Paper short abstract:

This paper examines forms of state abandonment in the port-city of Buenaventura, Colombia. It ethnographically analyses a state-led project (Plan Todos Somos PAZcífico) and look at the (political, social, and material) junctures it generates

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses the recent political trajectories of the water infrastructure system in the Colombian port-city of Buenaventura. The city, located in southwestern Colombia, has been shaped by high rates of violence, racial segregation, infrastructural breakdowns, and irregular patterns of urbanization. Moreover, it has been marked by precarious urban development policies both by the local and the central governments. Buenaventura is principally inhabited by impoverished Afro-Colombian communities and hosts the biggest port of the country, which have led to several social and material inequalities. Drawing on ethnographic material and official documents, the paper explores the state-led interventions– and the abandonment they produce - on the water infrastructure system in the city. The system is highly deficient, forcing the population to improvise access to water and leading to massive political mobilizations. I turn to the term “organized abandonment” proposed by anthropologist Daniel Goldstein to describe forms of simultaneous state involving and neglect, which result in several forms of (urban) precarity. I focus on the Plan Todos Somos PAZcífico (PTSP), a recent development project funded by the World Bank (WB) and the Interamerican Development Bank (IDB) and whose main goal, to improve and expand the water infrastructures in the city, has not been attained. In dialogue with anthropological literature on the state and infrastructure, I argue that the PTSP produces forms of (infra)structural violence, material ruination, messiness, and collective anger. Furthermore, I examine the different forms of unsettled-ness the project encapsulates and look at the several (political, social, and material) junctures it generates.