By Duvan Caro, photographs by Elmer Arrieta.
Tacamocho is a district of the municipality of Córdoba Tetón, belonging to the Montes de María subregion, on the banks of the Magdalena River in the Colombian Caribbean. In addition to being a territory severely hit by illegal armed structures and drug trafficking, it is now facing the consequences of climate change, which has forced entire towns to flee to save their lives and the few belongings they have.
Thus, the peoples along the Magdalena River have been displaced and terrorized by illegal armed groups and drug traffickers, coupled with the impoverishment, abandonment and systematic racialization by the state and regional governments, as well as the plundering by multinationals who see in this territory an opportunity to develop large agro-industrial and mining projects, through which large areas of wetlands are drained for the development of large projects, leaving local residents landless.
It should be noted that the Afro-peasant and fishing communities that live on the banks of the Magdalena River are productive territories with a strong livestock vocation, diversified food production and fishing potential that feed the different cities of the Colombian Caribbean and a large part of the national territory.
Regardless of the different situations of rights violations, the inhabitants of this territory have developed systems of resistance and collaborative work to deal with the floods that, since 2014, have become more frequent and have its inhabitants on high alert.
"SOS Tacamocho" is a volunteer group made up of people from the community who, through collaborative work and continuous community monitoring of the river level, prepare for possible floods and erosion that occur in different parts of the community of Tacamocho, while raising their voices to the relevant authorities.
Marys Acosta has lived her entire life in the community of Tacamocho. She lost her home three years ago due to the first wave of winter and the erosion of the river. She and other affected people make up the SOS Tacamocho community.
"This erosion started three years ago, but it had been there before. It has taken away three main streets in the town and also my house. We have relocated with our own resources. We have not had any help from the government, from anyone. But now the situation has worsened," he said.
Erosion and flooding, he says, have put the families of Tacamocho at imminent risk, since the municipal government and national authorities do not have the land available to relocate the entire community.
«We have the dilemma that if we stay here, we run the risk of erosion, and if we leave we will have to stay outdoors, in parks or in schools. Because we have nowhere to go, nowhere to settle. What we want is for the national government to pay attention to us, to remember Tacamocho, that it is not just for collecting votes.»
Together with several members of the SOS Tacamocho collective, we walked along part of the banks of the Magdalena River, while its turbulent waters were held back by small dams made of pieces of wood and sacks filled with earth, which have been built in recent days by the inhabitants of the community.
Erosion. Chronicle of a catastrophe foretold.
The Magdalena River bathes with its turbulent waters and its complex swamps vast plains that make the Caribbean Coast a productive and unrivaled area for its fauna and flora, which are integrated into large swampy areas, mangroves and mountains that extend throughout the region making it a great economic attraction for locals and foreigners.
Large-scale livestock farming projects have been established on the lands closest to the riverbank, and in recent years large farms have been developed for breeding buffalo, destroying the local vegetation. On the other hand, large extensions of monoculture timber plantations can be observed, separating the mountains from the swamps and the latter from the river, directly affecting the biological flow of the waters.
Zambrano, Bolívar, is a town that has seen its economic development on the waters of the Magdalena River, which as it passes through the municipality irrigates its lands for the production of subsistence crops ‒traditional food crops such as corn, rice, etc.‒, and small- and large-scale livestock farming.
In past decades, these same waters made it a strategic point for regional and national trade. But today, the river's waters are one of its greatest fears, due to the floods and erosion that destroy houses every year as it passes through the town.
Pabla Martínez Rodríguez, a resident of the municipality of Zambrano, has lost her peace of mind in recent years when she sees the river waters forcefully entering her house, which she is about to lose.
"I have been living on the Magdalena River for 20 years and today we are suffering from the flooding that the river has brought in recent days."
"We haven't received any visitors, much less any help from anyone, not even the government, nothing. We are alone. My house has been falling down since December, when the flooding started. If the flooding continues, we will have to go somewhere else."
In La Albarrada, one of the historic streets of the community of Zambrano that borders the riverbank, several meters of sacks, bags and plastic sacks filled with earth can be seen stacked and secured with pieces of wood. They are part of the artisanal construction of the dam that separates the water from the houses and with it they seek to avoid the massive displacement of approximately 11 thousand people who live in the urban area of the municipality.
