James Fyfe

Located on the outskirts of the city of Buenaventura, in southern Colombia, and bordering the Pacific rainforest, La Gloria is a city of hope.

After years of suffering ongoing paramilitary violence in the region, the village is now and example of a people building a new future of peace. Whereas a few years ago a walk through the village would have found houses locked and boarded up out of fear, now one finds children playing in the streets and people dancing in their homes to the music of currulao.

The village has no running water and can by all respects be considered a slum, but what it lacks in basic amenities it makes up for in alegría , the happiness of its people, who despite all their hardships still possess an unparalleled joy for life.

La Gloria may be much safer now but its brutal past is still remembered in the form of crosses scattered across the surrounding jungle marking the sites of past murders and assassinations.

Many of the people living in La Gloria have been forcibly displaced from other parts of the coast and are now struggling to survive and forge a new life with little money in a city filled with thousands of other displaced people and high numbers of unemployment.

Recent years have seen Colombia's internal conflict shift from its traditional battleground of the Amazon jungle region of the country to the Pacific coast, where left-wing guerillas and right-wing paramilitaries fight each other for new coastal routes to smuggle drugs northwards to Mexico and the United States.

The lush jungle that borders La Gloria includes numerous gold mines where a large number of villagers work hoping to strike it lucky.

With its violent past hopefully now behind it, the residents of La Gloria are now working together to continue developing the village and at the same time to retain their Afro-Colombian roots.

 - 2009

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