By Gerardo Szalkowicz on May 12, 2021
Photo: Juan Pablo Rueda, El Tiempo
“Here, if you don’t die of COVID, they will starve you to death or kill you with a bullet,” a demonstrator in her twenties shouted into the microphone, condensing into one sentence the central theme of the strike that has turned into a social explosion.If the spark that ignited the streets — for the third time in three years — was the regressive tax reform that President Iván Duque clumsily tried to impose, the victory of being able to stop it gave birth to an “enough is enough” movement against the whole model. We now have an explosion of accumulated anger against the Uribe regime, a popular crusade to overthrow the foundations of the neoliberalism of war that is so hard to dethrone despite these cyclical revolts. Will this be the definitive one, the one that finally paves the way for the arrival, in May 2022, of a government that will dismantle this system of injustice sustained by hunger and bullets?
The protests that began with the National Strike of April 28th uncovered, once again, two pillars on which the Colombian elite bases its hegemony. On the one hand, the ferocity of the police and military forces to silence any claim by imposing terror (at the time of writing this article, 47 demonstrators have been killed, 548 disappeared and more than one thousand wounded, according to the NGO Temblores). On the other hand, a well-oiled media shield as a necessary complement to ensure immunity: the local media demonize the protests and the international media look the other way. What coverage would the global press give to this situation if it were another government — for example Venezuela — which was carrying out an open-air massacre of this magnitude?
As the days went by, the information siege was broken by the police brutality that went viral on the social networks. Then we began to see some lukewarm and brief statements from the UN, the OAS and the European Union, as if to say: “Loosen up a little, so that it is not so noticeable.” Of the Latin American presidents, only Alberto Fernandez of Argentina strongly condemned the repression. International diplomacy guarantees protection to the spoiled child of the United States in the region, showing almost no sense of indignation as it usually happens with the unbridled Carabineros (police forces) of Sebastián Piñera.
Also as in Chile, the Colombian rebellion has a great component of spontaneity and is led by young people, those who resist at the barricades, singing and dancing, and forming a large part of the leadership of the National Strike Committee, convener of the strike action that began on April 28th.
The Committee, which brings together some 50 trade union and social organizations, emerged from the huge mobilizations of November 2019 against Duque’s adjustment agenda. The balance: three protesters killed. The eruption of the coronavirus forced a retreat, but the rage continued to accumulate and exploded again in September 2020, this time against institutional violence. Ten days of protests and the same response: 13 fatalities.
The appearance of the COVID pandemic only increased the unease, mainly due to the economic deterioration and the weak measures taken to deal with it. According to official data, 3.5 million people fell into poverty, which rose to 42.5%, and unemployment increased five points to 16.8%. The government grants a measly subsidy equivalent to $43 U$D per month when the minimum wage is $259.
After the biggest fall in the GDP in half a century (6.8%), the government continues to bet on over-indebtedness and strengthening the military apparatus, allocating 70% of the budget to the Public Debt Service and to Defense and Security. Popular indignation reached its limit when the purchase of war planes for 14 billion pesos was announced. And then came the unusual tax reform proposal that sought to expand taxes on salaries, while taxing basic food basket products, fuel and even funeral services. Duque stuck his fingers in the socket and was shocked. Like Piñera, he now covers his eyes and repeats the same old script: if in Chile they were protesting aliens, in Colombia they are vandals or Venezuelans.
State Necropolitics
The systematic violation of human rights became state policy with the assassination of liberal leader and presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán in 1948. The Bogotazo opened the period known as “La Violencia,” (“The Violence”), which in the period of one decade, left some 300,000 dead and was the prologue to the formation of the guerrilla rebels and the longest armed conflict in Latin America. The Colombian oligarchy fed on the war to build a very loose democracy in which any critical thinking was (and is) at the risk of death. So far this year alone, 57 social leaders and 22 former FARC combatants who had signed the peace agreement have been assassinated, 33 massacres, 158 femicides and 27,435 people have been displaced. Over these decades, Colombia has accumulated some 85,000 disappeared, more than the sum of all the dictatorships of the Southern Cone.
The current peak of violence has its matrix in the breach of the Peace Agreements signed in 2016 and the imprint of the Uribista government, a political expression that crystallizes the alliance between the landowning elite, the business elite and the narco-paramilitary power. A scheme of state and paramilitary violence directly associated with the geopolitical role of Colombia, which is the largest cocaine producer in the world. Colombia is the main ally of the U.S. in the region, which is the biggest consumer of cocaine.
This regime is going through its deepest crisis today, and it no longer has the pretext of linking any critical voice with the rebels. Gustavo Petro, a former rebel, appears as a real alternative to politically channel social discontent. But for that to happen, there is still one long year to go. For the time being, the new generations are rising up against this silent and silenced genocide, against the neoliberalism of war that kills them with hunger or bullets, against a destiny of mere subsistence. They give their bodies to the future because, as a banner in the streets of Bogota read: “On the other side of fear is the country we dream of.”
Gerardo Szalkowicz is editor of NODAL. Author of the book “Latin America: Traces and Challenges of the Progressive Cycle.” He hosts the radio program “Al sur del Río Bravo.”
Source: Pagina 12, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English