Tumaco victims receive four boats as part of reparation

San Andrés de Tumaco is one of 64 municipalities in the department of Nariño, violence accentuated in its territory between 1994 and 1997. The first illegal group to be present in the area was the gang “Los Van Van”, which committed extortion, social cleansing and murder, allegedly serving large merchants in the area. At the end of 1997, the ELN and the FARC made their first incursions into this region of the Pacific of Nariño.

According to the Single Registry of Victims, as of March 2020, more than 95,000 victims of forced displacement and 721 persons reported missing were recognized in Tumaco during the armed conflict in Colombia.

As part of the celebration of Victims Day, the national Government delivered this Saturday, April 9, to the premises of the General Maritime Directorate (DIMAR) four multipurpose boats, “as a subject of collective reparation to the Bajo Mira y Frontera Community Council”, reported the Government, through the Victims Unit.

It may interest you: Colombian Red Cross medical reinforcements arrive in Chocó

The boats delivered are of two types: three fiberglass fishing boats and one canoe type of 15.0 meters. Each boat is equipped with the safety elements. “This has represented an investment of $368,652.92 billion pesos,” said the entity.

During the war years there were many warlike actions that the legal and illegal armed groups carried out in the municipality of Nariño. But two milestones remained in the memory of its population.

The first event occurred around 5 am on March 24, 2001 in the village of Llorente. On that day, a group of paramilitaries, with a list in hand, killed 31 peasants with chainsaws. While this was happening, a group of FARC guerrillas arrived and clashed with the self-defence forces for 12 hours.

The media Routes del Conflict documented that as a result of these actions 21 families from the district had to be displaced to other municipalities. The then governor of Nariño, Parmenio Cuellar, denounced that he had insistently asked the security forces to defend the civilian population, but a colonel told him that they had no jurisdiction in Llorente. The Army arrived five days after the events occurred.

You may be interested in: “Victims have taught us that dialogue is not a distant concept”: International Community

The other memory that the Tumacan community has very marked occurred on March 27, 2002, when a group of 20 armed and unidentified men arrived at the Caunapí village, and then went to the house of the Castillo Cabezas family. The gunmen called eight people with a list in hand, who were then killed.

At the reparation event this Saturday, Ramón Rodríguez, national director of the Victims Unit, said that “these teams are part of one of the actions taken towards the fulfillment of the collective reparation plan with ethnic affiliation. It was agreed that the teams would sail on the Mira River and its tributaries, as well as the maritime zone in the Colombian Pacific Ocean,” he said.

Thirty people participated in this day, representatives of the four communities that comprise the territory of the subject of collective reparation Community Council Bajo Mira y Frontera. This delivery, according to the director of the Unit for Victims, “makes it possible to advance one of the measures for restitution of this reparation plan: in 2021, two trucks were delivered, one with stakes and another type of van, aimed also at recovering the productive practices of this group.”

KEEP READING: