![\"Bryan](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/DSC07904-1786751593.jpg\")
Bryan Reyes sits at the edge of his hospital bed in a temporary medical tent outside Luis Ablanque de la Plata District Hospital [Euan Wallace\/Al Jazeera]<\/p>\nChronic under-investment<\/p>\n
In Buenaventura alone, some 540 homes have collapsed and 3,416 sustained damage. Some 330 residents were injured.<\/p>\n
But at the Luis Ablanque de la Plata District Hospital, several wards have been out of operation following the earthquake.<\/p>\n
The injured lie by the dozens in beds under tents outside in the hospital\u2019s sweltering car park, waiting to be treated for a range of breaks and tears sustained in the disaster.<\/p>\n
Bryan Reyes, 29, sustained three fractures in his leg after jumping out of a first-floor window to escape the earthquake.<\/p>\n
A shipyard worker who carries cargo for a living, he called the earthquake response evidence of Buenaventura’s long history of institutional neglect.<\/p>\n
“It is a total abandonment. It\u2019s like the people here just don\u2019t matter,” he said.<\/p>\n
Reyes pointed to the lack of resources at the hospital. The limited supplies, he explained, are a symptom of chronic under-investment.<\/p>\n
“Before the earthquake struck, there was a strike at the hospital because the workers hadn\u2019t been paid,” Reyes said. “There are never any supplies; they don’t pay the doctors or specialists.”<\/p>\n
Bryan Reyes sits at the edge of his hospital bed in a temporary medical tent outside Luis Ablanque de la Plata District Hospital [Euan Wallace\/Al Jazeera]<\/p>\n
Buenaventura has historically lagged in socioeconomic development compared with other urban hubs like Cali, which is located in the same department.<\/p>\n
According to government estimates from 2024, 15.4 percent of the city’s population lives in multidimensional poverty, a term that economists use to capture deprivation beyond dollar amounts.<\/p>\n
Multidimensional poverty includes factors like a lack of access to education, healthcare and other basic public infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Buenaventura has more than double the rate of multidimensional poverty as Cali, where 6.7 percent of residents experience that issue.<\/p>\n
In 2025, the civic monitoring group Buenaventura Como Vamos (BCV) also found that 72 percent of residents struggled to find work.<\/p>\n
Approximately 70 percent reported having to eat fewer than three meals a day due to insufficient food.<\/p>\n
The city also has a relatively high Afro-Colombian population, a minority ethnic group that has been historically marginalised. Some 88.5 percent of the city identifies as being of African descent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chronic under-investment In Buenaventura alone, some 540 homes have collapsed and 3,416 sustained damage. Some 330 residents were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":859108,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,29759,9830,295,5105,893,13199,799,44,35117,66],"class_list":["post-859107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-colombia","tag-earthquakes","tag-environment","tag-features","tag-government","tag-humanitarian-crises","tag-latin-america","tag-news","tag-poverty-and-development","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=859107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/859108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=859107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=859107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=859107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}