InSight Crime: After a long flight over a sea of trees, the ocean begins to emerge through the window of the twin-propeller plane. The vast Pacific meets the Darién jungle in the remote Colombian town of Juradó, in the northwestern Chocó department.
A gray sky and sticky humidity greet passengers at an airstrip, more a muddy clearing in dense vegetation than a suitable landing zone. Among the passengers is the town’s mayor, Denio Jimenez.
“This airstrip cost 25 billion pesos, [but] it’s 300 meters short,” he complains in a video he posted on social media while waiting for his luggage. “The plane couldn’t land under normal conditions […] It’s dangerous to land here.”
The unfinished airstrip is the only link between Juradó and the rest of Colombia. Quibdó, the departmental capital, lies 200 kilometers to the south and is inaccessible by land. Juradó residents must endure a nearly three-hour boat journey along the Pacific coast to reach Bahía Solano, the nearest Colombian town.
To enter Juradó’s town center, a remote area surrounded by rivers and ocean, visitors must navigate a 15-minute boat ride through mangroves. The isolation is exacerbated by frequent phone signal outages, leaving the community even more disconnected from the outside world.
Yet, despite its remoteness, Juradó is, according to its mayor, “a strategic point for everything.” The municipality shares land, river, and maritime borders with Panama, just 19 kilometers north, making it a prime corridor for drug trafficking, arms smuggling, contraband, and, increasingly, human smuggling between the two countries. more here