makes it harder for people to get there, but also to communicate.”
When the earthquake happened, Conto said, getting in contact with her mother felt like an impossible mission. Calls were not going through. Leaving her with no way to know if her family was safe for at least 12 hours.
The Colombian Red Cross reported that the earthquake affected communities in 30 of Chocó’ s 31 municipalities. Many families lost homes, belongings, and livelihoods.
The organization also said the department lacks a tertiary care hospital that can provide the advanced and complex medical care that is currently unavailable at every medical facility in Chocó.
“ Chocó is a territory where every year and at different times of the year we experience an emergency,” said Alvarez Flores.“ The department regularly faces floods and landslides, often before communities have fully recovered from the previous emergency.”
This pattern extends beyond health care, and has also affected an already weak, but vital system: schools.“ My nieces and nephews were trampled while trying to escape. Others were afraid to return to buildings where walls had fallen,” said Palacios.
Schools have provided psychosocial support, but in some cases, Palacios said, students have returned to shortened school days of only two or three hours. Many children in Chocó remain afraid to return to school, even as local government agencies have provided psychosocial support to help students cope with the trauma.
Too often, communities in Chocó face repeated emergencies with limited time and resources to recover between them. For residents, each new disaster compounds longstanding challenges in health care, transportation, communication, and basic infrastructure.
These problems are deeply rooted. Chocó’ s development was deeply shaped by the colonial gold economy, which relied heavily on enslaved Africans brought to Colombia’ s Pacific region. The Afro-descendant people who escaped slavery, called cimarrons, established communities in the region and elsewhere, preserving forms of autonomy and cultural traditions.
That history is crucial to understanding the region today. Chocó has one of Colombia’ s largest Afro-descendant populations and has experienced persistent socioeconomic disparities.
In 2025, 65.3 % of its population was living in monetary poverty, the highest rate among Colombia’ s 32 departments, according to DANE, Colombia’ s national
Credit: World Central Kitchen / WCK. org
17