Under the blazing Colombian sun, Germán Balera pushes a small cart loaded with a few thermoses of coffee and packs of cigarettes across a derelict airport runway and into a labyrinth of ramshackle huts of corrugated zinc, plastic sheets and cardboard.
Balera is a resident of La Pista, Colombia’s largest informal settlement that is home to approximately 14,000 people on the outskirts of the city of Maicao in north-east Colombia. They are crammed into 12 makeshift blocks spread along the 1.2km runway of the dusty city’s abandoned airport, in the arid Colombian province of La Guajira.
The shantytown is one of 52 informal settlements in Maicao, a stone’s throw from the Venezuelan border. It houses about 4,000 families – almost doubling in size in the past two years. Life is dire in La Pista, where key essentials such as food, water, sanitation, adequate housing and education are in short supply.
“Some days we eat, some days we don’t,” says Balera, sitting outside his small, plastic-clad hut as his nephews play around him. “There is no work here, you can’t do anything. Life is hard here.”
Balera’s livelihood and that of his four grandchildren depends on his meagre cart. On a good day he may return home with up to 20,000 pesos (about £3.50 or $4.25); on others he arrives empty-handed. Other residents live off rubbish collection and recycling, which produce an equally miserly income.
Most residents in La Pista live off one meal a day. Large families, sometimes up to 12 people, live cramped in the tiny, decrepit shacks, at the mercy of the relentless heat and the frequent heavy rains that flood much of the settlement.
According to the World Food Programme’s latest report on food insecurity in Colombia, 50% of La Guajira’s population is food insecure, with the province also bearing the highest rate of monetary poverty in the country – registering 67.4%.
Water is also a scarce resource in La Pista, as it is in much of La Guajira. Locals get their water supply – often untreated – from vendors who traverse the camp on donkeys, selling 200-litre buckets for a costly 8,000 pesos (about £1.50 or $1.80).
Diseases like dengue and shingles are rife in the settlement as contagion is hard to keep at bay.
“We don’t live well here. Mothers don’t have enough to buy water, rice or vegetables,” says Yurelis Epieyú, an Indigenous Wayuu woman and local leader of La Pista, sheltering from the sun under the shade of a tree. “We feel forgotten.”
La Pista’s residents are mostly Venezuelan migrants who have fled their country’s economic collapse and ongoing political crisis. They now live alongside binational Indigenous Wayuu and Colombians displaced by violence.
Many of the Venezuelans in La Pista hoped that the thawing of diplomatic relations between Colombia and Venezuela could provide greater institutional support or even the opportunity to return home.
The two countries fully reopened their shared border in January this year, though for many in La Pista little has changed.
“I had the hope that our life would change when they opened the border because we would have been able to return easily. But the situation in Venezuela remains the same, or might even be worse. So we’d rather stay here and look for a better life,” says Yuraima García, a Venezuelan resident of La Pista and community leader.
As La Pista has grown to become a defining feature of Maicao, its relationship with local authorities has become increasingly complex.
Mohamad Dasuki, the mayor of Maicao, says the “international community has a greater responsibility” to deal with the issues in La Pista as his focus is to bring greater “visibility” and international aid to the settlement.
Dasuki has allowed residents to remain in La Pista and says he has “never had the intention of evicting them” as he sees migration as “an opportunity”. Despite his apparent support towards the shantytown’s residents, many say the municipal government has attempted to stop construction of cinder-block homes in La Pista in order to discourage more permanent settlement in the area.
With limited state support and few places to turn to, locals have found solace in the work of local organisations like Hijos de La Guajira.
The Maicao-based private non-profit has stepped in to carry out a role the Colombian authorities have failed to fulfil. The small NGO runs a communal food bank in La Pista where it offers daily lunches to approximately 350 children.
Hijos de La Guajira also runs a nutritional support programme through which it distributes nutritional supplements to an additional 750 malnourished children in La Pista.
Buenaventura Ayala, the group’s programme coordinator, describes the local government’s efforts as “phantom aid”.
“[The town hall] is working superficially. It’s done next to nothing in terms of caring for the population of La Pista. They have the money, what they don’t have is the interest to invest it properly,” says Ayala.
Like many of the residents, Ayala claims the opening of the border has simply led to the arrival of more migrants to La Pista.
“It was more of a political thing as in reality the [Venezuela’s] economic situation is still precarious. It did not have the effect that was expected,” Ayala says.
With the mayor concluding his term at the end of the year, uncertainty is looming over the future of those who call La Pista home, and residents hope they won’t see themselves forced to resettle once again.
“We want to know what’s going to happen to us here. We aren’t here to cause harm – we want to work, we want to help our families. We are human beings. Just like any other person who has emigrated we have the desire to get ahead for our children,” Epieyú says.
