2023-07-08 18:18:00
The violence in the municipalities of Atlántico and the District of Barranquilla continues to generate anxiety and terror in the lives of good citizens who earn their daily bread.
Drug trafficking, extortion, massacres and homicides with high degrees of cruelty, with dismemberments, are shaking the department and especially the metropolitan area of Barranquilla.
The Ombudsman issued several weeks ago Early Warning 022-2023, where it presents an x-ray of the current violence.
Zero zone had access to this document, where you can find the neighborhoods at risk, the population groups affected, and the criminal groups that are present in the territories.
“Early Alert 037 of 2020, warned of the risk scenario for Barranquilla, Soledad, Galapa, Malambo and Puerto Colombia, in it, the presence of the Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia/’Clan del Golfo’ (AGC) and recently reconfigured groups such as ‘Los Nuevos Rastrojos’ and the ‘Nuevo Bloque Costeño’. Likewise, it identified the presence of regional and local organized crime groups such as ‘Los Costeños’ (also called ‘Los Nuevos Costeños’), the ‘Bloque Central Renacer’, ‘Los Papalopez’ and ‘Los Vega’“says the Ombudsman.
Precisely, ‘The Vegas’ They were the victims of the latest massacre perpetrated in the metropolitan area of Barranquilla. The fatalities were Ronald Ivan Vega Daza, Ray Vega Daza and Rafael Vega Cuello. The injured responds to the name of Roberto Carlos Vega Dazawho was shot in the leg.
The Ombudsman’s Office continued with its monitoring and identified that the risk scenario has become more complex, due to the emergence of other criminal structures in the metropolitan area of Barranquilla.
Mention the band ‘The Pepes’a new criminal structure that emerges at the end of 2021, presumably under the command of Worthy Palominoalias ‘The old’ o ‘Sebastián’confined in a prison in the interior of the country.
This gang, according to the Ombudsman and the authorities, was born from internal disputes between him and Jorge Eliecer Diaz Collazosalias ‘Castor’by command inside the structure ‘The Costeños’. The main behaviors attributed to ‘The Pepes‘ are homicides, forced displacement, extortion, micro-trafficking and drug dealing.
Then the Ombudsman mentions in the early warning ‘Los Rastrojos-Caleños’a structure that arose from the dispute that took place within the stubble during the period 2011 – 2012, which caused a division of these groups in two: ‘Coastal stubble’ y ‘Caleño Rastrojos’.
This dispute between these two factions left the ‘Coastal stubble’who consolidated their power, finally constituting themselves in so-called ‘The Costeños’.
Meanwhile, ‘Los Rastrojos-Caleños’ since that date, they had tried to return to the department of the Atlantic without any success; until, in 2021, they achieved alliances with other structures, which has allowed a realignment of the group in the metropolitan area of Barranquilla and other areas of the department.
“Among the main crimes that are attributable to them are: homicides, forced displacement, extortion, micro-trafficking and drug dealing”said the Ombudsman.
But the issue is more complex because there is already a presence and impact of transnational criminal structures.
“The District of Barranquilla, has historically been consolidated as a strategic site for economic, political, logistical agreements, drug trafficking, asset laundering and drug trafficking routes of Armed Groups of Organized Crime and other structures dedicated to transnational crime such as those dedicated to to drug trafficking and multicrime”expresses the Ombudsman in the early warning.
“In this order, in Early Warning 020 of 2018, the Ombudsman’s Office warned that in Barranquilla, meetings with transnational crime would be taking place in order to consolidate economic relations; at that time, the Alert made reference to the Sinaloa Cartel; However, according to the monitoring carried out by the Early Warning System, it was possible to identify that there are at least three more structures that would be present in the AMBQ”he added.
According to the Ombudsman, they are present to carry out businesses derived from drug trade to international markets; extortion, micro-trafficking, controlling micro-trafficking routes, hitmen, trafficking and sexual exploitation, would be some of the crimes that these multi-crime gangs would be committing.
One of those bands is ‘Aragua Train’, an organization that also hits Bogotá hard. This group that was born in Venezuela and expands to other Latin American countries, executes within its main criminal activities are extortion, human trafficking, drug trafficking, among others.
