While the Cerrejón mining company's promotional material gives the impression that it is helping the displaced communities, the reality is that the mining company has used underhand tactics to buy off individuals and sow internal division within the communities. So while a few people in the village of Roche were paid extra money to leave early, others who decided to stay, faced power cuts and water shortages that lasted for weeks at a time. Local people have formed an organisation, FECODEMIGUA, to defend their interests and demand compensation.

In 2011, the mining companies behind Cerrejón approved plans to expand the mine further, which would have required the rerouting of 26 kilometeres of the Rancheria river, the main river in La Guajira province. This "P500 project" was vehemently opposed by local people as the river is their main water source. In November 2012, the mining companies announced that they were suspending studies into the rerouting of the river. Although welcome, the local communities do not believe that this stay of execution will last for long. The companies are still planning to expand the mine by other means and local villagers still face being forced to leave their homes.

The project spans a vast 69,000 hectares of land in the middle of the territory of the indigenous Wayuu people, who share the area with people of African descent, local farming communities and other indigenous groups. The indigenous are facing health and humanitarian crisis besides being culturally weakened and divided by the presence of Cerrejon and other socio-economic influencers such as tourism. Malnutrition and dehydration with contaminated water lead to many illness. Wayuu children suffer with stunted growth and a range of diseases, including chronic diarrhea, respiratory and skin problems, vision loss and more. While the Wayuu represents 38% of La Guajira’s population, Wayuu children accounts for 90% of childhood mortality in La Guajira between 2014-2016. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic is threatening  the entire socio-economic and cultural structure of the Wayuu  as their elders and adult women are vital to the traditional hierarchy, beliefs and economy. Existing malnutrition and pre-existing respiratory conditions mostly due to air pollution from nearby coal mine are linked to more vulnearble immune systems of many Wayuu and less effective in fighting off novel respiratory infections like COVID-19. 

The Cerrejón mining company has exploited cheap labour and forced mine workers to live and work in conditions that have damaged their health. According to the coal mine workers' union, Sintracarbon, 700 workers at Cerrejón are suffering from serious health problems as a direct result of the inadequate working conditions at the mine. Workers have to work 12 hour shifts and do not receive adequate medical attention. Pro-union workers have been reportedly intimidated or sacked and replaced with casual workers who are paid less than their permanent counterparts. In 2008, one union leader, Adolfo González Montes, was tortured and killed in his own home.

Conditions got so bad that Sintracarbon called a strike in February 2013 which ground Cerrejón to a halt for over a month. While the workers of Cerrejón are struggling to improve their conditions, things are even worse for indigenous groups like the Wayuu who are not getting these jobs at all. They make up just one percent of Cerrejón's workforce, despite the fact that 45 percent of the local population is indigenous.

Women have also seen scant benefit from the mine, as 94 percent of the jobs at Cerrejón go to men.

The mine has also caused broader environmental damage to local rivers and habitats. The coal dust from the mine has caused respiratory problems for local people and workers. 

Climate change is already having an effect on Colombia. Warming has already led to an 82 percent reduction of glaciers in the Colombian Andes. Prolonged droughts together with mass-scale coal mining and the damming of a principal waterway resulted in scarce and contaminated water supplies. Cerrejon coal mine uses large volumes of water from the Rancheria River as well as groundwater. To continue everyday operations at the coal mine approximately 2,700,000 liters of water per day is needed.

Colombians have done little to cause this problem. The country’s per capita carbon footprint is under a fifth of the UK's and 11 times less than that of the USA. The Cerrejón mine, however, is making a major contribution to climate change. Every year 32 million tonnes of coal are exported from the mine, mostly to European and North American countries. With the expansion of the coal mine, the companies behind Cerrejón hope to increase this figure to 40 million tonnes. This means that, while local people use very little of the coal, they are having to deal with the effects of climate change, caused by the emission of 82 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. That is more than the carbon footprint of the entire country of Colombia. If they are successful in burning all the known coal reserves at Cerrejón, the resulting carbon emissions, at over 13 billion tonnes of CO2, would be equivalent to Colombia’s domestic emissions for 184 years.