Extortion in the Atlantic became a monumental headache. Barranquilla and Soledad constitute its theater of operations. Which is not random. Here is concentrated almost the entire departmental GDP. This criminal modality has focused on the vulnerability of small and medium businesses because it does not have robust security schemes.

In Barranquilla, the most affected merchants are those of Undeco and Asocentro, which are made up of neighborhood shopkeepers, hardware stores and owners of establishments in the Historic Center. Extortion is not something recent, but those affected do feel that it has acquired greater evolution since 2019 with a brief interlude of reductions in 2020 due to the covid-19 lockdowns.

In the past, in some neighborhoods of the city, extortion was carried out wrapped in the offer of security. With the irruption of the district by the AUC, this ended.

Extortion, ambushed in cell phones, is characterized by being an operationally less risky activity for crime and economically very attractive.

Some flagellated merchants maintain that extortion is also carried out by groups or individuals not affiliated with recognized criminal gangs. Everything seems to indicate that they profitably usurp these criminal nomenclatures as if they were 'franchises' at their service. Extortion, of course, is a crime associated with the dynamics of organized criminal groups.

Those who engage in extortion activity, when they contact their victims and put forward their demands, sometimes assume the role of protectors to justify the money requested and grant discounts if the claims exceed the economic possibilities of their victims. In some cases, the same criminals reappear with the same extortion intentions, some time later, hiding behind another criminal label. Other times, they issue death threats to the merchants and their family members. And they have two paths: either they pay the 'vaccine' on time or they end up closing their businesses as numerous shopkeepers have done, with the consequent economic damage to their homes and employees.

The figures on extortion are today a partial photograph, since the crime is more widespread. The underreporting is attributable to the understandable fear of those affected. They do not denounce either in their union or in the judicial and police instances.

Nor have the economic, social and psychological implications of extortion been studied in depth. What we do know is that the popular economy has burst, increasing the tragedy of unemployment. Inside or outside prisons, crime cannot be tolerated. Living in fear does not make sense because it is equivalent to granting sovereignty to crime, which in the long run weakens the State. Without security, a fundamental right – we never tire of pointing it out – there is no freedom or democracy.