【外交政策 20150108】哥伦比亚被遗忘的街道

满仓

【中文标题】哥伦比亚被遗忘的街道
【原文标题】The Forgotten Streets
【登载媒体】外交政策
【原文作者】SCOTT C. JOHNSON
【原文链接】http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/01/08/the-forgotten-streets-buenaventura-farc-colombia-port-gangs-violence/


正在进行中的和平谈判或许会结束哥伦比亚的游击队战争，但饱受战争蹂躏的城市布韦那文图拉将会期待什么样的命运？



8月份的一天，一个20多岁、骨瘦如柴的青年——他叫杰林——走向一名中年男人，用手枪向对方胸部开了几枪，对方立即死亡。受害者是一个屠夫，在布韦那文图拉的圣佩德罗街区工作，这是一个不规则蔓延、被雨水浸透的哥伦比亚沿海城市。屠夫犯的错误很简单，杰林说，他拒绝向这块地盘上的黑帮支付两个月的保护费，大约40万比索（200美元）。杰林还说，屠夫威胁要报警。

他说：“我用9毫米手枪向他射击。开了4枪，确保他死定了。”

我和杰林在离他家不远的一个酒店房间里见面。他的家是一片邻水的街区，叫做圣莫尼卡，那里的房屋枝枝丫丫、危险地伸向海面。杰林戴着一顶黑色的帽子，穿着一件T恤衫、一条蓝色牛仔裤和一双绿色耐克凉鞋，他看起来低眉顺目。但是他说自己是普立麦罗——一种帮派的小头目，他的帮派是吉坦尼斯塔斯，与乌拉贝诺和安普雷斯一起，成为控制布韦那文图拉大部分地区的三个武装团体。他们采取敲诈、谋杀、绑架和威胁等手段控制当地。吉坦尼斯塔斯是其中势力最弱的帮派，但是杰林说，他的老板命令他继续战斗，直到占领整个城市。“这就是我们的任务，保护自己的地盘，伺机扩张。”他是否害怕？他摇摇头：“我不害怕。该死就得死。”





布韦那文图拉一般被认为是哥伦比亚最暴力的城市。那里的谋杀案发生率比全国平均水平高出56％，是纽约的9倍。这里有一个庞大的港口系统，负责吞吐哥伦比亚大约60％进出口的货物，但是几乎没有任何收入落到当地居民的口袋中。2013年，大约有1500万吨非法货物，加上未申报的毒品和武器进入布韦那文图拉。高端发展的前景、进入亚洲、欧洲和北美的便捷港口网络，加上这座贫穷的城市——大约80％的人口生活在贫困线以下——让布韦那文图拉成为各种利益、合法机构和犯罪组织的必争之地。杰林这样的组织通常被成为“犯罪团伙”，为了争夺贩毒路线、控制岸边地产而经常火拼。大公司往往瞄准高档货物下手。

几十年来，哥伦比亚政府对布韦那文图拉所坐落的太平洋海岸线区域极少给予关注。除了港口之外，国家几乎放弃了这个地区，任由布韦那文图拉和它的居民——大部分是非洲奴隶的后裔——与世隔绝、穷困潦倒。安第斯山脉把这座城市与哥伦比亚其它地区分割开来，这里缺少政府的关注，没有必要的基础设施与国内其它地区保持联络。

2012年，哥伦比亚加入了太平洋联盟，这个贸易组织成员有墨西哥、秘鲁和智利，其主要目标是与亚洲——尤其是中国——追求更紧密的经济合作关系。但是，当政府官员们提议把布韦那文图拉作为第二年太平洋联盟峰会举办地时——这里是通往南美的太平洋口岸；城市拥有地区最大的港口，确保哥伦比亚在联盟中的重要地位，这个主意被否定了，因为那里太危险。最终，峰会在几百英里外的加勒比地区举办，这对那些期望让国家昂首进入新世纪的人来说不啻于一记警钟。之后，总统胡安•曼努埃尔•桑托斯与市政官员一起试图改善布韦那文图拉的形象，包括制定宏伟的计划来提升旅游业、发展市政建设、修建海边的景观大道、盖起豪华的酒店。但是这座城市的现状让这些彻底扭转形象的努力变得几乎不可能。

哥伦比亚在试图把长达50年的战乱抛在身后时，遭遇了严峻的挑战。游击队战争让新政府直接面对“哥伦比亚革命武装力量”，经济重建仅仅是桑托斯希望可以真正实施的计划之一。从2012年10月开始、目前依然在古巴哈瓦那继续的和平谈判，或许会结束拉丁美洲多年来的冲突局面。但是问题在于，尽管政府与哥伦比亚革命武装力量的谈判有些许进展，但是战争造成的后果——尤其是布韦那文图拉——不大可能通过和平的环境来改善。多年来的战乱，加上政府的忽视，让布韦那文图拉变成了荒蛮之地。杰林和其它犯罪团伙的成员，包括曾经与哥伦比亚革命武装力量作战的民兵后裔，在那里可以为所欲为。

除非桑托斯政府可以迅速兑现他的承诺，着力解决多年来被忽视所造成的后果，否则布韦那文图拉只会变得更加暴力，不管有没有达成和平协议。而这，将是哥伦比亚悲惨的未来。



哥伦比亚的内战已经造成22万人死亡、更多的人受伤、600万人流离失所。总共有670万人沦为战争的受害者。政府与哥伦比亚革命武装力量首次在1984年进行和平对话，但一直没有任何进展。当年，哥伦比亚政府承诺进行大范围的改革，包括土地改革、增加政治参与度和政府账目公开。但是当这些改革纷纷失败，以及政府成立的委员会被认为毫无效果之后，谈判很快破裂，哥伦比亚革命武装力量立即加紧了起义和伏击的攻势。

