Colombia started this week with a wave of attacks by the dissidents of the self-proclaimed Central General Staff that included the explosion of a motorcycle bomb, harassment with rifle bursts and attacks on a military helicopter, which spread anxiety in the southwest of the country. President Gustavo Petro landed on Thursday in Morales, Cauca, one of the epicenters of the violence, where two police officers and two civilians died, to attend in person to the delicate public order situation, and then hold a security council in Popayán, the capital of that department.
Meanwhile, the Minister of the Environment, Susana Muhamad, presented on Wednesday in Bogotá, during the International Biodiversity Day, an ambitious campaign to “make peace with nature” as part of Colombia’s diplomatic commitments ahead of the world conference. of Biodiversity of the United Nations, which will be held between October 21 and November 1 in Cali. COP16, an event that mobilizes more than 12,000 people, will be the great international showcase of the Petro Government, a convinced environmentalist. Although they may seem distant, the two episodes are more related than may seem at first glance.
Although Cauca has received most of the attention due to the attacks by Iván Mordisco’s dissidents who left the dialogue table with the Government, the violence also spills over into the neighboring department of Valle del Cauca, in the that Cali, its capital, accelerates preparations to host COP16. The explosion of the motorcycle bomb, without going too far, was near a hotel in Jamundí, just an hour’s drive from Cali, where a hundred police officers who arrived to reinforce security in the region were staying. It is not the first time that harassment has occurred in the leaks of the capital of Valle del Cauca. Its mayor, Alejandro Eder, conceives the summit as an opportunity to revitalize the city. But the complex security situation emerges as a challenge.
Cali has great symbolic weight, as it is the de facto capital of the entire Pacific region, highlights analyst Elizabeth Dickinson, researcher at the International Crisis Group. “For the Central General Staff, it is a very important show of force to be able to enter, and carry out actions against the State, in the third city of Colombia,” she points out. There are other points in the Valle del Cauca, such as Buenaventura, with a strategic value due to its access to the sea. The conflicts of a much broader region converge in the department, which includes Cauca and Chocó.
In April alone, Valle del Cauca suffered a car bomb attack on an army battalion, a massacre of five people and the murder of two councilors, one in Jamundí and the other in Tuluá, where the mayor has been threatened since the campaign for the criminal gang La Inmaculada. In Buenaventura, the main port on the Pacific, two and a half hours from Cali, all types of criminal gangs roam, with Los Shottas and Los Espartanos leading the way, in addition to the ELN, the FARC dissidents and the Clan del Golfo. A recent early warning from the Ombudsman’s Office indicates that armed or criminal groups are present in 82% of the neighborhoods of Buenaventura.
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To further sound the alarm, Governor Dilian Francisca Toro confirmed last month that, according to military intelligence information, a faction of the Central General Staff planned to kidnap the deputies of the Valley, which stirs painful memories of the armed conflict in a city that He already suffered a shocking episode. The case of the 12 deputies kidnapped in 2002 while they were meeting at the headquarters of the Departmental Assembly in the heart of the country’s third city was one of the cruelest crimes of the extinct FARC guerrilla, today disarmed and converted into a political party by account of the peace agreement.
Carlos Negret, Ombudsman between 2016 and 2020, points out that the security crisis in Cauca and Valle del Cauca corresponds to the same dynamic. “The municipalities most affected by this conflict are those in the south of the Valley: Florida, Pradera and now Jamundí. They are part of the risk scenario of Northern Cauca, so much so that they all belong to the same PDET zone. [Planes de Desarrollo con Enfoque Territorial, los más afectados por el conflicto]as is that of Norte del Cauca and Alto Patía,” he explains. These are the same strategic corridors that illegal armed actors fight for being fundamental to illegal economies.
“What is happening in Cali is much more complex because it is mixed with the urban problems, where camouflage and bracelets are not seen; where alliances acquire a higher level of complexity, such as their articulation or disputes with gangs that have outsourced the criminal activities of more complex criminal structures, even multinationals,” adds Negret in his analysis. In the city there is also a deep heritage of all the heirs of the Cali Cartel who are current networks in extortion and micro-trafficking activities, there is an abundance. “The current mayor is working on a commitment to reconciliation that could benefit the management of this scenario,” she clarifies.
Cali has had structural and historical problems of violence for a long time, with extreme inequality, which is why it usually appears on lists of the most violent cities in the world, recalls Kyle Johnson, researcher at the Conflict Responses (Core) foundation. “There are many gangs, but also other actors of violence linked to hitmen and other violent actions because in Cali a lot of money is handled from illegal economies, not only coca but also marijuana, in addition to arms trafficking,” he points out. Other cities and municipalities that directly suffer the onslaught of the armed conflict are very close to Cali, both in the south of the Valley and in the north of Cauca. “Violence is not necessarily defined by political-administrative lines,” he agrees.
Other types of criminal dynamics converge in cities that do not occur in rural areas, warns Catalina Miranda, citizen security coordinator of the Ideas for Peace Foundation (FIP). She agrees that the high homicide rates, which reached 44.9 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023, are a serious phenomenon that Cali has not been able to resolve for several years. It also faces a problem of contempt for authority that has led to measures such as mixed patrols, with traffic agents accompanied by a soldier. “The district administration is making important efforts,” she values, but to solve the structural problems, more ambitious measures are needed, social inclusion strategies and a significant reform of the penitentiary system. For now, Cali needs sufficient shielding to guarantee the success of COP16. Time is short.
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