Temporalities of Development: Negotiating Promises and Disruptions in the Port City of Buenaventura

ABSTRACT

This article examines the temporal politics of development in Buenaventura, Colombia, through the lens of the Buenaventura 2050 megaproject. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and critical infrastructure studies, it explores how long‐term plans for port modernization and urban renewal intersect with the lived realities of the city's majority‐Black population. While development discourses promise progress, they also produce disruption, delay, and displacement. Using a critical approach to infrastructural temporalities, the article argues that Buenaventura's “suspended present”—a state in which progress and development are indefinitely postponed—is not only a temporal condition but also a racialized one: unbuilt projects and deferred promises disproportionately affect Black communities, reproducing historical patterns of inequality and exclusion. By centering the voices of local actors: port workers, community leaders, and scholars, it highlights the emotional and political tensions between state‐led visions of modernization and the everyday experiences of waiting, resisting, and hoping.