几年时间里，冲突越来越激烈。一些业主和小企业主受够了绑架和勒索的威胁，他们于是出资支持布韦那文图拉的右翼政府军，其实就是哥伦比亚政府军。其中最重要的一支武装力量“哥伦比亚联合自卫队”也采取了与哥伦比亚革命武装力量类似的手段——暗杀、绑架和针对平民的大屠杀，目的是击退反叛军。哥伦比亚革命武装力量参与了大规模的毒品交易活动，来为其行动筹集资金，这让他们与犯罪组织和恐怖组织形成了某种默契。

2003年，时任哥伦比亚总统的阿尔瓦罗•乌里韦采取了大规模的行动来解除加入战争的3.2万名政府军武装，这是为了回应那些饱受哥伦比亚革命武装力量勒索的小企业主的诉求。在行动过程中，政府还与哥伦比亚联合自卫队签订了一项和平协议，作为放下武器的补偿条件，可以给予士兵减刑。但是政府并没有给这些前政府军士兵提供职业培训和教育的机会，因此这些人陆续开始从事贩毒和犯罪活动。犯罪团伙应运而生，其组成人员主要是参与战争双方的前士兵。在城市里，犯罪团伙成员从事非法活动的嚣张气焰与他们当兵时同样高涨。有些前哥伦比亚革命武装力量成员在贩毒时，使用的就是战争期间军火交易的网络。布韦那文图拉开放的海岸线和缺少法治的现状，让这里成为犯罪团伙滋生的沃土。





如果说那些士兵曾经有希望相信政府的承诺，这个希望在2006年也破灭了。政府曾经向这些前士兵做出承诺，在遣散队伍之后会保护他们不被引渡，但是却把一些人送到美国接受贩毒罪名的审判。政府军的支持者认为政府背叛了它的承诺，那些被政府军杀害的人的亲属们，失去了他们了解家人如何被害的希望。

今天，桑托斯总统决心推进和平进程，他把自己没有十足把握的中期选举与这件事挂钩。最近，他敦促那些对反叛组织和政府的言论感到越来越担心的民众保持耐心和克制。哈瓦那的会议中充满了各方的阻挠、离席的威胁，和哥伦比亚革命武装力量与政府领导人之前的相互攻击、争权夺利。（其它反叛组织暂时没有参与对话，政府在最近声明会与民族解放军单独开展对话。）

但希望还是有的。去年8月，哥伦比亚军方二把手哈维尔•弗洛雷斯将军与哥伦比亚革命武装力量的高级官员单独会晤——这是哥伦比亚现役军官第一次与他的不共戴天的仇人近距离公开交谈。哥伦比亚革命武装力量的一位谈判人士伊万•马尔克斯说，这是一次“军人与军人”的对话。会议释放出信号，双方坦承讨论了解除武装和进一步达成最终协议的话题。

尽管古巴的和平谈判有诸多利好消息，但是在布韦那文图拉的居民看来，对话只不过是发生在另一个星球的事情。桑托斯在去年4月来到这座城市，他发誓要为年轻人提供工作技能培训，并且为中小企业提升贷款额上限。而哥伦比亚革命武装力量对此的回应是引爆了布韦那文图拉中央电塔上的一枚土制炸弹，让整个城市连续几天陷入黑暗。一位对方会议成员维克多•维达尔直言不讳地批判政府：“控制布韦那文图拉就等于控制了哥伦比亚的经济。只要依然有船只来往，港口依然在运作，就没有人会关心当地居民的死活。”





对布韦那文图拉的居民来说，这说明他们的城市其实就是战场。

3月份，人权观察组织发表了一份谴责性的报告，详述了这座城市无处不在的人权迫害现象，包括谋杀、肢解和绑架案件。更令人不安的发现是，在几个小餐馆中，黑帮分子折磨受害者，把他们的肢体切下——有时候受害者还活着——丢入大海。

今年春天，海岸边一片住宅区纳耶罗的居民发现，两个犯罪团伙——乌拉贝诺和安普雷斯——的火拼把他们夹在中间。在一条街的尽头有一个小餐馆。当地居民威廉姆•米娜说：“他们在孩子面前杀人，他们霸占了这所房子，居民都非常害怕”这位19岁的男孩记得看到黑帮分子把人拖到木头房子里，他还听到尖叫声。

面对死亡威胁和暴力的侵害，一些当地威望人士没有别的选择，只能把居民组织起来，成立一个民间观察和自卫联合会，来对抗黑帮的暴虐。在“跨宗教正义与和平委员会”——“世界基督教会联合会”的分支机构，一家在暴力社区安排志愿者作为“见证人”的非政府组织——的帮助下，他们在一夜之间竖起围墙，用木板等障碍物封锁街道，并宣布纳耶罗为“人道区”。还拆除了所有的小餐馆。今天，有290户人家住在这里，但是急于扩张地盘的黑帮分子依然在威胁当地居民。

一个存在于某条街道上的“人道区”似乎都是不大现实的，但它的确存在着。尽管它破旧不堪，但那里的确为走投无路的居民提供了必要的安身之所。在人道区的入口处，居民把一所房子的一面墙壁变成了宣传壁画。上面有手写的约法三章：1，我们永远不会使用任何暴力手段；5，在人道区里我们会互相保护；6，我们轮流看守大门。

