Buenaventura residents criticise state neglect after Colombia’s earthquake

Buenaventura, Colombia – Lorena Hipis sits in her living room, gazing emptily into the kitchen. The harsh midday sun beats down on her.

The walls have been shaved off one side of her house, and a gaping hole punctures what used to be the roof.

"The whole thing came crashing down," said Hipis, gesturing to the wreckage of a five-storey building next door.

It collapsed during the 7.4-magnitude earthquake on Monday, destroying half of her home and flattening her mother's house nearby. Four people inside died.

Hipis lives in Buenaventura, a city of 432,000 on Colombia’s Pacific coast that suffered widespread destruction.

Though her city is home to the country's largest port, she fears it will be overlooked in the broader recovery effort.

"The municipality, the state and the government haven't come here," she said on Thursday.

In her daughter’s bedroom, metal rebar hangs from the ceiling, while jagged chunks of concrete and brick threaten to tumble to the floor at any moment.

Hipis fears that what remains of her roof will collapse under the weight of the debris from the neighbouring building.

She said she is desperate for help to clear it: "The government is taking too long. And this is an urgent situation."

Buenaventura is one of several cities and towns where residents fear a pattern of state neglect will affect how resources are distributed after the deadly earthquake.

An estimated 287 people were killed across the country, roughly 19 of whom died in Buenaventura.

But locals worry that greater care will be paid to major provincial capitals like Pereira and Cali, as opposed to areas with higher levels of poverty, like their city.

Chronic under-investment

In Buenaventura alone, some 540 homes have collapsed and 3,416 sustained damage. Some 330 residents were injured.

But at the Luis Ablanque de la Plata District Hospital, several wards have been out of operation following the earthquake.

The injured lie by the dozens in beds under tents outside in the hospital’s sweltering car park, waiting to be treated for a range of breaks and tears sustained in the disaster.

Bryan Reyes, 29, sustained three fractures in his leg after jumping out of a first-floor window to escape the earthquake.

A shipyard worker who carries cargo for a living, he called the earthquake response evidence of Buenaventura's long history of institutional neglect.

"It is a total abandonment. It’s like the people here just don’t matter," he said.

Reyes pointed to the lack of resources at the hospital. The limited supplies, he explained, are a symptom of chronic under-investment.

"Before the earthquake struck, there was a strike at the hospital because the workers hadn’t been paid," Reyes said. "There are never any supplies; they don't pay the doctors or specialists."

Buenaventura has historically lagged in socioeconomic development compared with other urban hubs like Cali, which is located in the same department.

According to government estimates from 2024, 15.4 percent of the city's population lives in multidimensional poverty, a term that economists use to capture deprivation beyond dollar amounts.

Multidimensional poverty includes factors like a lack of access to education, healthcare and other basic public infrastructure.

Buenaventura has more than double the rate of multidimensional poverty as Cali, where 6.7 percent of residents experience that issue.

In 2025, the civic monitoring group Buenaventura Como Vamos (BCV) also found that 72 percent of residents struggled to find work.

Approximately 70 percent reported having to eat fewer than three meals a day due to insufficient food.

The city also has a relatively high Afro-Colombian population, a minority ethnic group that has been historically marginalised. Some 88.5 percent of the city identifies as being of African descent.

'Help for one hour'

Speaking to Al Jazeera, many of those affected by the earthquake in Buenaventura criticised the local government's response as insufficient.

Betsy Tenorio is among them. Her grandfather Arnulfo was killed on Monday when his house collapsed on him.

He was unable to escape when the earthquake struck because he suffered from paralysis on the right side of his body. His home was in the Barrio Oriente, an impoverished neighbourhood full of worn brick houses and potholed roads.

"There are no words," Tenorio said between tears, describing her grandfather as a good man who loved his family, especially his newborn great-grandson.

She explained that the city’s mayor visited the area on the day of the earthquake, but she has heard nothing from authorities since.

"We only received help for one hour," she said. Instead, any assistance her family received has come from "the immense, immense support the community has shown us".

Alfonso Grueso, the president of the Association of Community Action Boards, a neighbourhood body, estimated that the homes of some 750 residents were damaged by the quake – representing roughly 15 percent of Barrio Oriente's population.

He added that, aside from the mayor’s tour of the area, the state has not offered assistance.

"What we need most is help from the state and the municipal government, since practically none has arrived," Grueso told Al Jazeera.

In Buenaventura, years of state neglect have strained relations between residents and authorities.

Last year, 64 percent of locals said they distrusted the mayor’s office, according to Buenaventura Como Vamos's survey. Fifty-seven percent also expressed distrust in the national government.

Mounting security fears

After the earthquake, Jorge Montez has kept watch at the site of a collapsed apartment building near the city centre, a grey backpack slung over his shoulder.

With no bodies or survivors found in the building, the site has been abandoned. Still, Montez, the parking attendant for an adjacent lot, stands guard over a lonely boat that has been left behind.

In Buenaventura, security has been a concern in the earthquake’s aftermath.

While authorities in Cali have militarised the city, with soldiers patrolling the streets, locals say no such measures have been rolled out in Buenaventura.

Montez said that the area around his building had been patrolled by the GAULA, a special anti-extortion and kidnapping military unit, but they were pulled away due to a prison riot on Monday night.

Shortly after, people began looting the site, part of which had been a computer shop.

"There aren’t enough military or police. We’re short on security," said Montez.

For residents like Hipis, whose homes suffer from collapsed walls and roofs, insecurity is especially concerning.

From the buckled wall of her kitchen, she watches as a group of young boys kick their way through the debris.

"We have no security, we have no walls, we have nothing," she said.

Volunteers in Barrio Oriente, meanwhile, said they needed a police escort to deliver aid to the area, given concerns about local gang violence.

A compounding crisis

Experts warn that the earthquake may aggravate the deep-rooted problems Buenaventura has struggled with for years.

"The poverty rate will rise in Buenaventura and the Pacific region," predicted Iveth Dalissa Caceres, a social worker.

She views underdevelopment and disasters in the region as cyclical problems, compounding one another.

"Disasters generally occur in the Pacific. The highest poverty rates are in the Pacific. Violence is in the Pacific," said Caceres.

But she also noted how decades of suffering have fostered a spirit of solidarity in the city.

Caceres is one of hundreds of locals who coordinated relief efforts to help earthquake survivors. She oversees a community kitchen cooking and distributing 400 meals to affected areas like Barrio Oriente.

"We are an incredibly resilient community, so that means we fall once and get back up ten thousand times," said Caceres.

"We were born in this situation. So that’s what we’ve learned: to keep moving forward no matter what."

Reporting originally appeared via Al Jazeera. Read the full source for additional context.