The second international organization mentioned is the Balkans poster, made up mostly of ex-servicemen from Serbia, Croatia and Montenegro. However, since 2020 it would be present in cities such as Barranquilla, Medellín, Santa Marta and Cartagena.
“Basically, their presence in Barranquilla is due to their interest in exporting the drug to European countries, where the income is much higher than in the United States, their actions that occur through emissaries in the territory who monitor the quality and completion of the process, and that the drug leaves the country in optimal conditions”the Ombudsman stated.
“Its main partners in Colombia would be the Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia -AGC, who supply the Balkans with drugs that are then exported to Europe through the ports of Barranquilla, Santa Marta, Cartagena and Buenaventura”he added.
The agency also mentions in the Early Alert the Sinaloa Cartel, already referenced since 2018, with a presence in our territory.
“Currently it is known that they would be controlling certain strategic corridors, especially close to the Magdalena River and the Caribbean Sea. Their main allies in the territory would be Los Costeños and the AGC”warns the Ombudsman.
He stated that the aforementioned criminal structures have imposed a series of violent mechanisms of social and territorial control that generate anxiety and terror in the population residing in the vast urban sectors under their influence.
The violent acts identified, according to Early Warning, are expressions of the territorial control strategy that seeks to guarantee the monopoly of the illegal economies of drug trafficking, extortion, human trafficking, among other illegal activities of the AMBQ.
“Taken as a whole, they constitute a worrying risk scenario for the exercise and guarantee of the fundamental rights of the civilian population that is exposed and vulnerable to the presence and violent actions of the Organized Armed Groups AGC, ‘Los Costeños’, ‘Los Costeños’, Nuevos Rastrojos’, ‘Los Rastrojos-Caleños’ and other organized crime groups in the neighborhoods and urban sectors of the municipalities that make up AMBQ”considered the Ombudsman.
According to the entity, the factors that make the Barranquilla metropolitan area attractive to criminal structures are related to the economic advantages that derive from its geographical and strategic location, since it constitutes a reference center for the Caribbean Region.
“It provides connectivity between the north and south of the region and from this, with the rest of the country. These advantages have been used by illegal armed groups to consolidate their actions at the regional level”indicated the Early Warning.
“In this way, Barranquilla has positioned itself as a place for consultation and strengthening, a strategic corridor, and a territory that facilitates logistical, military, political and strategic coordination supplies, including for the establishment of agreements with international criminal organizations. , such as the international drug cartels, from Sinaloa, Los Balcanes, El Tren de Aragua, among others”he added.
In addition, it warns that the economic development of the capital of the Atlantic, as well as the offer of goods and services that it possesses, is presented to these structures as an opportunity to strengthen their finances; because their interest is not only focused on the control of illegal and informal economies, but also because they have multiple possibilities for money laundering through investments in various businesses, apparently legal.
According to a report from the Attorney General’s Office, a network dedicated to money laundering is operating from Barranquilla; who used different companies from Barranquilla (Atlántico) to receive more than 100,000 million pesos from Turkey, China, the United States, Panama, Spain, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Hong Kong, which would correspond to advance transfers for exports that were never made.
The Ombudsman warns that the criminal actions of these groups especially affect: Formal and informal merchants, shopkeepers, human rights defenders, teachers, university students, members or leaders of social and community organizations, Community Action Boards, members or leaders of organizations of victims, representatives of the displaced population, trade unionists, population with diverse sexual orientation and gender identity, boys, girls, adolescents and young people, socially stigmatized population (people who carry out sexual activities in contexts of prostitution, illicit drug users, common criminals, among others).
Also to people in the reincorporation process, peace signatories, members of the Comunes political party, residents of housing projects of priority interest or free housing, migrant population in informal status, betting vendors, informal workers dedicated to pedicabs, motorcycle taxis, and motorcycles. ; ethnic communities (Afros, indigenous) Yukpa, Inga, Zenú, Kankuamo, Arhuaco and Palanquera communities, public service drivers, journalists, peasant population and land claimants.
The disputes between these criminal organizations for control of territories and drug and micro-trafficking routes have unleashed an increase in massacres in the metropolitan area of Barranquilla. There are 7 so far in 2023. Alarming!.
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