尽管如此，当孩子们发生争吵的时候，他们会说出一些能让对方望而却步的话，比如“我要把你剁碎。”22岁的弗雷纳•安古洛说：“把政府军拒之门外并不难，难的是赶走头脑中的暴力。”



几乎没有一家人没有受到暴力的伤害，有的房屋在居民无法面对压力之后已经人去楼空。据人权观察组织提供的数据，从2010年到2013年，有5.6万人离开城市周边地区的家园，比哥伦比亚任何一个城市流离失所的人都要多。很多儿童成为黑帮猎取的目标，因为他们急于招募新成员加入。亚得列•鲁伊斯神父在巴里奥里雷斯负责管理当地的教区和一个居民活动中心，他估计近年来，已经有4000名儿童被收入犯罪团伙。

朱里奥•西萨•比亚乔亲眼见到整整一代儿童消失在帕洛塞科的黑暗世界里，那里是简陋的木板房、污水横流的阴沟和崎岖不平、垃圾遍地的街道。

作为布韦那文图拉土生土长的居民，比亚乔说犯罪团伙最早在2005年出现，他们在附近的学校召集居民开会。他们说要保护邻里街坊。但是后来他们开始招募儿童，教他们如何打仗，于是儿童变成了犯罪团伙的主力。

2008年，安普雷斯的一批武装分子用枪威胁比亚乔离开他的房子，他们想控制这片街区，而比亚乔又不愿搬走。直到2012年他在回来，那时候控制这里的是乌拉贝诺，原先那帮坏蛋已经被赶走。他说，新来的黑帮也不是好人，但是不管怎么样他可以回到家里。“我们不敢和他们对着干，要不然就有生命危险。所以如果你想保护自己的孩子，你得想别的办法。”

于是在那一年，他站出来帮助这个社区。在政府勉强给予支持的条件下，他建立了一个安全的场所，孩子们可以在那里读书、演奏音乐。这个叫做“社区行动组织”的非政府组织在一个水泥建筑物里，窗户上安装了铁条。他自己的两个孩子和另外两个男孩、一个女孩，经常到那里去。这个地方远远算不上是个托儿所或者类似的机构，但它能让孩子们感觉到，除了家，还有其它地方能让他们有些许的安全感。犯罪团伙或许也会对这里网开一面。





杰林——吉坦尼斯塔斯的小头目和杀手——是一个不幸的孩子，他早早落入了黑帮的手中。2003年他13岁时，有一天，他和家人正在吃鸡肉米饭的晚餐，两个乌拉贝诺的黑板分子闯进来，当着他的面枪杀了他的父母。之后，身为黑帮分子的表兄隆吉开始教杰林如何使用大砍刀，之后是手枪。最终他交给杰林一些“手艺”，包括如何正确地肢解一个人。

杰林说，他在那时第一次参与谋杀。受害者是一个女人，好像是做了什么错事，杰林一直也不知道她的罪名到底是什么。跟着两个年龄比较大的男人，杰林和其他几个孩子用柴刀把她砍死。“然后我们把她碎尸，丢到大海里。回家后我表现得一切正常。”

杰林的目光空洞而又冷酷，他对于死者毫无悔意，但他承认自己常常想起死去的家人。“我对家人的死去感到难过，但是他们已经死了，也没什么可想的。”他说他现在做的一切都是为了家人，“这就是我的工作”。杰林说他总共杀过8个人，大部分都被他肢解，有些尸体被焚烧，剩下的丢入大海。“我接到杀人的命令，就去完成任务。”



从多个角度来说，布韦那文图拉已经没有了退路，从一个用警察管理治安的城市，变成了一个需要准军事武装来避免当地彻底陷入无政府状态的地区。这个充满暴力的海边住宅区集中了大量的防暴警察，每个人都配备自动机枪、手枪和全套装备，让他们看起来不像警察，更像是士兵。每一条街道都至少有一到两名警察。

哥伦比亚官方宣称，布韦那文图拉的暴力局势已经得到遏制。10月底，总统桑托斯再次来到布韦那文图拉，他说自从“让我们走向安全”项目实施的第一个星期里，哥伦比亚11个大城市——也包括布韦那文图拉——的犯罪数量下降了25％。总统的网站上显示，7个贩毒团伙和十几个武装抢劫组织已经被消灭。

我在9月份来到当地，地方警察武装总指挥何塞•米格尔•科雷亚上校说，布韦那文图拉的局势已经发生了转变。他坐在办公室里，拿出一张数据表格指给我看——2014年逮捕了262名乌拉贝诺和安普雷斯成员，包括26名头目；没收177件武器；查获2732公斤毒品。这些成果部分来源于桑托斯的“让我们走向安全”项目，和布韦那文图拉在哥伦比亚国家经济中的重要地位。他说：“地理位置、和平进程、经济增长，这些因素都非常重要。这里的确很混乱，但是警方已经开始反击，黑帮的势力在一天天减弱。”

9月初，哥伦比亚国家警署和美国禁毒署在巴拿马的一次突袭行动中逮捕了安普雷斯的两名头目。埃德加和艾维尔•布斯塔曼特被指控在布韦那文图拉从事大规模的毒品走私和洗钱行为。科雷亚说：“警方在这里的行动取得了很好的效果，犯罪数量在下降，黑帮不见了踪影。”





