Our Colombia analyst Kyle Johnson made it his mission to find out more. Just one road runs in and out. Around , people live in the town itself, with another 89, in the surrounding countryside. The great majority of residents are Afro-Colombian. Despite a peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia in FARC , rebel dissidents, criminal gangs and other armed groups proliferate throughout. It is a cocaine production hub with easy access to seaborne smuggling routes and a higher proportion of land used to grow coca leaves than anywhere else in Colombia.
Its politics are so corrupt that several former mayors are in jail. There are people and institutions working unevenly to improve the situation. The Catholic Church is a positive and influential force for change, helping to organise communities, denouncing human rights violations and promoting peace initiatives.
Meanwhile, as in many rural parts of the country, a mix of honest, well-intentioned and also occasionally corrupt soldiers and police are frustrated by their inability to expand state control. In many cases, they are just trying to survive their deployment. The journey is just over one hour by air, though it would have taken over 24 hours by road.
We approach the town over the green coastal jungle and drop down toward the most alluring part of Tumaco: an island on the edge of the Pacific Ocean with a one-runway airstrip, a military base, a sandy beach and some hotels for mainly Colombian tourists. My aims are modest in these first few days.
Things are tense, with homicide rates spiking because of fighting between FARC rebels and a breakaway guerrilla faction. He promises a breakthrough in my quest to meet the FARC breakaway faction. I follow his instructions and take a motorcycle taxi to the school. He tells the driver to leave the neighbourhood. I say yes, and he escorts me to the school. An audience of some twenty people is arrayed behind too-small schoolroom desks, including a Catholic priest, someone from the UN human rights office and several community leaders.
