Afterr Alejo Restrepo Mosquera
Chocó is an atypical region in the country due to the series of inequalities that afflict it. It is the only territorial entity that has coasts on both oceans, but not a highway that communicates it with the sea, let alone a port that serves as a starting point for international markets. Nor is there a decent road network that unites us with the interior of the country. We have the highest poverty rates in the country, rampant unemployment, infant mortality; We are not self-sustaining, and we are afflicted by illegal mining, drug trafficking, groups outside the law, common crime, and corruption.
Likewise, we are the only department that has been intervened by the National Government several times, that is, our territorial autonomy is not respected, all due to the unprecedented institutional crisis in which we have been immersed for several decades, caused by the foolishness of our political ruling class, which has only been interested in looting the treasury.
This setback began when the political leaders who replaced those of yesteryear appeared. With their lack of belonging and love for this land, in their desire for power and easy money, they began their disastrous pilgrimage through all the entities that supported the Department with income and as privateers, they destroyed everything, that is how they disappeared: The Company de Licores del Chocó, the Chocó Lottery, the fiscal houses, the eight-story building, the five-story building, the governor’s house, the cabotage ship, the Casa del Chocó in Bogotá, the Hotel Citara, etc. And like a ranch without owners, the henchmen of corrupt politicians each took their piece and no one was hurt at all. Due to the indifference of the Chocoanos who were permissive with this embezzlement against the income of the department, it was left without what to function with and the debacle ensued.
After the department’s sources of income were broken, the devastaters of the public began with the famous liquor deals, chances and large public works contracts. The few assets that remained fell prey to the voracious appetite of predators, who alienated everything that had been built by honest politicians of the past. That is why it is not strange to see today the assets of the department in the hands of individuals and foreigners.
Due to mismanagement and corruption, sectors such as health, education and basic sanitation also fell into misfortune, and because they were transfers from the central level, the governments of previous shifts opted for acute intervention, sending supporters of the National Government in order to put the house in order, but the remedy was worse than the disease. The foreigners, wrongly called auditors, only came to the apartment to do the same thing that the corrupt natives had been doing, filling their pockets and tidying up the house, nothing at all. They passed without pain or glory, like the last gravediggers, to show a button, Dasalud passed away and to this day the labor liabilities of his former employees have not been cancelled.
In recent years we have experienced an unprecedented institutional crisis due to the financial infeasibility of the department, caused by the liabilities that it has been dragging and to which no ruler has provided a solution. In the last decade we gave ourselves the “luxury” of having four governors, one by election and three handpicked by the central government, with the well-known institutional instability that this caused us.
If in the next four years our rulers do not change their attitude and become aware that Chocó must be managed neatly, not dividing the little that comes to us in business and corruption among campaign sponsors, absolutely nothing will happen; we will continue for many decades in the most complete underdevelopment. It is time for the Chocoano people to become aware and ask for results from the ruling class that they have been electing and that has always fleeced them. Enough of so much corruption in this department, an execrable phenomenon that has never allowed this region to head towards true progress and development.