Colombia’s army staged a show of force over the weekend in a city whose population was at the mercy of two warring gangs.

The gangs “Shottas” and “Spartanos” have been fighting for months for control of Buenaventura’s drug trade and other illegal activities such as micro-trafficking, extortion and kidnapping.

But the army has attempted to assert some state control, taking effect in several neighborhoods in Colombia’s main port city.

Buenaventura is where 40 percent of the country’s international trade takes place and the origin of most of the cocaine destined for the United States.

In recent years, it has emerged as one of the country’s most violent cities, with 576 murders between 2017 and 2021, according to the Pares Foundation, along with enforced disappearances and kidnappings.

On August 30, the two gangs were involved in a shootout with automatic weapons that lasted several hours.

According to local media, it was a “night of terror”.

Surrounded by mangroves, Buenaventura is a city of between 350,000 and 500,000 residents, 90 percent of whom claim to be of African descent.

The city stretches along an avenue flanked by slums down to the harbor at the end of a lagoon.

These are places where it is too unsafe to venture alone due to the risk of kidnapping.

Shottas and Spartanos share control of these neighborhoods, which feature humble brick houses, unfinished buildings surrounded by steel fences, wooden huts on stilts, and metal shacks perched over water and garbage.

The gangs stormed in, replacing the right-wing paramilitaries and left-wing guerrillas that used to rule here and were already self-financing through drug trafficking and terrorizing the local population.

Born out of a split in the criminal group La Local, these two gangs stepped up their operations significantly from the end of 2020 and their territory extends into the swamplands on the outskirts of the city.

Since then, Buenaventura has been a swarm of shootings, kidnappings and extortions.

Locals also speak of sinister so-called “slaughterhouses” where the bodies of kidnap victims are dismembered before being disposed of in the lagoon away from prying eyes.

“The two groups traded legitimately, primarily food: eggs, cheese, fruit… they missed nothing. They even agreed to set prices for certain staple foods,” said Juan Manuel Torres, a researcher with the country’s Peace and Reconciliation Commission , told AFP.

“What we are living through now is a new urban war for neighborhood control.”

As the new leftist President Gustavo Petro was due to visit Buenaventura on Tuesday to implement his “total peace” policy aimed at negotiating with criminal groups rather than crushing them, the police and army patrolled the city’s streets day and night .

They were most present in streets known as zones of conflict between the rival gangs known as the “invisible borders”.

In one such neighborhood, Jean XXIII, shootings erupt almost daily and terrified residents barricade themselves in their homes as soon as night falls.

The sudden appearance of soldiers has aroused concern and curiosity.

Heads pop out of doors and eyes peek out from behind curtains as heavily armed soldiers cautiously walk down the streets and alleys.

“The criminals could shoot at us at any time,” warned Lt. Col. Samuel Aguilar, commander of the 24th Marine Battalion.

“The two gangs are at war here and they don’t like us interfering in their business.”

Together with the police, they try to prevent the gangs from imposing their authority on the streets.

“There have been a lot of changes in Buenaventura in one year, and unfortunately not for the benefit of the community,” added Aguilar.