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BUENAVENTURA, Colombia
Zulma Mosquera didn’t want to leave Buenaventura, the Pacific port city of more than 450,000 people in western Colombia where she grew up, and where she and her four children called home. But, like hundreds like her in recent weeks, she felt she had to escape.
The exodus has been propelled by a wave of gang violence that started in late December, but residents say it’s also the result of racialised neglect in a city where the population – which is 85 percent Afro-Colombian – struggles even for basic public services.
Driven by concern over worsening crime but also by anger over longstanding marginalisation, hundreds took to the streets of Buenaventura last month in a series of demonstrations, blocking access to the port and calling for urgent government intervention.