Southwestern Colombia, isolated after landslide on the Pan-American highway

First modification: 01/13/2023 – 21:37

In Cauca, a southwestern department of Colombia, a landslide in the town of Rosas left some 700 homeless, some five farmhouses destroyed and a section of the Pan-American highway that connects the region with the rest of the country.

The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, traveled to the area together with members of his presidential cabinet and promised the purchase of a farm to relocate the victims and seek that they have a safe place to live.

In an educational institution, Petro met with 200 people who managed to escape last Monday morning from the hamlets of Santa Clara, Párraga Viejo, La Soledad, Chontaduro and La Manguita, which were buried.

“The affected people cannot return to live there and the relocation of these peasant families is imposed, which not only had their homes, but also their entire livelihood,” adding that “the initial count indicated that it was necessary to deliver half a hectare per family, but that is not enough to live, progress and educate the children”, and added: “We are going to place them in a very specific place, a farm with very fertile land”.

“The State buys the farm, Law 1523 (which created the National Disaster Risk Management System) allows us to do it in less than 15 days and this relocation can be the beginning of a large peasant area that even helps us to alleviate tensions in northern Cauca”, stressed Petro.

According to the president, the relocation should include a school zone and health services.

The road that connects with South America

The Pan-American highway connects Colombia with the rest of the continent and is the artery through which products arrive from Ecuador by land.

The governor of the department of Nariño, a territory that is currently isolated from the center of the country due to the landslide, predicts that the closure of the road could take about three months.

Petro pointed out that in a month an alternative route could be glimpsed with the adaptation of neighboring roads through which merchandise trucks could transit, he also spoke of an airlift and even a maritime connection from Tumaco to Buenaventura, the main Pacific port Colombian.

“This will allow for the first time in Colombia to talk about the creation of our civil navy,” said the president.

From his Twitter account, Petro pointed to take advantage of the situation to reinforce the road infrastructure. “This disaster will allow us to carry out the largest work that southern Colombia has received in its history and the best to integrate with South America. The dual carriageway Popayán / Ipiales,” he said.

According to Gustavo Petro, initial studies indicate that this highway would cost more than 2,560 million dollars.

Millionaires loses

According to the merchants, the losses due to the collapse amount to one billion Colombian pesos, more than 200,000 dollars. According to the Chamber of Commerce of Nariño, some 250,000 liters of milk could be lost that are taken from this department to processing plants in Valle del Cauca.

The tourism, transport and agriculture sectors report daily losses of 250 million pesos, about 53,000 dollars.

In addition to this panorama, travelers who were vacationing at the end of the year parties were trapped in cities like Cali and have not been able to return to their places of origin.

The problems of the roads in this region of the country are structural and have not been solved during the last governments. The department of Cauca continues to be plagued by problems of violence. Dissidents of the extinct FARC guerrilla fight for control of the territory with other groups outside the law, despite the Peace Agreement signed in 2016.

The lack of investment in infrastructure in the region, in addition to the severe winter that has plagued the country during the last year due to the “La Niña” meteorological phenomenon, has created the circumstances for the country’s roads to continue to deteriorate.

With EFE and local media