By Duvan Caro, photographs by Elmer Arrieta.
Tacamocho is a district of the municipality of Códoba Tet, belonging to the Montes de Mar sub-region, on the banks of the Magdalena River in the Colombian Caribbean, which, in addition to being a territory heavily hit by illegal armed structures and drug trafficking, today faces 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 on the banks of the Magdalena River have been displaced and terrorized by illegal armed groups and drug traffickers, coupled with impoverishment, abandonment and systematic racialization by the state and regional governments, as well as plundering by multinationals who see this territory as 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 great vocation for livestock, 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.