Colomba: Bullets and Coffee
TRANSLATED BY JONATHAN LOTT
I will never forget my first visit to Colomba Costa Cuca in Quetzaltenango. It was a Tuesday, and I arrived around ten in the morning. On my way to the town center, I encountered a loud jukebox energizing a cantina that was nearly full of young people. The scene struck me as surprising, considering it was still early on a Tuesday. When I spoke with the municipal technician I had come to meet, I mentioned my astonishment. We discussed the context, particularly the dangerous situation in the municipality. He informed me about the presence of gangs in various communities and how challenging it was for many young people to avoid recruitment. He also noted that these criminal groups had even threatened to sabotage the recent elections. In a joking yet cautionary tone, he said, “Here, the traditions are hired killings, and the handicrafts refer to the weapons …”
Located forty kilometers from the municipal center of Quetzaltenango, Colomba is one of the municipalities in the western coastal region. Known for its coffee production, it also has a reputation as one of the most dangerous areas in the department. A recent event on September 17 shook the community and the country. During a class held in the municipal gym (as the school was under renovation), a fifteen-year-old student was shot in front of the entire establishment. The attacker, another teenager associated with a gang, fled the scene and was captured by nearby security cameras. After 19 days in the hospital, the victim succumbed to the injuries. How does a municipality reach such high levels of violence, where a teenager can be attacked in broad daylight, in front of classmates and teachers? To answer this, we must examine the living conditions of the population.
In Colomba Costa Cuca (the municipality’s full name), a large part of the population is employed on one of the municipality’s 91 coffee plantations, which account for over 60% of its agricultural production. Previously, these coffee plantations were communal lands owned and cultivated collectively by indigenous communities. However, under the guise of modernizing the Guatemalan state and providing legal certainty, the Liberal Reform of Justo Rufino Barrios in 1878 introduced a property registration system that was effectively a privatization of the remaining communal lands. These lands had been in the hands of communities who, lacking formal titles, could not legally claim ownership. Under Barrios’s administration, a public auction system was introduced, requiring communities to pay 500 pesos per “caballería” (a unit of land) to retain possession of their lands. Most of the indigenous population, being illiterate and lacking resources, was unable to respond to this requirement, and the lands were awarded to plantation owners, many of whom were Barrios’s associates and subordinates. For instance, Manuel Lisandro Barillas acquired extensive tracts of land in the Costa Cuca area (Flores and Colomba) and El Palmar. Stripped of arable land, the local population was forced to become laborers on these estates, whereas they had once been landowners.
The precarious conditions and low wages on coffee plantations in the municipality—still a reality today—have fostered a context where crime has emerged as a response to labor exploitation. The consequences of the historical dispossession of communal lands remain visible even more than a century later. There is little doubt that when a community is stripped of its means of livelihood, it will inevitably develop responses for survival, even if they manifest violently. Colomba, a municipality of hardworking people but without adequate conditions for growth, is a clear example of this.
Hopefully, this unfortunate event serves as a call for the government to take action and create opportunities to improve the living conditions for the population in this region.
Fredy Pastor is consultant in Human Rights, Public Policies and Popular Education. Student of Legal and Social Sciences.
