Changing Lifestyles : Forgotten by Time : Development threatens the tranquillity of a Colombian coastal region.

Weary of the turmoil that convulses much of Colombia, Enrique Murillo a few years ago returned to his birthplace in this village of four mud streets along the Pacific Ocean, where dogs and chickens rule the roads and life is lived on the porches of thatched wood shacks.

Murillo sought out the tranquillity he remembered as a child, the isolation of this remote jungle region where whole villages have never known electricity or running water.

He grew small patches of rice and plantains, ate fish and wild game and cared for his two children with the medicinal herbs that the 500 descendants of slaves who live here have always used: aloe for headaches, ipecac for snake bites, “three corners” for the evil eye.

But change is now on the horizon, and Murillo is worried. Colombia has embarked on an ambitious plan to bring development to this long-neglected region, including a possible port and a highway to connect the Pacific coast to the rest of the country.

Murillo and the other residents of this town, who have never known change, are in shock. While some residents long for the prosperity that they hope the development will bring, others fear a loss of community, culture and the natural environment they treasure.

“This has always been a united community where everyone knew each other and helped each other out,” Murillo said. “But when the road arrives and people begin to arrive from everywhere, hearts will change. Some people will leave looking for work, some will head for their land in the jungle and others will pick up a gun to steal and kill.”

One old woman fears “colonizers” will come to steal the gold she is sure lies under the ground. And some residents worry about the arrival of drugs. In contrast to much of the rest of Colombia, Tribuga and most of this region have been relatively immune to the guerrilla warfare and violent drug-trafficking that have characterized recent Colombian history. The isolation that kept the region poor also seemed to spare it Colombia’s worst scourges.

Last year technicians arrived from the central government to conduct tests for the port, and the government has set aside $347 million for a major project that will include infrastructure and health and education programs. The port and the project are designed to catapult Colombia’s Pacific region, one of the hemisphere’s poorest, into the 20th Century.

In addition, word has spread here that a 64-mile stretch of the Pan-American Highway through the nearby Darien Gap will also be completed within a few years. The project is a product of a recent agreement between Panama and Colombia and will fulfill a historical dream of uniting Central and South America. An extension of the road will unite the Colombian interior to Tribuga and is expected to bring full-scale economic expansion to the area, currently accessible only by boat or plane.

People in Tribuga, like others in the state of Choco, are descendants of black slaves brought by the Spaniards to the Pacific in the 16th Century to mine for gold and of slaves liberated in the mid-19th Century who fled to this remote jungle region to get as far away from their former masters as they could. They have always felt treated like third-rate citizens.

Whether out of racism, as some claim, or simply because of a development model that favored the Andean region over the coast, the people in the Pacific areas of Choco, Narino, Valle del Cauca and Cauca states have been ignored throughout Colombia’s history, despite enormous potential in minerals and timber and a rich biodiversity unequaled in any other part of the world except the Amazon. The Pacific regions here count a population that is 90% black.

Like the mythical Macondo, invaded and then abandoned by banana companies in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” interest in this area by outside companies and the government has always been fickle.

In Quibdo, Choco’s capital city, sporadic efforts at development have left people high and dry. Most people are out of work, rotting food litters the streets and children with swollen bellies can be seen everywhere.

“I am angry with the government for the little they’ve done to improve the life of the people,” said one resident, looking out from the banks of the muddy River Atrato to the jungle 400 yards away. “There are no factories and no work and people are hungry.”

To combat the poverty, the administration of President Cesar Gaviria is stepping up efforts to prepare for what it is calling “The Era of the Pacific.” A law has been passed, under pressure from black groups, that recognizes the distinct cultural rights of black communities and gives them collective title to land and some control over their natural resources. A huge mission has gone to Asia in search of investment, and credits have been acquired from the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank.

The plan for the Pacific is to include, among other elements, the building of sorely needed clinics and the deployment of technicians to train residents in how to administer their towns.

But with the literacy rate here half the national average and few services, development will be a difficult task. Many members of the region’s black communities complain of a tradition of political corruption and of local leaders who, elected to represent Choco, end up in Bogota selling out to the Andean-oriented Establishment.

Cooperation at the regional level has also been frustrated by distrust and racially motivated suspicions between black and Indian groups going back at least 150 years.

At the same time, environmentalists are weighing in against the Pacific plans. They express the fear that any major development project will bring widespread devastation through deforestation.

“As soon as people from the interior arrive here on the new highway, they will haul all the wood away on both sides of the road and finish off this area which, together with the Amazon, serves as the lungs of the world,” said Jose Gabriel Posada, who heads a fledgling eco-tourism business in Nuqui, near Tribuga.

“To build this road and this port,” adds Murillo, “they will destroy part of our forests, the medicines that come from it and (thousands of acres) of mangrove swamp, from which we take fish, oysters and crab.”

But the development projects have their supporters among this region’s poor. They sit in 90-degree heat on their porches without work or any means of getting their produce to market, dreaming only of more money and a better way of life.

The infant-mortality rate here is a staggering 110 in 1,000, and only 4.2% of homes in the rural areas have running water. People motivated by what they see as better futures for their children, jobs besides fishing and farming or simply having a few improvements for their homes want development now.

“Today, it takes one and a half days to take a canoe-load of rice and plantain to the nearest port and exchange it for a bit of salad, kerosene and a few things to fix up the house,” a resident of Nuqui said.

“When the port and the road arrive, there will be good and bad, but there will always be money.”