RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – In one of the country’s most impoverished districts of Cali, the third-largest city in Colombia, over 70 families are currently occupying derelict land. People are demanding dignified housing.
“Particularly now, in times of coronavirus, confinement in precarious neighborhoods is unbearable,” one of the squatters explained to German online newspaper ‘amerika21’ on Monday. On Sunday, the families had returned to the occupied area in the Siloé quarter after the police counter-insurgency squad (ESMAD) had forcibly removed them on Saturday.
Four weeks ago, the families erected their homes on derelict land. These were destroyed, and some burned down during the police operation over the weekend.
At four o’clock in the morning, the ESMAD’s operation started, which surprised most occupants in their sleep. When they refused to leave their dwellings, the police used gas grenades and rubber bullets to disperse them. Several people were injured, including minors.
Mariluz Benavides, a leading activist behind the land seizure, said: “I tried to talk to the ESMAD and calm things down because there are children and pregnant women among the families. But no chance. Even the police officers on the ground negotiating with us could barely catch their breath during the gas bombing”. At around 4:30 PM, the ESMAD retreated from the quarter.
The city council bought the land 18 years ago to build social housing. To this day, this has not happened. Since then, the wasteland has been used as a landfill. “A threat of contagion to the residents of the neighborhood,” as Benavides says.
Despite repeated denunciations, nothing happened. “That’s why we have decided to build our own social housing,” Benavides says determinedly. “We can no longer pay our rent because of the curfew, and we need a roof over our heads.”
David Gomez, a neighborhood activist, said that “The city has completely neglected Siloé. The severe housing shortages lead to people living in very confined spaces.
Besides, the majority of residents live from casual labor and are particularly affected by the curfew imposed by President Iván Duque on March 25th, which has been extended ever since – currently until May 31st. “In this context, it is all the more serious that people are being driven out and that their few belongings are being destroyed,” Gómez continued.
In Colombia’s major cities, more than 50 percent of people live off casual labor. This sector has come to a complete halt due to the curfew. Millions of people have no income, and have either already lost their homes or are on the verge of becoming homeless.
On May 5th, residents were still negotiating with a representative of the Secretariat for Human Rights and Peace. At no time did they receive eviction notices. In fact, there was no official eviction order, so the ESMAD’s intervention violated fundamental human rights. Human rights organizations appealed to the United Nations and the Organization of American States the same day, demanding that the city government provide humanitarian aid to displaced families and a negotiated solution.
The city’s Security Secretary, Carlos Rojas, justified the intervention: “The local administration spoke to the families and arranged for them to leave the compound. They have not done so.” He said that his office is preventing illegal occupations from springing up on the city’s hillsides.
The Secretary of Housing, Martha Hernández, claimed: “We did not evict any families, there was no construction of shelters, no tools were found, only people who wanted to take possession of the land.”
On Monday, with the presence of city officials and human rights organizations, further deployment of the ESMAD was prevented, as the force remained several hundred meters away, ready for operation.
Two weeks ago, a similar situation occurred in the capital Bogotá. In the south of the metropolis, in the Altos de la Estancia district of Ciudad Bolívar, the police and the ESMAD forcibly evicted 300 families from their homes. The city council justified the action by saying that it would save human lives because the shacks were located on landslide-prone land.
This settlement, which has been there for decades, should have been relocated years ago, based on the same argument. The families rejected the city administration’s offer to move them to temporary camps because of the increased risk of infection by Covid-19.