In front of the police station are the remains of a car bomb that exploded months ago on an access road to Saravena, Arauca.
May 11, 2022Camilo Rozo
The limits are very clear: a block of five streets filled with armored vehicles and trenches built with sandbags.
The area is known as the security ring.
Outside of that, anything can happen.
Campaigning for one of the presidential candidates in certain parts of Colombia is very risky.
Here, in Saravena, a city in the midst of the war between the ELN guerrillas and the FARC dissidents for control of the territory, entering with electoral propaganda outside the limits established by the security ring can cost you your life.
The local team of Federico Gutiérrez, Fico, the right-wing candidate, is clear:
"From there to there and from there to there." They point their fingers into space.
Not one more step out.
Headquarters of presidential candidate Federico Gutiérrez in Saravena, Arauca.
May 11, 2022Camilo Rozo
Its headquarters, obviously, is within that border.
It is a low house completely lined with images of whoever was the mayor of Medellín.
Juan Jaimes Poblador is 43 years old and wears a candidate's bracelet, second in the polls after Gustavo Petro, from the left.
Jaimes does not have an escort because, paradoxically, he says that he does not talk about politics: “I have lost many friends because they started talking about it very loudly.
I do not do it".
In Saravena people communicate in a low voice.
It is a small city, with 43,000 inhabitants, where everyone knows each other.
Its streets are full of soldiers, but everyone knows that the real control is held by the ELN, the oldest active guerrilla in Latin America.
Charge the revolutionary tax to merchants, taxi drivers, hoteliers.
He has made this region, Arauca, his bastion.
Since the beginning of January, he has confronted the FARC dissidents, those who did not accept the peace process.
Dominating this part of the border with Venezuela means having access to a large key corridor for the transfer of drugs to the neighboring country, where the merchandise is distributed to the rest of the world in small planes.
The ELN, which has just announced a unilateral ceasefire during the presidential elections, is winning this conflict and imposing its law on the rest.
Yesid Lozano Fernández, 58, was mayor of Saravena in the previous legislature for the Democratic Center, Álvaro Uribe's party.
He arrives at the security ring surrounded by six bodyguards, aboard two trucks.
He was kidnapped by the ELN in 2010. In September of last year a guerrilla tried to shoot him a few meters away, but his security team shot him in the head.
“First God”, he says when remembering it.
All this has not taken away the desire to support Fico.
“We work for democracy.
I try to explain my ideas without colliding with subversion, although sometimes it is really difficult”, he continues.
Yesid Lozano Fernandez, Saravena, Arauca.
May 11, 2022Camilo Rozo
The local campaign is made up of well-meaning officials and former officials who fill the propaganda security ring, but don't want to risk placing any advertising outside of that.
They organize meetings in closed spaces with well-known people and some undecided people who they detect by the conversations in the cafeterias.
That is to say, they practically address those who are already going to vote for Fico, who are not few.
After years of leftist guerrilla control, many people opt for a conservative candidate.
In other parts of the country, the people of the Petro campaign suffer the same risks.
Instead of the guerrillas in those areas, the paramilitaries rule.
The main group is the Clan del Golfo, an army of armed men dedicated to drug trafficking.
Like the dissidents and other armed factions, it was born with an ideological component of which little remains.
Petro has not been able to go to give speeches in the Coffee Region, Chocó and Bolivar, the areas where the Gulf clan has the most influence.
The ghost of the assassination hovers over him.
In the past, several progressive candidates who had serious chances of reaching the presidency—just at the moment he finds himself—were assassinated.
This has increased its security.
In Soacha, last weekend, 750 policemen were deployed at his rally.
On stage, as he spoke, he was surrounded by bodyguards holding large bulletproof plates.
The candidate himself wore a vest.
In fact, the event was about to be cancelled, but one of his main advisers, Alfonso Prada, spoke with the leaders of the area to minimize the risk.
The battalion of faithful that he is president do not have that level of protection and they risk it every day.
Police checkpoint in Saravena Arauca.
May 11, 2022Camilo Rozo
Petro was three weeks ago in Montería, a cattle town controlled by drug cartels.
It is an area very assimilated to paramilitarism.
His reception was arranged by a local politician who has worked on the campaign since 2010 when it was first launched.
The local politician offered him a lunch at his farm, on the outskirts of Montería, in a location secret from the rest of the world.
He lives in a building where everyone carries Fico propaganda in their cars.
He is the only one with a Petro sticker, which has caused him to lose some friendships.
"I have always voted for Petro for president and I have said so, but I have been very cautious," he explains.
He drives in a shadow zone, in a delimited area like the security ring.
Outside of that, no one knows what could happen.
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