但是布韦那文图拉的很多人都质疑这样的说法，他们认为警方与黑帮串通，从贩毒和贸易活动中渔利。甚至负责起诉犯罪分子的检察长都对与他们合作的警方的敬业和忠诚度表示怀疑。

当我在寻找与杰林的谋杀行为有关的证据时，检察长办公室的一位高官表示愿意与我合作，但前提是不能透露他的姓名。他在桌子上的一堆蓝色和褐色的文件夹中翻来翻去，找到02417号档案，内容是关于圣佩德罗一个被杀害的屠夫。那是一片低矮的棚屋和小巷组成的街区，渔民当街售卖海产品。看起来像是杰林描述的案件。

这位官员看着档案，皱起了眉头：“这里并没有说他为什么被逮捕，我有点担心。”谋杀和逮捕这两起事件，在档案中并没有找到两者的关联。他觉得，档案中的每日摘要只不过表达出当局的无能和腐败，就像他们在这里打击犯罪网络时采取的姿态。即使有一个运作良好、职业素养很高的警察部队，再加上一个人员充足的检察长办公室，也无法应对布韦那文图拉多如牛毛的暴力事件。

这位官员告诉我，从7月份到9月份，他已经处理了19起谋杀事件。他指着身后的三个大纸板箱说，这里还有更多等待处理的案件——大约有90个。很多受害者都是无辜的商人遭到暴力勒索，而且这里还没有包括其它类型的犯罪，比如绑架、失踪，这都是经常会发生的事件。

他说：“每天都有黑帮分子被逮捕，但局势还是那个样子。抓起来一个，街上还会出现另一个。”他认为，这座城市真正需要的是对基础设施、教育和医疗的大规模投入。维持和平当然是件好事，但是如果这些深层次的问题没有得到有效解决，“暴力不会停止——积怨太深了”。



鲁伊斯神父告诉我，哥伦比亚政府在布韦那文图拉长期以来没有存在感，“人们基本上生活在一个无政府的环境中”。这种情况下，数千名受过训练的士兵、游击队战士和政府军暴徒在这里寻找工作、食物，或者仅仅是生存下去的方法，自然会产生混乱。

一天晚上，我遇到了一位前政府军士兵，他经历了遣散的过程，他要求保持匿名。他来自一个叫做皮塔尔的农村地区，在2001年被招募进入一个臭名昭著的政府军组织“布洛克卡利马”。他没有受过教育，不识字，政府军组织给他一个月70万比索（大约350美元）的报仇。那一年的4月，他参与了一次沿河岸的电锯大屠杀行动，那条河从山上流往布韦那文图拉。几个星期之后，组织领导人让他去杀一个朋友，那个人或许违犯了步枪管理的规定。他意识到，对那些头目来说，“武器比人命更值钱”。

由于心怀恐惧以及心理上的强烈逆反，他申请政府的遣散项目。尽管从政府那里得到了一些补贴，但是没有任何的职业培训和教育机会。最终，钱花光了。

他不能回到河流沿岸的家乡，因为那里的人都投靠了哥伦比亚革命武装力量，他与政府军之间的关系等于前去赴死。于是他在布韦那文图拉勉强度日，直到另一个控制这座城市的黑帮向他伸出了橄榄枝。

他说：“我这辈子再也不愿意去接触武器，但是我不知道武器是否会来接触我。”换句话说，没有生活的希望和政府的支持，他发现唯一生存下去的机会就是参与犯罪。

他说：“我一无所知，不知道自己未来的生活应该是怎样的，我与社区之间的关系彻底断绝。我只想让政府遵守我们曾经签订过的承诺。”

布韦那文图拉的海岸边有一片街区，叫做哥伦，和周边的地区一样，这里只不过是一小片低矮的棚屋。几个前哥伦比亚革命武装力量的叛军占领了一条小路尽头的几所房子，附近住着几个乌拉贝诺的成员，这些人在最近几年占领了这片街区。在这片被遗忘的城市里，游击队战争似乎是一个遥远的回忆，但是暴力威胁的阴影一直笼罩在身边。

虽然我知道布韦那文图拉的居民在这里长期遭遇暴力事件，但是在这里做报道的第一个星期，我没有看到任何流血事件。直到一天下午，天还没有黑，哥伦的街道上挤满了人。听到第一声枪响之后，我钻入一辆汽车。人群尖叫、呼喊着跑向水边。在人群中，我看到一个魁梧的男人抓着一个女人的头发，在街道上拖行，两个人都在高喊。那个男人手里拿着一支手枪，指向那个女人。

几分钟之后，我听到了至少四声枪响。

街道上空无一人，除了几个看热闹的人。距离我大约50英尺的地方，一个女人躺在一辆黑色起亚轿车旁边。那是42岁的母亲，名叫尤兰达•索科罗•格雷罗，这是布韦那文图拉在今年第16个被谋杀的人。她经营一个贩卖红糖的小生意，据目击者和警方说，她来到哥伦是为了与一位客户见面。后来得知，她或许拒绝向当地黑帮支付贿赂，给自己招致了杀身之祸。

警方几乎没有获得任何有意义的证词，因为说的太多会有危险。杀手骑上一辆摩托车，跟随一辆贴有深色玻璃膜的汽车消失了。尤兰达的身下有一大滩血，她后背上的弹孔还在冒着烟，说明最后一颗子弹是近距离的射击。这是2014年的最后一起谋杀事件。





原文：

While ongoing peace talks may
 finally put an end to Colombia’s guerrilla
 fighting, it remains to be seen what
 will happen to Buenaventura, the urban
 monster the war created.

BUENAVENTURA, COLOMBIA — ONE DAY IN THE MIDDLE OF AUGUST, A GAUNT 20-YEAR-OLD WHO GOES BY THE NAME OF JEILIN APPROACHED A MIDDLE-AGED MAN AND SHOT HIM SEVERAL TIMES IN THE CHEST WITH A PISTOL, KILLING HIM. THE VICTIM WAS A CARNICERO, A BUTCHER, WHO WORKED IN THE SAN PEDRO NEIGHBORHOOD OF BUENAVENTURA, A SPRAWLING, RAIN-SOAKED PORT CITY ON COLOMBIA’S PACIFIC COAST. THE BUTCHER’S OFFENSE WAS SIMPLE ENOUGH, JEILIN EXPLAINED: HE REFUSED TO PAY THE TWO MONTHS’ WORTH OF EXTORTION MONEY, ABOUT 400,000 PESOS (OR ROUGHLY $200), TO THE GANGS WHO CONTROL THE CITY’S STREETS. WHAT’S MORE, JEILIN SAID, THE BUTCHER HAD THREATENED TO CALL THE POLICE.

“I shot him with a 9 millimeter,” he said, “four times, to be sure he was dead.”

Jeilin and I met in a hotel room not far from his home turf, a quadrant of streets in a waterfront neighborhood called Santa Monica, where rickety wooden shacks on stilts jut out precariously over the brackish water of the bay. Wearing a black wool beanie, a T-shirt, blue jeans, and a pair of green Nike sandals, Jeilin was unassuming, but he explained that he was a primero—a kind of block leader for his gang, known as the Gaitanistas. Along with the Urabeños and La Empresa, Jeilin’s gang is one of three main armed groups that control large parts of Buenaventura’s waterfront through a combination of extortion, murder, kidnappings, and threats. For now, the Gaitanistas are the weakest of the gangs, but Jeilin said that his bosses have ordered him to keep fighting until the group controls the city completely. “That’s the mission we have,” he explained, “to keep our territory and to expand it.” Was he ever afraid? He shook his head: “I’m not scared. When it’s time to die, it’s time to die.”

Buenaventura is often described as Colombia’s most violent city. Its homicide rate is 56 percent higher than the national average, and nine times that of New York City. An expansive port system has turned the city into the gateway for roughly 60 percent of Colombia’s imports and exports, but very little of the profits have trickled down to residents. In 2013, some 15 million tons of legal goods, along with untold quantities of illicit drugs and weapons, passed through Buenaventura. The mix of high-end development prospects, a strategic international port with easy access to Asia, Europe, and North America, and the city’s poverty—roughly 80 percent of the population is considered poor—has helped make Buenaventura a battleground for all sorts of competing interests, legitimate and criminal alike. Often called bacrim, for bandas criminales (criminal bands), Jeilin’s group and others like it fight each other over drug-trafficking routes, but also for control of valuable waterfront property, which large companies are, in turn, eyeing for high-end development.

For decades, the Colombian government paid scant attention to the stretch of Pacific coastline where Buenaventura sits. With the exception of the port, the state largely abandoned these areas, leaving Buenaventura and its residents—mostly Afro-Colombian descendants of slaves—isolated and impoverished. Geographically separated from the rest of Colombia by the Andes Mountains, the city is a signature of government indifference
and continues to lack the necessary infrastructure that could connect Buenaventura with the rest of the country.

In 2012, Colombia joined the Pacific Alliance, a trading bloc that includes Mexico, Peru, and Chile, whose principle aim is to aggressively pursue economic ties with Asia, in particular China. But when government officials presented Buenaventura as a location for a Pacific Alliance summit the following year—a Pacific gateway to South America, the city had the region’s largest port and could establish Colombia as a key player in the Pacific Alliance, the thinking went—the idea was shot down because the city was far too dangerous. The summit was ultimately held hundreds of miles away on the Caribbean, serving as a wake-up call for those intent on moving the country into the next century. Since then, President Juan Manuel Santos has worked with city officials to improve Buenaventura’s image by developing an aggressive plan to promote tourism and downtown development that includes a multimillion-dollar waterfront esplanade and luxury hotels. But the state of affairs in this city have made such an about-face nearly impossible.

Colombia faces serious obstacles as it struggles to put 50 years of conflict behind it, and economic renewal is just part of Santos’s plan to emerge intact from the guerrilla war that has pitted successive administrations against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (known by its Spanish acronym of FARC). Peace talks, which began in October 2012 and now continue in Havana, Cuba, could potentially put an end to Latin America’s longest-running conflict. But the problem is that, while the government is making progress on negotiations with the FARC, there are consequences of the war—seen most extremely in Buenaventura—that aren’t likely to be healed by the peace process. Years of fighting, combined with a largely absentee government, have turned Buenaventura into a kind of feral place in which Jeilin and the other members of the bacrim—descendants of paramilitary groups that once fought the FARC—operate with impunity.

Unless Santos’s government can deliver, quickly, on promises to tend to the consequences wrought by years of neglect, Buenaventura is only likely to become more violent, with or without a national peace agreement. And that could be disastrous for Colombia’s long-term vision for its future.

