Within the framework of its strategy against drug trafficking, the United States has carried out several attacks against fishing boats, killing more than 100 people without proving their connection to drug trafficking. In the San Andrés archipelago, which belongs to Colombia, this operation makes artisanal fishermen fear the worst.
The sun is barely rising when the first boats set sail from the coast of Providencia, a small Colombian island in the Caribbean. The fishermen go out into the sea, but they never go alone: for several weeks, their habits have changed.
“We go in groups”
“We go in groups. It is better to be together because I believe that by detecting several boats together, they cannot say that it is something about drug trafficking,” Juan Peñalosa explains to RFI.
Since the beginning of September, US attacks against suspected drug trafficking vessels in the Caribbean have multiplied. Fear has taken over the 220 fishermen of this community.
José Manuel is one of them: he fishes “with his lungs”, without bottles, with a harpoon in his hand. And this morning he went near the coast with two companions. “We are worried about going to the most distant keys due to the situation. But as fishermen, it is our turn,” he says.
“They can’t give them life again”
For fear of being mistaken for traffickers, some fishermen are now giving up the areas richest in fish. It is a sacrifice, since the entire community depends on this income. Juan Peñalosa, however, tries not to worry too much: “The boats do not have those characteristics that those boats that make those drug crossings have. They are much smaller boats, with a shallower draft, with smaller engines,” he says.
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For now, the area around Providencia has not been affected. But that doesn’t stop Elizabeth Cabezas, a 63-year-old fisherwoman, from living in anguish every day. He prepares lunch for his two children, who have gone out to sea.
“They are the children of someone who are risking their lives out there. They bomb them saying it’s drugs. And when they bomb them, if they are fishermen and the drugs don’t appear, they can’t give them their lives again,” he denounces.
Letter to the UN
For Edgar Jay, president of the Afro-descendant fishermen’s association of Providencia, these US operations go far beyond the fight against drug trafficking. According to him, “it is a strategy of intimidation. Can the United States apply the death penalty extrajudicially anywhere in the world? It is an invasion.”
And this anger against the Trump administration is widely shared on the island, where it is heard that these “gringos think they own the world.” To denounce the situation, Edgar Jay has sent a letter to the United Nations.
Together with the fishermen of his town, he demands the right to work in safe conditions: “We believe that the UN has to be an organization that serves the interests of world peace, the interests of unprotected people,” he says. The island’s artisanal fishermen are now waiting for intervention from the international community.
*Journalism in Venezuela is carried out in a hostile environment for the press with dozens of legal instruments in place to punish the word, especially the laws “against hate”, “against fascism” and “against the blockade.” This content is being published taking into consideration the threats and limits that have consequently been imposed on the dissemination of information from within the country.
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