While the corruption scandal in the Risk Management Unit writes a new chapter in the headlines every day, in upper Guajira, the most vulnerable communities continue to cry out for drinking water and denounce that politicians turned the resource into a commodity of change for votes in the last elections.
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The Amunchinjau community is a small but well-organized ranchería led by Misael Estrada. Although the hamlet is part of the rural area of Uribia, the municipality that concentrated the most aid, in reality, its inhabitants have nothing.
“The greatest need of the community is the lack of drinking water, we are drinking water from a nearby jagüey, but it is soon to dry out and, when it dries up, only sea water remains, which is not suitable for human consumption. And, when you come to the Mayor’s Office to ask for help, they tell you that they will call you and in the end they never call me,” says Misael.
Yunesca Redondo, a resident of Amunchinjau, states that the water conditions in the jagüey “are not good.”
“But we still drink it because we can’t get water around here, it’s not suitable for consumption, but what else can we do,” he points out.
Yunesca reveals something worse. When tank trucks arrive, they do not do so with drinking water.
“It is not drinking water, it is dirty water from here in Jagüey. They themselves look for the water from the jagüey and take it to the community, I have never seen them bring drinking water“, account.
In the area you can see children drinking water from the jagüey. The image offends his dignity and that of his people, a people tired of listening to promises. For them, nothing changes, they only have to drink where the animals drink.
In the Bahía Honda district, the jagüey is the only hope for the residents of the area, communities that have their rights protected by sentences and judicial rulings but there the abnormal became normal, that children drink that water that is not drinkable. In other words, your rights are protected only on paper.
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Uribia is a gigantic municipality of almost 200,000 inhabitants, an electoral fortress that today is in the eye of the hurricane because it was the beneficiary of million-dollar aid that should have been delivered precisely to these communities.
There, Olmedo López and Sneyder Pinilla, former directors of the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD), concentrated the resources that are lost today, something that outrages the Wayú.
“Because the Government sends water aid, look how Olmedo López has stolen what was for the Wayú people, what he does not need to pocket, he has no need, but we do”says Luisa Pimienta, leader of the Wayú community.
They also remember that the men of the former mayor of Uribia, Bonifacio Henríquez, came to campaign for a stranger to them, the conservative Antioquia Carlos Trujillo, a politician they have never seen.
Pediatrician Lucho Gómez, former M-19 militant, recognized social leader of La Guajira and former manager that President Gustavo Petro appointed to coordinate the delivery of resources, has said repeatedly that he is not part of this network of corruption and that he warned to the first leader of the disaster that was coming.
In addition, he asks that they investigate the million-dollar water distribution contracts in La Guajira.
“There were 185 vehicles per day, tank trucks, with two daily rates, one of 1,070,000 pesos and another of 1,400,000 pesos. That was around 200 million pesos a day. There were five tank trucks for each municipality operated: 5, Riohacha; 5, Manaure; 5, Uribia, and 5, Maicao. And suddenly there was an immense jump in the contracting from Bogotá, 20 more tank cars went up for Uribia and then 25.”
Who gives the order from Bogotá?
“Olmedo, who was the director, although Sneyder was present here, not only was he second in hierarchy, but he says he knew the team in La Guajira.”
Those who suffer from this embezzlement of resources put their chests to the wind and continue waiting for compensation for their rights. The wind blows strongly in the upper Guajira and carries away the sand and the thousand-fold promised change in its wake.