MORE THAN 220,000 PEOPLE HAVE DIED IN COLOMBIA’S WAR, THOUSANDS MORE HAVE BEEN WOUNDED, AND SOME 6 MILLION HAVE BEEN INTERNALLY DISPLACED. All told, around 6.7 million people are considered victims of the conflict. The government and the FARC first tried in 1984 to engage in peace talks and have continued to try, in vain, ever since. That year, the Colombian government promised widespread changes, including agrarian reform, increased political participation, and a reconciliation process. But when these reforms failed to materialize and the commission that the government had established turned out to be ineffectual, the talks quickly broke down, and the FARC ramped up its campaign of attacks and ambushes.

Within a few years, the conflict became even more volatile. Landowners and small-business owners, outraged by the continued campaign of kidnappings and extortion, began backing right-wing paramilitary groups in Buenaventura, often with the tacit knowledge of the Colombian National Army and government. The most prominent of these paramilitary groups, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), employed many of the same tactics of the FARC—assassinations, kidnappings, and massacres, often of civilians—in their bid to beat back the rebels. By this point, however, the FARC was actively engaged in large-scale drug trafficking to help fund its operations, increasing the nebulous ties among organized crime, terror, and economic survival.

In 2003, Colombia, under then-President Álvaro Uribe, undertook a massive campaign to “demobilize” some 32,000 paramilitary fighters who had joined the war, often at the behest of small-business owners who were more vulnerable to extortion campaigns by the FARC. As part of the campaign, the government also signed a peace deal with the AUC and offered fighters reduced prison sentences in exchange for laying down their arms. But the government didn’t provide job training or education programs to many of these ex-paramilitary fighters. Consequently, they began drifting back into drug smuggling and criminality, and, as such, the bacrim was born—a network that overwhelmingly consisted of people who had been caught up in the war, on both sides. On the streets, the bacrim members applied the same zeal to their lawless endeavors as they had as soldiers. Some former FARC members trafficked drugs, for instance, using the very networks that had helped them fund the war. And Buenaventura, with its open ocean access and general lack of rule of law, proved more than fertile ground for the bacrim to prosper.

If there was any hope for ex-combatants to trust the government’s promises, that was squashed in 2006, when the government—which had promised former fighters protection from extradition during the demobilization process— began sending some of them north to the United States to face drug-trafficking charges. Supporters of the paramilitaries thought the government had betrayed its promise to protect them, while relatives of those whom the paramilitaries had killed lost hope they would ever learn what happened to their loved ones.

Today, President Santos is so committed to the peace process that he pegged his narrow re-election campaign to it, and recently he has had to push hard for patience and tolerance with a public that has grown wary of both the rebels and government rhetoric. The meetings in Havana have been plagued by setbacks, threats by both sides to walk away, and continued attacks and counterattacks as the FARC and government leaders jockey for position and leverage. (Other rebel groups are not part of the talks, and the government recently announced separate negotiations with the National Liberation Army, or ELN.)

But there also have been scenes of hope. In late August, Gen. Javier Flórez, the Colombian military’s second-highest officer, met with senior FARC officials in person—the first time a serving general in Colombia has agreed to such an intimate and public encounter with sworn enemies. One of the FARC’s top negotiators, Iván Márquez, said the meetings were a chance to talk “warrior to warrior.” The meeting signaled that the two sides had opened discussions about the decommissioning of weapons and had moved one step closer to a final agreement.

But for all the optimism the peace talks have generated in Cuba—and, to a lesser extent, Colombia—for the residents of Buenaventura, the talks might as well be happening on another planet. When Santos visited the city this past April, he vowed to develop job-training programs for young people, as well as increased credit lines for small businesses. The FARC responded by exploding a makeshift bomb at Buenaventura’s central electrical tower, leaving the city dark for days. “Control of Buenaventura means control of the national economy of Colombia,” said Víctor Vidal, a local council member and outspoken critic of government inaction in Buenaventura. “And as long as the ships keep coming and going and the port is working, no one cares about the deaths in these neighborhoods. No one cares.”

That is to say, for those in Buenaventura, the neighborhood is the new battlefield.

In March, Human Rights Watch published a damning report documenting widespread human rights abuses in the city, including scores of murders, dismemberments, and disappearances. One of the more disturbing revelations was the existence of several casas de pique, or chop houses, where gangs torture their victims by cutting them to pieces—sometimes while the victims are still alive. They then throw the body parts into the ocean.

This spring, residents of Puente Nayero, a small sub-neighborhood that juts out into the bay, found themselves sandwiched between two warring bacrim groups, the Urabeños and La Empresa. At the end of one long street was a chop house. “They were killing people in front of kids; they were taking houses,” said resident William Mina. “The community was scared.” The 19-year-old remembers gangsters pulling people down the street and into the wooden shed. He remembers the screams.

Faced with daily death threats and terrorized by the violence, a group of leaders had little choice but to organize themselves into a neighborhood watch and self-defense coalition to confront the tyranny of the gangs. With the help of the police and the Inter-Ecclesiastical Commission of Justice and Peace, part of the World Council of Churches, an NGO that places volunteers in violent communities as “witnesses,” they walled off overnight the entrance to their street with wooden barriers and declared Puente Nayero a violence-free “humanitarian zone”; one of their first acts was to tear down the chop house. Today, some 290 families live inside, yet the gangs—desperate to expand their territory—continue to threaten the residents.

