Hardship is nothing new for Afro-Colombians living along the country's Pacific coastline, but the situation is evolving all the time: the drug smuggling technology is advancing, communities are being impacted in different ways by poverty and armed conflict, and individuals are fighting back to make change. Below are some links to articles that provide some more in-depth perspective on topics that impact Colombians in and around Buenaventura daily. 

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Colombia Reports /  Santos Builds Houses with Confiscated Drug Money​

Colombian President Juan Manual Santos said Monday he has used money taken from a narcotrafficker to build 565 houses for citizens in the troubled port city Buenaventura on the western coast....



Wired / Authorities in Awe of Drug Runners' Jungle-Build, Kevlar-Coated Supersubs

The clatter of helicopter blades echoed across the jungles of northwestern Ecuador. Antinarcotics commandos in three choppers peered at the mangroves below, scanning for any sign of activity. The police had received a tip that a gang of Colombian drug smugglers had set up a clandestine work site here, in a dense swamp 5 miles south of Colombia’s border. And whatever the traffickers were building, the tipster had warned, was truly enormous....



Design Observer / Buenaventura: A City in Search of Good Fortune​

Mention to anyone in Colombia’s capital, Bogota, that you are planning a trip to the port city of Buenaventura, on the Pacific Coast, and you will likely encounter stern warnings and looks of disbelief. Buenaventura holds a special, troubled place in the Colombian psyche....



UNHCR / Colombia's Displaced Youth Sing Out for Own Space

Excerpt: "Then the music blasts and the camera starts rolling. This is My Territory, a music group of 27 young Afro-Colombians, is making its first music video with help from the UN refugee agency. Everything about this production is home-grown, from the original song recorded on someone's old laptop, to the makeshift studio soundproofed by egg cartons, and the filming location in the local barrio (neighbourhood). The band was formed and named after a two-day urban music festival last December. The event provided a platform for more than 300 youth to organize themselves against violence in Buenaventura, the largest port on Colombia's Pacific Coast and a hub for people displaced by clashes between illegal armed groups in the surrounding areas."



Daily Beast / The Drug War at Sea: Rise of the Narco Subs

Over the past five years, drug cartels have increasingly been shipping cocaine by way of hard-to-detect semi-submersible vessels. And the next generation of narco subs may be even harder to spot....



Sabotage Times / Narco-Submarines of the Colombian Jungle 

Excerpt: "Narco-submarines are constructed in the bayous of Colombia, some of which are eight times the size of London and controlled almost entirely by FARC guerrillas. The FARC are an organised gang of drug dealing militia, armed to the teeth and fighting against the Colombian government in a bid to overthrow them and implement their Marxist philosophies. Their manifesto states that they’re working class militants fighting for freedom in a corrupt land of fat politicians and rich policemen. They also happen to be hell bent on ridding Colombia of American law enforcement in an effort, they claim, to form a properly independent sovereignty (either that or because the DEA regularly confiscation and destroy large amounts of their cocaína). Many of them are highly trained ex-soldiers from times of communist rule, who often deploy makeshift gas cylinder mortar bombs and landmines in the jungle to protect their territory from intruders."



Vice Magazine / Colombian Narco-Subs

A short video documentary on the manufacture and use of narco-subs in the Colombian drug trade