In the midst of the anxiety that the displaced people are experiencing, SEMANA reached Cúcuta, city where hundreds of displaced people are arriving to flee the bullets.
In an interview with SEMANA, A peasant from Tibú, identified as Luis Sandoval, gave a heartbreaking story of everything he has had to endure in the midst of this war that was activated in Catatumbo since last week.
“We (are) from the La Gabarra district, from a village called Morro Frío. They ran all the people there, they had to vacate everything. All the animals were left there and the farm alone, alone“, Sandoval began.
According to the farmer, armed men told the residents to vacate the area because the fighting was going to continue. He added that, in fact, Today some subversives arrived at the town with a list in hand.
🔴 “Who is going to return to the farm? No one. Let them murder us? No, it is better for us to lose the farm than our lives. We cannot stop the Government. None of us farmers are going to return like this. Everything is being lost.” : Luis Sandoval, resident of Tibú.https://t.co/5NociHW4pW pic.twitter.com/lGce4Xc70S
— Semana Magazine (@RevistaSemana) January 22, 2025
“And whoever it is, they kill him and that’s why we had to vacate there. We are innocent peasants there, but there everyone has to get out, You don’t know who they’re going to screw. See, yesterday the few that remained in La Gabarra held a march and they are telling us the story that later they took out two boys and killed them,” Sandoval highlighted.
“Who is going to return to the farm? Nobody. Better to lose the farm than to lose our lives.. We cannot stop the Government, the Government has to see how it organizes that there. Meanwhile, none of us farmers here are going to return like this. We will have to start begging here in the city,” he highlighted in SEMANA.
When asked what the solution is in Catatumbo, Sandoval was emphatic in saying that Coca crops in the area must be ended and replaced by agriculture.
“The solution for Catatumbo is to remove those coca plants and work with agriculture. But the Government is to blame. The Government does not want to give us a peso to plant a cocoa bush. I left 5,000 cocoa plants on the farm and made two trips to Tibú to request a loan from the Agrarian Bank to work with cocoa and they denied it. There is no help from the Government. So that’s why we were forced to plant the coca bush,” said Sandoval.