What’s behind the grenade attacks rocking Bogotá’s San Bernardo neighborhood?

Bogotá, Colombia – Bogotá’s inner-city enclave of San Bernardo was struck by a grenade assault final week, the fourth such assault in a month, even amid a safety clampdown which has executed little to dent a turf battle between drug gangs.

Within the latest incident on the night of March 25, two males mounted on a bike tossed an explosive gadget into a bunch of individuals gathered on a road nook of the barrio, which lies within the coronary heart of the Colombian capital’s troubled Santa Fe district. Three individuals had been reported injured.

Three comparable earlier assaults in the identical neighborhood claimed the lives of 4 individuals, with dozens injured, all within the area of 5 weeks, a part of a feud between a Venezuelan crime group often known as Los Venecos and a rival Colombian gang known as Los Costeños, in line with police statements.

The gangs had been preventing over territory and drug trafficking, defined Normal Giovanni Cristancho, commander of the Bogotá Police, to El Espectador newspaper after an earlier assault.

“These explosions search to generate concern, to have an effect on the opposing group, and so they kill harmless individuals, homeless individuals. It’s pure terrorism, there’s no different approach to put it,” he stated.

Repeated police raids within the barrio had captured 120 individuals and seized 20,000 doses of medication, weapons, and grenades, he added.

However simply hours after the most recent wave of safety operations within the barrio, with specialist police groups supported by navy items, one gang openly launched the fourth grenade assault.  

Capital battle

“Out of the blue it looks as if Colombia’s battle has come right here,” native resident Carlos Sosa advised Latin America Studies after we visited San Bernardo after the most recent incident.

Sosa works half time within the Nuestra Señora de los Dolores church, within the middle of the neighborhood. Initially from Venezuela, he has lived in San Bernardo for seven years.

The neighborhood all the time had suffered from insecurity, he stated, however since December final yr crime has reached new ranges. The decline of the barrio was creating large unrest, with individuals transferring away.

“I’m guessing in recent times half the neighborhood has left. Persons are scared. And they’re scared to speak,” he stated.

Sosa pinned the underlying issues on widespread poverty. The church assisted with meals handouts and a migrant shelter with area for 30 beds however had been hit by cuts to USAID funding.

“We’ve needed to let employees go and reduce on the numbers of individuals we are able to help. We’re a poor church in a poor barrio,” he stated.

Sosa identified the paradox of San Bernardo’s proximity to Bogotá’s major police command middle, three blocks away on the nook of the Parque Tercer Milenio.

“Persons are promoting and shopping for medicine in plain sight, and everyone seems to be asking ‘why don’t they do one thing’ however nothing modifications,” he stated.

A brand new Bronx?

Outdoors the church, in a small park on the coronary heart of San Bernardo dozens of individuals dwelling in very precarious circumstances had been smoking and sharing bazuco, a road drug created from the residue of cocaine manufacturing.

Some talked to Latin America Studies on the idea their actual names weren’t used. Even then, they had been very reluctant to present particulars of the continued battle in ‘Samber’, because the barrio is understood colloquially.

At instances the neighborhood felt deserted, one stated, with metropolis officers turning as much as “promise change and take a photograph, then depart”. The barrio had additionally turn into a hub for individuals to purchase small doses of medication which may price simply 2,000 pesos (US$0.5), stated one other

“Folks fall into vice right here, and San Bernardo is the place to come back to purchase medicine.”

He defined that drug dealing had intensified in San Bernardo after a infamous Bogotá slum, El Bronx, which for many years was a no-go space for police and metropolis authorities, was “retaken” by 2,500 police and troopers in 2016, with many buildings demolished.

As was documented by social organizations on the time, the Bronx operation merely dispersed drug gangs to different city areas comparable to San Bernardo, 5 blocks away.

The “Bronxification” of latest districts was a priority being raised by metropolis authorities final week. In an official statement Bogotá’s mayor Carlos Galán vowed to deliver San Bernardo underneath management.  

“This new assault, just like the earlier ones in the identical space, is the response of felony gangs searching for to outlive the sustained siege by the Bogotá Police on their constructions within the San Bernardo neighborhood,” he stated.

Epicenter of exclusion

The neighborhood would turn into the main target of an formidable social intervention to handle the a number of issues, with “48 billion pesos allotted to a complete care plan” focused at susceptible populations together with homeless individuals, victims of the armed battle, indigenous communities and youngsters and adolescents in danger.

The mayor’s workplace labelled San Bernardo an “epicenter of exclusion; essentially the most excluded inhabitants in Bogotá” and promised to “flip it right into a hub of inclusion”.

The disaster in San Bernardo put the safety coverage of Mayor Galan underneath the highlight with current figures displaying homicides in Colombia’s capital climbed 11.9 % in 2024 in comparison with the earlier yr, with 1,204 murders recorded throughout town.  

Of those 90 occurred within the downtown district of Santa Fe, which incorporates San Bernardo, which when adjusted for inhabitants offers a murder price of 83 per 100,000; greater than 5 instances town common.

Bogotá’s safety chief César Restrepo performed down the rise commenting to newspaper El Pais that 60% of the homicide victims had felony information and half of the homicides arose from contract killings associated to territorial disputes between felony gangs, which he additionally linked to elevated stress from town authorities redoubling its actions towards felony organizations, with 300 gang leaders captured.

“There are two methods to decrease the speed: making agreements with criminals in order that they don’t turn into violent [in exchange for allowing them to continue their criminal businesses] or dismantling crime, hitting them. We’re not going to make felony agreements, so we went on the offensive,” he says.

He defined that the assaults by regulation enforcement towards one gang imply that rivals then make the most of that weak point to dispute territory.

Army-grade grenades

For a lot of commentators, although, the troubles in San Bernardo stemmed from an absence – slightly than an extra – of state presence, with some demanding a large-scale militarization of the zone.

“The battle unleashed in San Bernardo can not watch for short-term measures, we demand the authorities militarize the barrio now,” metropolis councilor Oscar Vahos told City News final week.  “This battle between gangs has mutated into city terrorism,” he stated.

His level was underlined by information that grenades used within the current assaults had been of navy origin and fabricated by Colombia’s major arms provider, Indumil.

How these restricted navy weapons ended up being utilized by drug gangs in San Bernardo could be topic to a “thorough investigation”, stated safety chief Carlos Restrepo calling on “these in control of a lot of these armaments” –  in impact the Colombian military – to take measures to make sure they don’t fall into felony arms.

The grenade revelation solely underlined the ability and sources of organized gangs in Bogotá. Many individuals we talked to in San Bernardo had been uncertain that the present packages being deliberate for the barrio would repair the underlying problem of micro trafficking. At greatest, the issue would simply be displaced.

“They clear up one space then the issue shifts some other place,” one stated. “Normally someplace shut by.”

Featured picture of a homeless individual within the Santa Fe district of Bogotá, Colombia. Picture credit score: Steve Conceal