‘Stigmatized, segregated, forgotten’: Colombia’s poor being evicted despite lockdowns

Don Pacho has been running from the rival factions of Colombia’s civil war his whole life. Now, he’s running from the police, as authorities in the country’s capital push on with a wave of evictions despite a strict coronavirus lockdown.

Hundreds of Bogotá’s poorest residents are caught between two brutal forces: a nationwide quarantine that makes working impossible and authorities forcing people from homes they say were unlawfully built.

“In the middle of a pandemic the authorities are breaking all protocols without a care for how it affects us,” Don Pacho said, as a pack of his 15 dogs barked around his partially destroyed home overlooking Colombia’s capital. “They’ve got us stigmatized, segregated and forgotten.”

Ciudad Bolívar, a sprawling hilltop shantytown on the southern flank of Bogotá, has been Don Pacho’s home for 23 years. Many of the neighbourhood’s million residents have also been displaced by Colombia’s civil war, which killed over 260,000 and forced 7 million from their homes over five decades of bitter fighting. Others have fled economic collapse in neighbouring Venezuela.

Today, with the coronavirus raging and strict lockdowns difficult to enforce in poor neighbourhoods, residents of Ciudad Bolívar are struggling to make ends meet, keep roofs overhead and feed their children.

“On top of all the hardships that people in Ciudad Bolívar have to face,” said Sergio Guzmán, director of Colombia Risk Analysis. “They can now add police brutality and a lack of a safety net during a pandemic.”

In Altos de la Estancia, a hilltop shantytown within Ciudad Bolívar, residents like Don Pacho are being evicted during police raids. In early May, authorities said his rustic home was illegally built on titled land and pressured him to leave. Police destroyed part of his home, until he made his way to the roof and remained there, protesting against the eviction.

“There’s about 30% of my house left,” said Don Pacho. “Everything the government tells us here is a lie.”

Residents of Ciudad Bolívar and other rundown neighbourhoods have started hanging red rags outside their houses, a sign that the city’s strict lockdown is leaving its poorest residents in need.

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When the lockdown started in late March, Colombia had reported a few dozen cases of Covid-19. Today it has over 24,000, including 800 deaths, with 470 cases confirmed in Ciudad Bolívar. Locals say the numbers must be higher, and accuse the authorities of ignoring the plight of poorer victims.

“How would we know when they won’t send an ambulance when we call?” said Tatiana Hernández, a community leader in Ciudad Bolívar. “They say it’s too far away. They won’t come and check out people when they get symptoms.”

The pandemic is also hitting the pockets of the country’s most vulnerable. Nearly 60% of Colombia’s economy is informal, with workers paid cash in hand and usually living day to day.

Public services seldom reach the peaks of the hills, where homes are precariously and quickly built on untitled land.

“When an entire neighbourhood has been abandoned, there isn’t much faith that the government will do anything,” Hernández said.

The government promised food and economic relief to 3 million impoverished families in early April, though residents in Ciudad Bolívar say little has been forthcoming. On Sunday, city officials promised those who had been evicted that they would receive 250,000 COP ($67) for three months, but locals are not holding their breath.

“People aren’t going to wait and watch their children starve to death,” said Wilder Téllez, a teacher in the neighbourhood. “We need help now.”

Bogotá’s progressive mayor, Claudia López, who has received plaudits for her frank and empathetic response to the pandemic, announced on Thursday that the lockdown would be extended for another two weeks, even as other parts of the country start to lift their quarantine measures.

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“Lifting the quarantine means death and disease, we know that and we don’t want that,” Téllez went on to say. “But we need a quarantine with dignity, with food and a roof over our heads.”

Meanwhile residents and observers in the city’s poorest neighbourhoods continue to note the difference between López’s lofty rhetoric and the grim reality on the ground.

Samuel Eduardo Rodríguez, 66, is attempting to put his life back together after authorities tore apart his home, claiming it was part of an illegal settlement. “At no point did they explain what was happening or why. They came in with their guns and we put our hands up,” he said.

“We’re cast aside, waiting for a solution that won’t come.”