ALTHOUGH the Government announced the first decree for La Guajira after three weeks of declaring a social emergency in the region, the senator of the La U Party, Alfredo Deluque, hopes that more resolutions will be issued for the benefit of the population.
He questioned that the department only takes ‘assistance’; that is, bags of food to distribute among the people, instead of creating conditions for their sustainable development.
THE NEW CENTURY: Weeks after President Gustavo Petro was ruling from that region, is a specific project already being seen to fulfill all the promises made by the Government?
ALFREDO DELUQUE: What worries us is that an emergency was declared in light of what the Constitution establishes, in order to issue specific regulations through decrees with the force of law so that there is a change in conditions in La Guajira.
We want to make a respectful but energetic appeal to the national government so that they can issue all the decrees with the force of law so that in La Guajira there are better conditions for our inhabitants.
ENS: Being realistic, do you see it possible for La Guajira to become a clean energy powerhouse in the short term?
AD: Yes, but it has to be coordinated with the inhabitants of the northern zone of La Guajira. It must be coordinated with the Wayuu indigenous people in due form. We see how energy companies in Bogotá have abandoned some projects under construction, precisely because they did not reach an agreement with our indigenous people.
We must worry about generating trust in that population, because, really, these projects will benefit them, they will change their lives and they will generate wealth in economic terms.
emergencies
ENS: What exactly are the main emergencies in La Guajira that must be attended to immediately by the national government?
AD: The problems in La Guajira have always existed. We have a Wayuu population that lives in a desert and living under the conditions in that desert is not easy. Providing the conditions for indigenous people to live with dignity in that territory is also difficult.
If we look at it objectively, these facts translate into a generator of poverty because there are no financial means to meet the basic needs of the Wayuu family.
What is there to do? Generate wealth in these families and the possibility that they have economic conditions to get ahead. The State only wants to carry ‘assistance’; that is, a bag of food and does not work to create conditions for the area to develop and connect with the country.
If we also add to this that a wealth generator in La Guajira, such as the port where merchandise arrived in Maicao, has been diminished because the world economic model has already changed. That port no longer generates the wealth it did before.
Also, if you add that the gasoline that was consumed in that territory was Venezuelan because it was extremely cheap and began to be replaced by subsidized Colombian fuel, there is much less wealth.
ENS: All the forecasts of the ‘El Niño’ phenomenon say that La Guajira will be the department most affected by this drastic climatic circumstance. What is being done today in a concrete way to face this problem?
AD: We have already lived it; from 2011 to 2014 it did not rain in Alta Guajira. Since the ‘El Niño’ phenomenon began, I drew the attention of the Government until they finally paid attention to me and brought ‘asistencialismo’, that is, bags of food and a supply of water.
At that time, 600,000 million pesos were spent on aid at a time of emergency in which the region could no longer sustain itself.
If we already know that the phenomenon of ‘El Niño’ is coming, we create the conditions so that when it arrives with all its forces, we are prepared. As? Drinking water solutions and create possibilities so that they can be more easily mobilized from one area to another.
In addition to that, creating assistance centers in Alta Guajira, which is an idea that I am just developing, so that people can take shelter when they have a problem in their territories.
Corruption
ENS: What to respond to the sectors in the center of the country who maintain that many of the resources that are promised for social investment and works have not turned out because the local political class and corruption end up keeping the resources?
AD: The easy solution to the issue is to say that in La Guajira there are problems because money is stolen. That is why there have been no basic solutions, since they are left with only that.
Recently a report came out in the Comptroller’s Office that talks about the departments with the most ‘white elephants’ in the country. La Guajira is not even close to the first place.
Corruption in the country is an issue that we have to end anywhere. What happens is that in La Guajira there is a very different diagnosis. It is the only territory in Colombia where the indigenous population lives in 40% of the desert. That is why we have difficult problems to solve. And to this we must add the historical abandonment of the state.
Many have come to persecute La Guajira. So many people have been imprisoned and the problem continues. So, if the problem continues, it means that you have to attack in another way that is definitive.
ENS: How do you see the outlook for the October elections? And what are your party’s bets?
AD: We have a candidate for Governor. The campaign starts today and we will do everything we can to make them victorious.