Buenaventura fears earthquake recovery will deepen state neglect of Colombia's poorest port city

Lorena Hipis stands in what remains of her living room, staring through the kitchen doorway at nothing in particular. The afternoon heat presses down on the exposed interior of her home. One entire side of the structure has been torn away. Where her roof once was, there is now open sky and the skeletal frame of metal rebar reaching upward like broken fingers.

On Monday, a 7.4-magnitude earthquake shook Colombia's Pacific coast. In Buenaventura, a port city of 432,000 people, a five-story building next to Hipis's house collapsed entirely. The impact destroyed half of her home and flattened her mother's house nearby. Four people died inside that building. Now, three days later, Hipis waits. She waits for someone to clear the debris. She waits for the government. She waits for help that has not arrived.

"The municipality, the state and the government haven't come here," she said on Thursday. In her daughter's bedroom, chunks of concrete and brick hang suspended from the ceiling, threatening to fall. The weight of the neighboring building's rubble presses down on what little roof remains. Hipis is afraid it will collapse on top of her. She is desperate for someone to remove it. "The government is taking too long. And this is an urgent situation."

Across Buenaventura, the earthquake's toll is visible and measurable: 540 homes collapsed entirely, 3,416 more sustained damage, 330 people were injured. Nationally, the quake killed 287 people. Buenaventura accounted for 19 of those deaths. Yet residents fear that in the recovery effort to come, their city will be overlooked. Buenaventura is home to Colombia's largest port, yet it remains one of the country's poorest urban centers. The worry is that resources will flow instead to larger provincial capitals like Pereira and Cali, leaving the Pacific coast behind once again.

This fear is rooted in lived experience. At the Luis Ablanque de la Plata District Hospital, entire wards have been shuttered since the earthquake. The injured lie by the dozens in beds positioned under tents in the hospital's parking lot, waiting for treatment in the sweltering heat. Bryan Reyes, a 29-year-old shipyard worker, sustained three fractures in his leg when he jumped from a first-floor window to escape the shaking. From his bed, he described the earthquake response as confirmation of what he already knew: that Buenaventura does not matter to those in power. "It is a total abandonment. It's like the people here just don't matter," he said. Before the earthquake, hospital workers had gone on strike because they had not been paid. Supplies are perpetually scarce. Doctors and specialists go unpaid. The hospital's collapse under the weight of disaster is not a surprise to anyone who lives here—it is simply the expected outcome of chronic under-investment.

The numbers tell the story of a city left behind. Government data from 2024 shows that 15.4 percent of Buenaventura's population lives in multidimensional poverty—a measure that captures deprivation across education, healthcare, and basic infrastructure, not just income. In Cali, located in the same department, that figure is 6.7 percent. Buenaventura's rate is more than double. A civic monitoring group found in 2025 that 72 percent of residents struggle to find work. Approximately 70 percent reported eating fewer than three meals a day due to insufficient food. The city is 88.5 percent Afro-Colombian, a minority group that has been historically marginalized in Colombia. The earthquake did not create these conditions. It simply exposed them more starkly.

Betsy Tenorio lost her grandfather, Arnulfo, when his house collapsed on Monday. He could not escape because he suffered from paralysis on his right side. His home was in Barrio Oriente, a neighborhood of worn brick houses and potholed roads. The mayor visited the area on the day of the earthquake. Since then, Tenorio has heard nothing from authorities. "We only received help for one hour," she said through tears. The support her family has received has come from neighbors and community members, not from the state. Alfonso Grueso, president of the Association of Community Action Boards, estimates that roughly 750 homes in Barrio Oriente were damaged—about 15 percent of the neighborhood's population. Aside from the mayor's initial tour, the state has offered no assistance. "What we need most is help from the state and the municipal government, since practically none has arrived," Grueso said.

In the earthquake's aftermath, security has become another urgent concern. In Cali, soldiers patrol the streets. In Buenaventura, no such measures have been deployed. A special anti-extortion military unit that had been patrolling near a collapsed apartment building was pulled away on Monday night due to a prison riot. Shortly after, looting began. For residents like Hipis, whose homes now lack walls and roofs, the absence of security compounds the disaster. She watches from her buckled kitchen wall as young boys kick through the debris. "We have no security, we have no walls, we have nothing," she said. Volunteers trying to deliver aid in Barrio Oriente say they need police escorts because of gang violence in the area.

Experts warn that the earthquake will deepen problems that have plagued Buenaventura for decades. Iveth Dalissa Caceres, a social worker, predicts that poverty rates will rise across the city and the broader Pacific region. She sees underdevelopment and disaster as cyclical forces that feed each other. "Disasters generally occur in the Pacific. The highest poverty rates are in the Pacific. Violence is in the Pacific," she said. Yet Caceres also points to something else that defines Buenaventura: a deep well of community resilience. She is one of hundreds of residents coordinating relief efforts. She oversees a community kitchen that prepares and distributes 400 meals daily to affected areas. "We are an incredibly resilient community, so that means we fall once and get back up ten thousand times," she said. "We were born in this situation. So that's what we've learned: to keep moving forward no matter what."