Fear and anguish reign among the thousands of displaced people who arrived at the Ocaña coliseum after leaving behind their lives in the Colombian region of Catatumbo where a confrontation between the guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN) and a dissent of the FARC, which has already lasted a week, forced them to flee their land.

Coming from different hamlets in the area, the displaced people pile up in the Algerian coliseum Durán Quintero, so named in memory of that politician and former minister born in Ocaña and who, like them, was a victim of the armed conflict because he was kidnapped by the guerrilla of the People’s Liberation Army (EPL) in January 1992 and died in captivity a month and a half later, at the age of 77.

Many of the newcomers agree to talk to the press, but few give their name for fear of suffering reprisals if they return home, a possibility that for now they see remote.

“No, it’s very difficult for me to go back there, very difficult, you have to fix a lot for one to return because (…) there is a lot of violence,” Delma Martínez (name changed) tells EFE.

The 66-year-old woman says that last Thursday, when the clashes between the ‘elenos’ and the 33rd Front of the FARC dissidents began, she left the sidewalk (village) of Piedras de Moler, in the jungle area of Teorama, one of the municipalities of Catatumbo.

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“The shooting was formed and I had to come to (the hamlet) Las Chircas because the situation got angry,” he says in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the coliseum.

According to the Ombudsman’s Office on Tuesday, of the 32,000 displaced people, 15,086 arrived in Cúcuta, capital of Norte de Santander; 11,503 to Ocaña, the second city in that department, and 5,300 in Tibú, a town located in the Catatumbo.

Upon arriving at the coliseum, they are directed to some attention stations marked with the names of the municipalities from which they come where officials take the data in the midst of a constant hustle and bustle for the arrival of food and mats.

Entities such as the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare (ICBF), which takes care of children and adolescents; firefighters, the Ombudsman’s Office, the Colombian Red Cross and the Emiro Quintero Cañizares Hospital, participate in this assistance.

There are also “sycological care” and “spiritual care” points, and on a soccer field located at the back of the coliseum, some boys play while adults prepare food in large pots.

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“One is stigmatized, with nerves because of so much violence and so many children suffering,” adds the woman.

As he explains, his group was composed of “six people, three women and three boys”, who walked in the direction of Ocaña, but halfway she injured her leg in a fall, so they had to ask a motorcyclist for help to raise it in the back.

The woman adds that although they have received the first aid, they fear for their future if the crisis continues.

“They are behaving well with us because they are giving us ‘room’ and food,” he says, adding that they also need clothes and toiletries. “I am a person who doesn’t have a job here, I don’t even get (the subsidy for) the elderly anymore (…) they took that away from us,” he says.

In the same situation is Torcoroma, 37, who arrived in Ocaña along with her husband and two children, aged 16 and 11, from San Pablo, a district of Teorama, with fear in his body for “the crossfire between the FARC and the ELN”.

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This housewife tells EFE that the outbreak of violence was not a surprise because “there was one or two rumors that there was a ceasefire only for the December season, but we do not know why they are in this fight” because until now, in São Paulo “both groups lived together.”

“At all,000 people came,” he says, adding that they left “with the only thing we could put in some backpacks and the papers (documents).”

On the possibility of returning to San Pablo, a farmhouse that in recent years experienced a bonanza for coca, Torcoroma responds: “No, we have to wait for something else to normalize and that we do not run the risk of returning to our homes.”

“You know that there is a saying ‘he who owes nothing, fears nothing’, but for killing another they come out by killing someone who owes nothing,” he concludes.

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