Shakira said Monday she will help rebuild at least 10 schools and restore a local university in Chocó after a 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck western Colombia on Aug. 10, killing at least 287 people and destroying more than 26,000 dwellings.
The quake hit one of Colombia’s poorest regions and laid bare how fast disaster turns into abandonment when the people at the bottom are left to wait on distant institutions. In Quibdó, the capital of Chocó, Shakira toured damaged schools, hugged students and took photos with them during a surprise visit. The scene was intimate. The destruction was not.
Who Gets Left Holding the Damage
“What worries me the most is that schools are not rebuilt once this emergency is over,” Shakira told journalists. “Every day that children don’t go to school is a day they miss out on their future.” She also said in a video posted on X by the Colombian news outlet La FM: “It’s a place I love, a place where I’ve seen our students grow in our classrooms.”
At a large high school in Quibdó, she added, “There is not a way to alleviate the pain of so many, there are no magic solutions, but what there is, is commitment to be here alongside those from Chocó, to not abandon El Chocó like it historically has been abandoned, until every Colombian and every person from Chocó can return to their normal lives like they deserve and all the children can return to their schools and dream of the futures they deserve.” The line lands hard because the abandonment is already built into the region’s history.
Shakira, 49, was accompanied by Howard Buffett, son of billionaire philanthropist Warren Buffett and a longtime donor to Colombia who has helped Shakira set up schools there before. The Howard G. Buffett foundation will work with Shakira’s Fundación Pies Descalzos, or Barefoot Foundation, on reconstructing the 10 schools. Buffett said, “When she calls, I come.”
What Relief Looks Like From Above
Shakira also said she planned to dedicate her “personal efforts” to rebuilding a local technological university in Chocó. She announced pledges of $500,000 each from the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund and Live Nation and $250,000 from CAF Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean toward rebuilding schools and getting children back into classrooms.
That money arrives in a region where the state’s own numbers show the scale of the wreckage. Authorities said the disaster destroyed more than 26,000 dwellings. The government has said 194 people are missing, while other civilian-run databases put the number at more than 4,100. The regional government said Monday that at least 3,100 homes were destroyed and over 265 educational sites affected in Chocó.
Aid groups have struggled to assess the damage in Chocó, an area the size of Switzerland where communication is difficult. The province has few roads linking it to the rest of the country, and its towns and villages are connected mostly by rivers and unpaved roads. Most of Chocó’s 600,000 inhabitants live in poverty, according to figures published last year by Colombia’s national government, and the region is largely inhabited by Indigenous tribes and Afro Colombian communities.
The Bill, the Bureaucracy, the Delay
The government estimates losses at 30 trillion Colombian pesos, or $9.58 billion, with about 24.5 trillion pesos in buildings and 5.5 trillion pesos in infrastructure. Those are the numbers the apparatus can count. The people in Chocó are left to live inside them.
President Abelardo De La Espriella, who took office days before the quake, is overseeing relief and reconstruction efforts. That puts the official response squarely in the hands of a new president and the same old machinery, even as the region’s roads, communications and schools remain battered.
Shakira’s announcement Monday came as one of many commitments from prominent Colombians and other Latin American artists to help Colombia and Venezuela. On Sunday, Marc Anthony and Chayanne joined dozens of other artists at a Miami benefit concert and live fundraiser for both countries’ earthquake relief. Colombian singer Karol G pledged to match fan donations to her Con Cora Foundation during her three-night run at SoFi Stadium near Los Angeles last weekend, and she will also join Maluma, Sebastián Yatra and others at a benefit concert in Bogotá this Sunday.
The celebrity money and foundation partnerships may patch holes. They don’t change who gets hit first when the ground breaks open. In Chocó, where schools, homes and roads were already fragile, the quake exposed how much survival depends on charity, donor networks and the uneven attention of power.