"This started on June 24 due to heavy rains and since then we have organized ourselves to deal with the erosion that occurs in the street and other areas that are at risk due to the inclemency of climate change and high concentrations of rainwater. The town is suffering from seeing the gradual growth of the river."
These situations, Fabian Leiva Ospino explained to us, make the risk imminent for the population of the urban area of the municipality as well as for the peasant families, located in the surroundings of the town, who have begun to arrive displaced from their plots by the current flooding, causing an increase in the price of products in the family basket.
Fabian Leiva Ospino, a community leader, who volunteers in the Save Zambrano group, created during the emergency.
Most food crops have been lost due to the rising waters and the total flooding of fertile land, said Julio Humberto Ahumada, a farmer who has lost all his crops and belongings to the floods.
"Families who depend on growing cassava, beans and other products are suffering because of the flood. We have been left without work, without land and without a home because everything is full of water and we don't know when it will end," he said.
«Winter has just begun and we are already adrift and without solutions. The few cattle that our families own have to be taken out and brought to the shores by the village carts, running the risk of them getting lost. The other families that depend on fishing do not fish as before, since the waters are spread out everywhere and the fish hide in the bushes, making fishing more difficult.»
Relocation on paper
In 2017, a resident of the community of Tacamocho filed a class action on his own behalf against the municipality of Córdoba Tetón, the department of Bolívar, the Regional Autonomous Corporation of the Río Grande de la Magdalena ‒CORMAGDALENA‒ and the National General Risk and Disaster Unit ‒UNGRD‒ with file number 13001-23-33-000-2015-00052-02.
The same ruling would later be in their favor in the second instance, issued by the Council of State in 2019, in which the municipality of Córdoba Tetón, the department of Bolívar, CORMAGDALENA and UNGRD were urged to adopt the necessary measures and relocate the population living in the district of Tacamocho to a safe place, where they would not be threatened by coastal erosion, flooding or flooding caused by the Magdalena River.
Manuel Gamarra, a community leader and member of SOS Tacamocho, told us about the failure to comply with the Popular Action, while showing us the houses destroyed and abandoned due to the erosion caused by the river.
«We are experiencing one of the most serious situations in our town. The river is at its highest risk level since 2014, when the first houses in the community began to disappear due to erosion. People began to move and that is where our fear began, because the river runs headlong into the population and begins to compromise not only private property, but also human lives. We have had two losses here that have hurt us greatly.»
«We are currently threatened by erosion and flooding from the river. We have been building small artisanal dams in the community with the help of the mayor's office to contain the water. But we all know that this will not solve the problem.»
According to the SOS Tacamocho group, since the erosion and flooding began, approximately 366 families have been displaced. This is a town with more than three thousand inhabitants, Gamarra tells us, looking towards the river.
«We are currently seeking to enforce the ruling that Tacamocho must be relocated. We want the mayor's office to have that land available, to allocate the resources to be able to take the first step, because we know that without that there will be no relocation.»
The community of Tacamocho is repeatedly calling on the national and departmental governments and all the entities responsible for their relocation as they watch their houses collapse without being able to do anything.
The river could enter the village at any moment and sweep away their homes, or there could simply be massive erosion of the community and its surroundings. Fearing this could happen, several families are moving anywhere, without guarantees and without institutional support.
During our tour of the streets of Tacamocho, residents said that people are moving to unsafe places or even to places where pigs were once raised, without having minimum decent housing conditions.
The mayor's office has provided a tractor for all those who want to leave, and when the move is made effective they are given 400 thousand pesos to pay rent and groceries worth 80 thousand pesos per family, monthly.
"We have had water in our homes for more than 15 days. The only hope is that the river waters will recede, but what we see is that the water is rising and we are here without any place to go with our children. We are alone."
Idulis Arrieta, displaced from the community of Tacamocho due to erosion and heavy flooding in recent days.
In the municipalities of Córdoba Tetón and Zambrano, works included in the Territorial Differential Approach Development Plans ‒PDET‒ have been implemented for several months, as well as in the entire Montes de María subregion, which are a planning and management instrument of the National Government through the Territorial Renewal Agency ‒ART‒, to implement as a priority and with greater speed the sectoral plans and programs, within the framework of the Rural Reform achieved in point one of the peace agreement signed by the Colombian State and the extinct FARC-EP guerrillas in 2016.
Several community leaders affected by erosion and flooding are wondering what work is being done to address climate change in this area of national importance, which has been hit by violence and, for some time now, by flooding.
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