement affected the city's criminal gangs. “For a long time, local organizations provided services to national ones, especially in the protection of cocaine shipments that arrived to be exported through the port or along the coast in speedboats,” he recalls. But when the pandemic hit, cocaine exports decreased significantly. It was much more difficult to transport drugs on the roads, which had few cars, and to take them out by sea, where there were few boats.

Trejos says that, as a result, national organizations stopped hiring local bands. Without drugs to move, local criminal businesses were compressed “to the maximum,” says the security expert. Months later, when the quarantine measures were eased and the gangs were able to do business again, they began to compete to capture the rents that remained available: “That triggered the war, and no one has won it yet.”

Esteban Castillo, 'Negro Esteban'

Sunday. 5.50 hours. Esteban Castillo Barón, alias Black Stephen He is in his residence in the Primero de Mayo neighborhood, in the municipality of Soledad. According to the Police count, two people knock on the door. The 49-year-old bricklayer gets up to open it. Before he can do so, several bullets hit him in the collarbone, neck and face. He dies. In the following days, the Police have assured that he had connections with aliases Fat 40leader of the Costeños.

Since the war began, the numbers of murders in the Atlantic – always concentrated in the metropolitan area – have risen drastically. Between 2010 and 2020 they were relatively stable: they fluctuated between 508 and 568, according to the National Police. In 2021 they jumped to 712. Last year, they reached 769.

Not only homicides have increased. Violence is experienced in a much more open, more brutal way. In 2023 there were nine massacres in the metropolitan area. Dismembered bodies have appeared floating in the Magdalena River. The victims are not only the gang members, maintains Trejos. “They could be civilians who broke some rule, such as reporting something or paying extortion to the wrong group. Living in a neighborhood in dispute or governed by a criminal group puts all the inhabitants of those neighborhoods at risk of their body becoming a spectacle to send signals,” he states.

Carlos and Luis Ricardo Julio

Sunday. 3:20 p.m. The brothers Carlos and Luis Ricardo Julio, 55 and 47 years old, are in a house in the El Edén neighborhood, southwest of Barranquilla. They chat, sitting in the living room. Suddenly a hitman bursts through the door, which they had left open, and shoots them. One of the brothers dies in the chair. The other tries to escape, but dies elsewhere in the house. According to the Police, behind the double murder is a dispute over some plots of land. Carlos, the older brother, was a lawyer and apparently worked for a client who wanted to market the land.

Jeisson Manuel Sandoval

Sunday. End of the afternoon. Jeisson Manuel Sandoval makes repairs to a motorcycle at the door of his house, in the La Floresta neighborhood, in the municipality of Soledad. According to what his mother told local radio station Zona Cero, “some boys arrive and shots are heard.” Sandoval dies moments later in a nearby clinic. He was 22 years old. His mother, Jackelin Acosta, remembers him as “a pelao well commanded.” “I wasn't in trouble or anything,” she says.

Pablo José Ayala

Sunday. 6:30 p.m. Pablo José Ayala Silgado, 21, walks in the La Sierrita neighborhood, southwest of Barranquilla. Suddenly, two hitmen on a motorcycle approach and shoot him three times. Ayala receives gunshot wounds to the head, chest and left arm. He is transferred to the San Ignacio Clinic, where he dies.

As of the time of publishing this article, the Barranquilla Metropolitan Police has not announced any arrests for the 14 murders. This Monday, Colonel Dave Figueroa assured Zona Cero that “the National Police has deployed an investigative group in order to find clarifications and capture the material and intellectual authors.” He added that more than 50% of the victims recorded judicial notes, “which shows the possible territorial dispute by criminal structures.”

For Professor Trejos, this violence has become a normal part of life in Barranquilla. It is not an epidemic nor is it temporary, it is day to day: “At some point there were peaks, but it is now almost permanent.”

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