Now there is not anybody who stops the growth of Inírida. Its kind, working (except the state professional employees), drinking full at highest levels people, they reproduce and they take in their families to know that beautiful and peaceful corner, so likely to stay. The ordinary Colombian when "Guainía" is asked, they confuse it with La Guajirae23, they have to see the map to know where to locate it, they think that it is at the Eastern Plains, but they doesn't imagine the forest. And she is there, know her or not. As well as the town tranquility, stranger for the great city inhabitants. In its streets the robberies, the murders are not every day bread. There are them, but they are not plentiful.
Their streets are almost all for pedestrians. Only the rich of town have car, it is not good for something different to turn the town around. Minibuses, trucks and vans take charge of passengers and load, and they are not many. The normal thing is that the driver waits and people pass. Something completely strange for the city dweller: Their streets hardly sound. What sounds is the bustle of taverns, billiards and stores, but few motors. With the main street paving, motos and cars began to run and even this way, its streets continue being human. They don't know that in the city we don't live them but rather we suffer them! They ignore that pedestrians pass the street as quickly as possible and with fear, so that they don't pass us for above...
The colonists are a mixture between the simple and rustic peasant, and the inhabitants of the marginal neighborhoods of our cities. Each one for their side defense his self, takes their earth and tame it like a wild pony. Even the parish priest from the only one Catholic temple he complained about how hard it was to motivate them to make something in common. The natives that live to their side continue being community, but not in the same way, because they want to resemble their neighbors.
The Iniridense society is a hard to believe kaleidoscope: Boyacenses, Cundinamarqueses, Llaneros, Bogotanians, Vallunos, Chocoanos, Nariñenses, Coasters and some few local. All live blended with Puinaves, Curripacos, Piratapuyos, Yerales, Guahíbos, Tucanos, Desanos, Uaunanos and another small groups. To them they are added the Brazilians and some few Venezuelans. All of them can live in the same neighborhood, to marry among them, to suffer with each soccer game, to despair with every time that the plant is damaged... Everybody fight, everybody suffer, and it doesn't care the ethnos.
With the exception of the evangelical ones, all the men of Inírida are good to drink. They invite everybody who they can and they talk on any thing. And not only on weekends! It is striking the quantity of alcohol that they can waste away in a small town. The ordinary colonist thinks that "he is making homeland", he swears that he makes to recognize that territory like Colombian. The settlers of the town are hardly found and it doesn't care to them a lot. Very often the militaries go out to the streets with their colored faces and their camouflaged uniforms; and they jog and sing their male and patriotic hymns. In its turn, the guerrilla is everywhere, but they walk in civil clothes and they are more discreet. The common knows who they integrate it but conflicts are not generated by that reason.
Only ten deaths for a confrontation between guerrilla and army are the thirty year-old balance. A record that any departamento would envy. And those deaths were originated by a policeman that killed several in a small population. The guerrilla requested the army to bring him that they will judge him. The militaries refused and, when they were taking him out by the road to the airport, a shooting lit up, and the ten policemen that accompanied him they were all dead. The guerillas fighters took their own ones. The surplus is almost anything.
They are more the deads for fights between the same "relatives" (indigenous) or the same colonists that they face for any thing when they are drunk. Anyway, the main cause of death continues being the bullet wound, followed by the drowning and the tuberculosis (according to the secretary of departmental health).
The discords, the sudden ill wills, I saw them somewhere around, blended in an explosive way with alcohol, money and women. But I felt surer in the most dangerous street in Inírida than in any corner of Cali. In the great city the aggressiveness is twice as much, the enemy is not nobody and it is everybody. It can be that a bullet comes out from a camper and it takes you directly to heaven. In Inírida, as in almost every town, if somebody wants to kill the other, the whole town smells it from the beginning. That they remain silent for convenience it is another thing.
With the growth it is getting lost the spontaneous charity, an ingredient that was very common among the colonists. As everybody have passed difficulties to arrive, if one arrived deeply distressed, it didn't lack who spread him the hand with a dish of soup or a place where to shelter for a while, provided he showed will to work. This is being replaced by the typical city unresponsiveness.
NOTEClick
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La Guajira is the northern most Colombian continental departamento; it is predominantly desert. Nothing to see with jungles and rivers.