Colombian City’s New Face and Violent Underbelly Collide
Colombian City’s New Face and Violent Underbelly Collide
By WILLIAM NEUMANJULY 13, 2015
BUENAVENTURA, Colombia — This has been called one of South America’s most violent cities, infamous for its “chop-up houses,” where victims are murdered and dismembered, their bodies later found on the streets or washed up in the stilt-house slums that line the shores of the polluted bay.And yet, in recent weeks, workers were busily laying pink and gray flagstones for a pedestrian mall in front of a newly built hotel and condominium complex meant to attract the international executives who are investing billions of dollars to expand this city’s busy port.
People here often talk of the two Colombias. One is the country of a sophisticated elite, growing rich off international trade and jetting between Bogotá and other world capitals. The other is a country of crushing poverty and violence where lawlessness reigns.In this Pacific port city, these two Colombias come face to face with raw impact.
Buenaventura is the country’s main Pacific port and the centerpiece of a government strategy to focus on increasing trade with Asia and Western Hemisphere countries on the Pacific, including Chile, Mexico, Peru and the United States. At the same time, it is plagued by intractable poverty and violence, a place where vicious gangs hold sway, long isolated from the central government in Bogotá.
The violence here, with its visceral cruelty, has gotten much attention. Prosecutors said at least two of the chopped up corpses found last year showed signs that they had been dismembered while the victims were still alive. Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group based in New York, has published two recent reports denouncing conditions here.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/14/world/americas/colombian-citys-new-face-and-violent-underbelly-collide.html?_r=0