They warned him in 2018, 2019 and more recently on January 24 of this year: because of the dispute between different illegal armed groups, in Ituango, a municipality located in the northwestern part of Colombia, “the violence in their forms of action could intensify and increase the capacity for intimidation against the civilian population ”. The warning, contained in the last Early Warning by the Office of the Ombudsman to the Government of Iván Duque, exploded this weekend when 815 peasants feared to die in the midst of armed fighting and fled from the remote rural areas to the main square. from town.
In chivas, buses that are the transport of the countryside in Colombia, climbed their few objects and animals and fled to the town center where they spent the night in a school and in the coliseum of the population. The secretary of the Government of Antioquia, Luis Fernando Suárez, confirmed that the displacement is six lanes and that the regional government will be present to deliver “cleaning kits, shelter and food” for farmers who do not have enough blankets or mattresses. “We will be present in Ituango to address this serious problem of forced displacement. We want to generate the conditions so that these people can return quickly to their plots, ”he said.
But the reality is more complex. According to Óscar Zapata, spokesperson for the NGO Coordination Colombia, Europe, United States, the presence of FARC dissidents, which did not join the peace process, and of paramilitary groups called gaitanista self-defense groups (ACG), make the risk be permanent “Among the displaced there are children, very old adults and even 13 reincorporated members of the FARC who did bet on peace. A real will is required for an implementation of the peace agreements, a public policy to disarm those paramilitary structures. We do not see a government willingness to dismantle these war scenarios, ”says Zapata from the population.
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The Ombudsman's Office has confirmed the diagnosis in its many warnings. “By activating the so-called dissent of Front 36, the expansion of the AGC and the emergence and performance of Front 18 Román Ruiz - Cacique Coyará adds the general military strengthening of these illegal armed structures as a result of a strong economic strengthening originated in transnational dynamics associated with international drug trafficking ”, indicates the document where it warns the national government and demands actions.
The Army is present in the area, but this has not been enough to stop the progress of these armed groups that take advantage of the region's topography as a strategic drug corridor. For the Ombudsman, threats against the population range from forced disappearances, selective homicides, massacre, sexual violence, to accidents involving mines and / or trap weapons and clashes involving civilians.
This has not been the only displacement but the largest. Last February, 120 former FARC combatants who decided to leave the Territorial Training and Reincorporation Space (ETCR) of Santa Lucia (Ituango), where many of them still live. The decision was related to the continued murder of former guerrillas who have bet on peace. According to the report to the Security Council, the UN Verification Mission, since the signing of the agreement, only 12 of them have been killed in Ituango. Through the Ministry of Stabilization, the Government has said that they will make a "phased" transfer and "with protection of the public force in coordination with FARC representatives" in the coming months.
The ex-guerrillas also alerted this humanitarian crisis. “Before leaving arms, we warned the State that if they did not cover those spaces that we were going to leave safe, other armed actors would take possession and the conflict would continue. It is what happened, ”Hermes Arrieta, demobilized, told ItISGO to EL PAÍS.
If there is a population that summarizes the vicious circle of the Colombian conflict that is Ituango. Historically, civilians have been victims of successive armed groups and social and access conditions remain precarious. In the eighties they lived under the rule of the FARC, in the nineties they suffered the expansion of the paramilitaries, who committed the massacre of El Aro and La Granja, one of the most remembered in Colombia for the displacement of 700 terrorized peasants. After years of bloody clashes, the FARC returned to impose itself in the territory until 2016 when they delivered the weapons in the framework of the peace process with the Government of Juan Manuel Santos. Now, however, paramilitary groups with new names and dissidents put civilians back in the middle. And in Ituango they believe that the figure of 815 displaced will increase in the coming days.