A humanitarian zone existing on a single street anywhere seems improbable—and it is. But for all its fragility, the zone does provide a necessary sanctuary for a beleaguered population. Near the entrance to the humanitarian zone, residents turned the wall of a house into a public mural with a hand-painted charter: #1 We will never use any kind of violence; #5 We will protect each other inside the humanitarian space; #6 We will take turns guarding the doors.

Nevertheless, when local children argue with each other, they resort to a language they know works. Te voy a picar, they say: I’m going to cut you up. “It’s easy to get the paramilitaries out,” said 22-year-old Fleiner Angulo. “But it’s hard to get the violence out of your head.”

FEW NEIGHBORHOODS IN BUENAVENTURA HAVEN’T BEEN AFFECTED BY VIOLENCE, AND SOME HAVE BEEN EMPTIED COMPLETELY AS RESIDENTS SUCCUMB TO PRESSURE AND FLEE. According to Human Rights Watch, some 56,000 people were displaced in and around the city from 2010 through 2013, more than in any other municipality in Colombia. Many of these were children who became prey for gangs that are constantly on the lookout for new recruits. Although there are no official tallies of how many kids have been conscripted, Father Adriel Ruiz, who runs a parish and community center in a particularly rough neighborhood called barrio Lleras, estimates that as many as 4,000 children have been swept into the bacrim in recent years.

Julio César Biojó has seen a generation of children disappear into this underworld in the Palo Seco neighborhood, a jumble of half-finished wooden huts, open sewage canals, and rocky, trash-strewn dirt lanes.

A native of Buenaventura, Biojó says the bacrim first appeared in his neighborhood in 2005 and immediately held a community meeting in a nearby school. They were there to protect the neighborhood, they told the residents. Over time, however, the newcomers began recruiting children and teaching them how to fight—and the children have since become the lifeblood of the bacrim.

In 2008, a group of armed men from La Empresa forced Biojó out of his home at gunpoint; they wanted to control the neighborhood, and he had refused to budge from his lot. He only returned in 2012, when control of the neighborhood had passed to the Urabeños and his former tormentors had been driven out. The new gang, he explained, wasn’t necessarily a safer option, but, for the time being, the men who had threatened his family were gone. “We can’t go against any of them or else we face assassination,” he said. “So if you want to save your children, you have to find some other way to do it.”

That year, he set out to help the community. With some meager government assistance, he created a safe haven where kids can read and play music. The NGO, called the Junta de Acción Comunal (Community Action Group), is run out of a cement building with bars on the windows. His own children, two boys and a girl, are frequent visitors. It’s a far cry from a high-end day care or anything even resembling one, but it provides kids with a sense that there is at least one place outside their homes where they can feel a modicum of safety and where the bacrim might leave them alone.

Jeilin, the primero and assassin for the Gaitanistas, was one of the unlucky ones—a child who fell into the gangs early on. He was 13 years old in 2007, when two men from the Urabeños broke into his home while his family was eating a dinner of chicken and rice and shot both of his parents in the face as he watched. That year, Jeilin’s cousin Longi, himself a gang member, taught Jeilin how to use a machete, then a gun, and finally schooled Jeilin on “technical things,” such as how to dismember people properly.

Around that time, Jeilin said, he first participated in a murder. The victim was a woman who had transgressed somehow—it was never clear to Jeilin exactly what her crime was. Led by an older man, Jeilin and the other kids helped hack her to death with machetes. “Then we cut her up and put her in the ocean, and I went home,” Jeilin said. “I went back to normal.”

Jeilin’s gaze is vacant and cold, and he expresses no remorse for his victims, though he did concede that thinking too much about his parents is difficult. “I feel sad for my family, but they already killed them. There’s nothing to think,” he said, explaining that what he does now is for them, “and it’s also part of my job.” In total, Jeilin said, he has killed eight people. Many of them he dismembered “finger by finger” afterward. Some of them he burned. Most wound up in the ocean. “If I get an order to kill,” he said, “that’s it.”

IN MANY RESPECTS, BUENAVENTURA HAS ALREADY CROSSED A RUBICON OF SORTS, from being a city where police can be effective to one where a quasi-military occupation is required just to prevent complete anarchy. The violent waterfront neighborhoods in particular are swarming with police officers, all of whom are equipped with automatic assault rifles, pistols, and fatigues that make them look much more like soldiers than police. Virtually every corner of these neighborhoods is manned by at least one officer, often two.

Colombian officialdom insists that violence has been decreasing in Buenaventura. In late October, President Santos visited Buenaventura again and claimed that a security plan called Vamos Seguros (Let’s Go Safely) had led to a 25 percent reduction in crime in Colombia’s 11 biggest cities, including Buenaventura, within the first week of implementation. According to the president’s website, seven drug-trafficking rings and more than a dozen armed-robbery outfits had been shut down.

When I visited in September, Col. José Miguel Correa, the commander of the local police force, similarly claimed that progress was already underway in Buenaventura. Sitting back in his chair, he pulled out a data sheet and began ticking off numbers—262 arrests of Urabeños and La Empresa members in 2014, including 26 leaders of both groups; 177 firearms confiscated; 2,732 kilos of drugs
impounded—and said the progress was partly a result of increased pressure from Santos’s Let’s Go Safely plan and Buenaventura’s strategic importance in Colombia’s national narrative. “The geographic location, the peace process, our economic growth—all of these things are very important here,” he said. “It was terrible here, but the police have started
to attack back, and that has weakened
the gangs.”

