The construction of the San Francisco-Mocoa bypass is the solution to what happens on the Pan-American Highway after the collapse in Rosas, Cauca, which has paralyzed transportation in the south of the country. This was what the former governor of Putumayo Fabián Belnavis told EL NUEVO SIGLO, who also explained details of what happens on the road known as the ‘springboard of death’, an unpaved road, with a single three-meter lane and which is on unstable ground.
THE NEW CENTURY: What should be the solution to the problem facing the Pan-American Highway?
Fabian Belnavis: The solution to this Gordian knot is the materialization of an old desire in the south of the country: the construction of the San Francisco-Mocoa bypass. The variant, as an alternative to the gloomy current layout, consists of 44 kilometers that in 2022, with Invías resources worth 1.2 trillion pesos, was reactivated after eight years of abandonment, a work that must demand the entire attention of the national government so that it is not a ‘white elephant’ and a real solution that allows the departments of Nariño and Putumayo to be inserted into the country’s development circuits.
ENS: As a temporary measure, what is your proposal?
FB: In the meantime and while the variant is being built, it would be very important to guarantee permanent maintenance of the so-called ‘springboard’, to improve its signaling, to guarantee machinery and equipment to remove land and vehicles in the face of frequent landslides on the road. .
ENS: What benefits would the construction of the road have?
FB: Once the San Francisco-Mocoa bypass is built, the old section, whose name could be “biodiversity”, could be used for tourism, adventure sports, bird watching and, in general, for the enjoyment of a landscape and nature that are a potential territory of life and not an ode to folly, under the current name and conditions of the ‘springboard of death’.
ENS: What denotes the current state of the road?
FB: The state of the road called ‘springboard of death’ clearly reflects the place it represents for the Colombian government, its border areas, the historical absence of a Social State of Law that reaches all the inhabitants of this important portion of the territory national, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars contributed by the oil industry in Putumayo and a plausible explanation of the convincing electoral results obtained by the change proposal headed by President Gustavo Petro.
ENS: How long has this complicated road existed in Putumayo?
FB: Obviously, the conditions of the ‘springboard of death’, a work that has its genesis in the needs of the country derived from the Colombian-Peruvian conflict (1932-1933), prevent the transport of tractor-trailers, and the overload of mobilizing commerce and passengers by This dangerous highway increases freight rates, harming communities and services already affected by the blockage of the Pan-American Highway. Today the ‘springboard of death’ is once again national news, as it is the main route that connects Nariño with the center of the country, as a result of the collapse of the Pan-American Highway Pasto-Popayán, near the municipality of Rosas. , in the department of Cauca.
ENS: Why do they call it the ‘springboard of death’?
FB: Its name is associated with being the most dangerous road in Colombia, with 80 winding kilometers, with 18 curves per kilometer, in a beautiful landscape of Andean Amazonian forest, with heights between 600 meters and 2,800 meters above sea level. It is an unpaved road, with a single three-meter lane on unstable ground, which due to the constant fog and permanent rainfall, accounts for thousands of tragic accidents that have claimed the lives of hundreds of people in the abysses of more than 300 meters that characterize it.