Young members of the Colombian "Shottas" gang renovate an abandoned soccer field in the port city of Buenaventura. At the end of 2022, they joined a fragile peace process initiated by the country's first left-wing government.
Together with their rivals from the "Spartanos" group, they have nearly 2,000 members, according to an estimate by the Peace and Reconciliation Foundation.
Before the truce, the two bands clashed mercilessly for control of the different districts of the city. They notably opposed the automatic weapon for several hours at the end of August 2022, during a "night of terror", according to the local press.
From now on, young people from the "Shottas", boots on their feet and construction helmets on their heads, are learning to handle shovels and wheelbarrows instead of weapons. "It's the first time that some of them have worked in construction and they like it," a spokesperson for the gang told AFP on condition of anonymity. .
All are Afro-Colombian, like 91% of the 350,000 inhabitants of this city through which 33% of Colombian international trade passes, as well as the drugs then transported to Central America and Mexico.
As part of a rapprochement with the government of President Gustavo Petro, some 200 members of the two groups have joined state-funded projects such as the renovation of the dirt football pitch in a poor area of the city.
But the truce remains fragile: the bill validating the progress made during the peace talks has still not been adopted, and discontent is growing among members of the two gangs.
In early July, after months of relative calm, a nine-year-old girl was killed in a shootout involving, authorities say, the two rival gangs. The latter, however, denied.
"If there were more works like this, perhaps we would have fewer young people involved in the conflict (...) we have always asked for social investment and not militarization", says the door- word of the "Shottas".
Poverty affects 40% of the inhabitants of the main Colombian port on the Pacific coast, where unemployment affects one in four people.
"Shottas" and "Spartanos" were born in late 2020 from a split within the same then hegemonic criminal cartel, La Local. The confrontation pushed the city's homicide rate to more than 61 per 100,000 people in 2021, nearly double 2020 and well above the national average (24).
In 2022, the two gangs agreed to open a dialogue with the government, kick-starting an "unprecedented" urban peace process, the government says, in a country ravaged by a six-decade conflict between guerrillas , far-right paramilitaries and drug traffickers.
We had a “truce from September to January, then the conflict got worse” between the two bands, explains the spokesman of the “Shottas”, a man with a corpulent physique who took part in the peace talks with the government.
It is "a tense moment because there is no legal certainty and there are a lot of economic interests behind all this. The structures are very nervous", estimates Juan Manuel Torres, researcher for the Foundation. peace and reconciliation, which estimates that the conflict has claimed some 300 victims since 2020 in the city.
The spokesperson for the "Shottas" abounds: without "a legal framework, we don't know what they can offer us".
The discussions with the government, relaunched this week, take place within the framework of the implementation of the ambitious project of "total peace" wanted by President Petro (elected in the summer of 2022), to put an end to the violence of the various armed actors operating in the country.
Sign of the president's desire to achieve peace, during a recent trip to Buenaventura, he launched a bold proposal entitled "Youth in peace": "Thousands of young people will be paid not to kill, not to participate to violence and to study".
Although criticized by the opposition, the measure seems to respond to the demands of the gangs: unemployment, "that's what brings poverty and poverty brings violence", underlines the spokesman of the "Shottas".
07/18/2023 08:50:16 - Buenaventura (Colombia) (AFP) - © 2023 AFP
