The Berrio family lives with their feet in putrid waters which have invaded their modest brick house. Beds and furniture were raised on makeshift blocks to be installed on planks.
In Colombia’s La Mojana region, constant flooding caused by deforestation and mining is causing a humanitarian crisis that inevitably repeats itself every year, and gets worse over time.
In addition, the authority that should manage this natural disaster is facing a mega-corruption scandal surrounding the faulty construction of a sandbag dike.
On May 6, this dike built at great expense which protected the approximately 500,000 inhabitants of this plain in the north of the country broke, leaving at least 32,000 victims according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The floods of the powerful San Jorge, Magdalena and Cauca rivers have inexorably invaded these vast areas, flooding thousands of hectares dedicated to agriculture and livestock.
“Everything has been drowned. The few animals that remain survive standing with their paws in the water, only to end up dying little by little. This water is very infectious,” laments Rosiris Berrio (47), who lives here as best she can. with her partner and two young children.
The family walks around their house, balancing on planks to avoid the murky water that comes up to their knees. “We stumble, we scratch ourselves. Yet we have to continue with everyday life,” whispers the mother who claims to have received no aid from the state.
In the village under the waves, the inhabitants travel by canoe from one house to another. Other, luckier households, where the water has receded, are floundering in the mud.
– Where to go? –
“We have been flooded four years in a row. Economically it is catastrophic. Before we cultivated this land, we were happy”, regrets Jose Ruendes, a 59-year-old farmer forced to shelter his bike, his bed and his equipment electrics in the attic.
In 2023, Environment Minister Susana Muhamad explained that sedimentation is increasing in rivers due to deforestation, making them more likely to overflow.
Carlos Carrillo, director of the National Unit for Risk and Disaster Management (UNGRD), also points to another culprit: mining and its imposing dredges which destroy the soil and river bottoms. “Dredging generates very complex changes in the dynamics of the currents,” he explains for AFP.
And according to the authorities, the water is contaminated upstream by illegal mercury gold mining.
Between 1998 and 2020, the region suffered 338 floods, according to official figures. The latest occurred while its inhabitants, most of them modest farmers, were recovering from those that swept away their harvests in 2021.
President Gustavo Petro, who visited the site in mid-May, believes that the long-term solution would be to relocate the victims to higher ground purchased by the State.
The idea, however, divides. “But where are we going to go? It’s not easy to start from scratch, to look for work,” worries Rosiris.
Not far from there, in a precarious camp for displaced people, Ana Dolores Valerio says she is ready to go “elsewhere”.
Caring for 13 children and grandchildren, she aspires to “dry land to be able to work”. This is the fifth time in the past 20 years that floods have forced him to camp in makeshift accommodation.
– Inhuman –
Beyond this debate, local leaders are calling for immediate action to address what the United Nations considers a “serious humanitarian crisis.”
“Some families only eat one meal a day, it’s inhumane,” denounces Nestor Ortiz, president of the village of La Sierpita, one of the most affected. There, the only school was closed and the aqueducts collapsed, spilling sewage into homes.
Residents also denounce corruption in the dike reconstruction work. Since it broke down, an investigation has been underway into alleged embezzlement of public money by UNGRD officials, a scandal which led to the resignation of the director of this institution and put the president in difficulty. Petro.
His new boss, Mr. Carillo admits that the work, worth $34 million, is not progressing at the expected pace: “The contractor does not seem to be doing everything he can to fill the gap” ‘about 70 meters.
Meanwhile, the thunderstorm in the distance warns the residents of La Mojana that the rainy season in the mountains upstream is just beginning and that the rivers will soon be even busier.
“We already know what’s going to happen,” comments fatalistically, Cristo Sanchez, an old man whose house already looks like an island in the middle of the water.