In early September, Colombian National Police and U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration operatives nabbed two leaders of La Empresa during a raid in Panama. Édgar and Ever Bustamante were believed to be responsible for large-scale drug- and money-smuggling operations in Buenaventura. “The police here are making spectacular progress,” Correa said. “Criminal activity is going down, and it’s limited to the gangs.”

But many people in Buenaventura question this claim, maintaining that the police are complicit with the gangsters, actively working with them to keep revenues from the drug trade flowing. Even the district attorneys responsible for bringing criminals to justice express skepticism about the loyalty and diligence of the police with whom they work.

When I was searching for evidence of Jeilin’s murderous exploits, a highly placed official at the district attorney’s office agreed to speak with me on the condition that I not use his name. Rifling through a stack of blue and tan folders piled on his desk, he pulled file number 02417, which belonged to a butcher who was killed in the San Pedro neighborhood, a warren of alleys, shacks, and canneries where fishermen sell their daily catches. That sounded like the crime Jeilin had described.

The official looked at the file and frowned. “It doesn’t say why he was picked up, and that worries me,” he said. There was a killing and an arrest, but the paperwork shed no light on whether they were connected. The stories he came across in his docket every day said as much about the authorities’ incompetence and corruption as they did about the criminal networks operating in the city, he believes. Even with a functioning, ethical police force and a fully staffed prosecutor’s office, he said, the violence in Buenaventura would still be overwhelming.

The official told me that he had reviewed 19 murder cases between July and September, and he pointed behind him to three large cardboard boxes filled with more pending cases—about 90 in total. Many of the victims were innocent merchants caught up in the violent politics of extortion, he said. But this caseload doesn’t even take into account a portion of the other types of crimes, he said, such as kidnappings and disappearances, that are also routine occurrences.

“There’s a capture of a gangster every day here, but it doesn’t make a difference,” he said. “You get captured, and there’s always someone to replace you.” What the city really needs, he added, is massive investment in infrastructure, education, and health. The peace process is a good thing, he said, but until these other, deeper problems are addressed, “the violence won’t stop—there’s too much misery.”

THE COLOMBIAN STATE HAS BEEN ABSENT FOR SO LONG IN BUENAVENTURA, FATHER RUIZ TOLD ME, that “the people have started living in a kind of anarchy.” In that kind of environment, the prospect of thousands of trained soldiers, guerrilla fighters, and paramilitary thugs wandering around looking for work, or food, or simply a means to survive, is a sobering one.

One evening I met with a former paramilitary soldier who had gone through the demobilization program; he requested anonymity. Originally from a rural area called Pital, he was recruited in 2001 into the Bloque Calima, a notorious paramilitary organization. He was uneducated and illiterate, and the paramilitary group offered him 700,000 pesos a month (about $350). That same year, in April, he was involved in an infamous chainsaw massacre along the banks of a river, which flows down from the mountains toward Buenaventura. A few weeks later, the group’s leader forced him to kill a friend, apparently for a minor infraction involving a rifle. For some commanders, he realized, “the weapon was worth more than the man.”

Scared and emotionally overwhelmed, the soldier entered the demobilization program. And though he received modest payments from the government, he didn’t receive any job training or education. Eventually, the money ran out.

He can’t return to his ancestral village along the river because too many people who sympathize with the FARC are still there, and his affiliation with the paramilitary groups would be a death sentence. So he’s scraping by in Buenaventura as yet another possible recruit for the gangs who control the city.

“I never want to touch another weapon in my life,” he said. “But what I don’t know is if the weapons are going to touch me.” In other words, with no prospects and no further support from the government, he may find that his only means of survival involve crime.

“I went in ignorant, without thinking about my life and the future, and my ties to the community are broken,” the ex-paramilitary soldier said. “I just want the government to help me keep the promise we both signed.”

On Buenaventura’s waterfront sits the neighborhood of Colón, which, like the others, is little more than an assemblage of shanties. Several former FARC rebels occupy one set of houses at the end of a dirt road. Nearby are several known members of the Urabeños, who in recent years have taken control of the neighborhood. Here, in this forgotten corner of the city, the guerrilla war seems like a distant memory, but the threat of violence to everyone remains stark.

Although I understood the toll that violence is taking on Buenaventura’s residents, in the first week of my reporting I hadn’t seen any bloodshed myself. That all changed one late afternoon, when it was still bright outside and the streets of Colón were filled with people. I was getting into a car when a shot rang into the air. A crowd, screaming and crying, ran away from the noise and toward the water. In their midst, a large man held a woman by her hair and dragged her across the street; both of them were shouting. The man carried a pistol and pointed it at the woman’s head.

Moments later, at least four more shots rang out.

The street mostly emptied except for a small number of spectators. About 50 feet away from me, lying by the side of a black Kia sedan, was the woman, a 42-year-old wife and mother of two named Yolanda del Socorro Guerrero, the 16th woman murdered in Buenaventura this year. She ran a small business selling panela, or brown cane sugar, and according to witnesses and police, she had come to Colón to meet a customer. It emerged later that she had probably refused to pay the requisite bribe to the local gang, in this case the Urabeños, and for that she was murdered.

None of the residents told the police they saw anything; saying too much was dangerous. Meanwhile, Yolanda’s killer disappeared on the back of a motorcycle, trailed by a small car with black tinted windows. Around Yolanda’s head was a large pool of blood and, on her back, a large smoke burn, indicating that the last bullet was fired at short range, when she was already down, the latest assassination of 2014.

易八泰

阿弥陀佛！

传说中的天堂，与地狱只有一墙之隔