Luis Fernando Gonzalez Escobar,
By Luis Fernando Gonzalez EscobarAcademic coordinator of the doctorate in Urban and Territorial Studies of the Faculty of Architecture of the National University, Medellín headquarters.
The Quibdó-Medellín highway is perhaps one of the longest in Colombia. Not because of its length, 215 kilometers, but because of the time it took to build. Almost a hundred years and it’s still not over.
The story is this. In 1924, engineer Roberto J. White prepared the plan that reflected the dream of the then National Administration of Chocó to have a road plan. This had as its axis from north to south the Central Highway of Chocó, a project between Quibdó, Istmina and Negría that, in practice, was conceived as a means of interoceanic communication between two extreme river ports, the first on the Atrato River and the last , in San Juan.
Three transversal road axes were also derived from this:
1) The Quibdó-Bolívar highway (Antioquia);
2) The Tadó-Pueblo Rico highway (formerly Caldas, today Risaralda); and
3) The first class road, from a place in front of Opogodó to Cartago (Valle del Cauca), later designed as a highway.
That was the dream of connecting Chocó and its central interoceanic waterway with the west of the country. An important road development that was taking place at that time.
At the end of the same decade of the 1920s, aerial cables, railways and other road routes would be added to this road plan – for example, Acandí-Sautatá, to connect the Caribbean coast of Choco and the Atrato River. In short, a dream with very few realities.
One of those few realities was the project of the central interoceanic highway whose plans and outlines were in charge of a German commission in 1925, and the construction of the first kilometers between Istmina and Negría. And the other began to materialize in 1927 when the mayoral government itself imported an “Erie” hydraulic shovel with which it began to excavate the jungle, starting from Quibdó in the direction of Bolívar, but whose momentum only allowed it to “explain” 20 kilometers, thus that reached Tutunendo.
Of course, the cars of the local elites rolled along this road and advanced to that town on the banks of the river of the same name, which became a spa and place for walks for the Quibdoseños, but still very far from an effective connection to the Andean region. .
The national government only became interested in that highway in 1931, when it included in the national highway plan 219 kilometers for the Municipality of Chocó, a length that was calculated for the transversal routes between Carago-Novita and Bolívar-Quibdó. Despite the law that supported this plan, the route continued to be the same bridle path for a long time.
Only in 1944, still unfinished, was the highway inaugurated, the same year in which the first bus arrived in the city of Quibdó from Medellín. Lisandro Mosquera Lozano from the ABC newspaper of Quibdó, welcomed this achievement, saw the benefits, among them the possibilities of exporting coffee from Greater Caldas and the southwest of Antioquia through the Atrato, and extended the genealogy of the efforts to have this communication until the times of the national road in the last quarter of the 19th century. In 1946 its use began to be standardized.
But what was celebrated as a great achievement turned into true ignominy. The central north-south interoceanic axis was never finalized and no roads were built in Chocó to connect its towns and urban centers.
Extractive routes were established towards the interior of the country that had Quibdó as their starting point, on the banks of the Atrato River. Those routes have always been trails. In fact, the drivers called it “the trail.” The community as “the trail of death” for the hundreds of dead that were buried or went to the abysses in 80 years of use.
A hellish unpaved road, full of holes and mudflats, winding and narrow, located between abysses and unstable slopes due to the intensity of the rain in the humid tropical jungle, probably the one that rains the most in the world. Faced with the difficulties of the terrain, there was never a response with adequate particular technical work or with sufficient resources.
The road has never been a priority for national governments. Except every time the Chocó community protested and included a highway plan in their requests. These plans have also requested the rectification of the Quibdó-Bolívar highway, at times such as the Civic Strike of 1987, the strike of 2000 and that of 2016.
Thus, resources have been allocated to projects without continuity, such as the construction of the Yuto bridge over the Atrato River, which was completed in 1998 but without a road. And until reaching phases I and II of the still called “Medellín-Quibdó Transversal”, whose route is Quibdó-La Mansa-Ciudad Bolívar, with a length of 102 kilometers.
They have been involved in this type of projects since 2009. And despite the deadlines granted, the resources invested, the kilometers paved, the sections rectified, the bridges built, etc., it is still not finished being built. In addition, it has serious problems, including geotechnical problems, which caused the collapse on January 12, 2024 at the Las Toldas site. To the already long and forgotten list of deaths on the “trail of death” 39 are added today.
The latest deaths are another offense. One more demonstration of structural racism, historical debt and socio-territorial injustice in the country. This is evident in other types of center-periphery connections, such as the connection between the Andean region and the Amazon jungle, the so-called “Trampoline of Death”, or the Bogotá-Villavicencio highway itself.
For a long time, experts, academics, multilateral organizations and banks have pointed out Colombia’s lag in road infrastructure. There is a problem of quantity and quality.
Despite the efforts of the latest governments, the indicators continue to be poor, below the Latin American average in kilometers built, kilometers paved, density of roads in relation to population, speed of mobility, amount of investment, connectivity between cities, etc.
In Chocó it is even more serious because of 100% of Colombia’s road network – by 2022 some 205,109 kilometers – what was built there only represents 0.39% of the national total. Of that, only 0.61 is part of the primary network, with just 148.9 kilometers paved.
Despite being imprecise, it can be said that in 80 years of the 219 kilometers of the 1931 national road plan there have only been 53 kilometers of main roads. The department still does not have an integrated road system.
The extractive transversals, the main ones, are the same as more than ninety years ago, although others have been added further south from San José del Palmar or to the north from Riosucio towards Urabá Antioquia.
There are still more kilometers projected than those that have been built in that department. It is an appendix of the country, with which the interior barely communicates. The dream of the mayoral ruling class of reaching western Colombia has not yet been fulfilled.
Many resources have been squandered over the years on uncompleted works and corruption, in which sectors of the regional leadership have also been complicit.
The post Quibdó-Medellín, the story of an infernal trail appeared first on Chocó7días.com.