Colombia protests

[Flavour]

It's been over a month now that protests have been going on in Colombia, and as far as I can tell there is no end in sight. There is a relatively good primer in the NY Times as to why (paywall): Why Are Colombians Protesting?

Some of the protests' aims have already been met, with the abandonment of the tax proposal (for now at least).

Demonstrators’ demands began with a repeal of the tax proposal. But they have grown over time to include calls for the conservative government to guarantee a minimum income, to prevent police violence and to withdraw a health care overhaul that critics say does not do enough to fix systemic problems.

So far, demonstrators have managed to topple both the tax proposal and the health plan. And Mr. Duque has rolled out several programs intended to help struggling families, including one that will partially subsidize salaries for employers who hire young people.

Be that as it may, the protests do not seem to be abating. There has been a number of factors contributing to the pressure cooker of social tension that this recent tax proposal sparked, including:

• Covid
• Years and years of corruption (specifically related to narco-trafficking) at the highest levels of government and all the way down the pyramid of the State
• Continued violence related to the narco business.
• Massive immigration from neighboring Venezuela
• Rising food prices

Dozens have already died in confrontations with the police in the last month, and now the military is being called in in various areas, including one of the largest cities, Cali:

Colombia sends military to western province after four die during protests

Colombia will begin "the maximum deployment" of military personnel in the western province of Valle del Cauca and its capital, Cali, President Ivan Duque said on Friday, after four people died in protests to mark a month of anti-government demonstrations.

www.reuters.com

There is no easy solution for the President, Ivan Duque, besides violent repression, which, we can safely predict, will not solve the problem. The elephant in the room as ever is the United States, whose backing of the Colombian government is steadfast. They can act with impunity against their own citizens knowing there won't be much in the way of complaint from Washington (comparisons with Israel not entirely ridiculous -- Colombia has not had a military dictatorship since the 1950s, unlike pretty much all its South American neighbors. This is partly because of American support for the highly corrupt but "democratic" government.)

 

[Brainaddict]

Despite years of repression Colombia has very extensive left wing movements, to varying degrees historically clandestine (linked to guerillas) and to varying degrees more out in the open now. So protests can be sustained for a long time because there are large support networks aimed at supporting them.

While they never had a military dictatorship it was only because they didn't need to - they stitched up the left wing movements to keep them out of their 'democracy', which is the source of a lot of the strife. While in theory the left can be more open after the peace process, in practice a lot of them have been getting killed - it's important to talk about that as well as real narco violence (narco gangs are sometimes used as footsoldiers by right wing politicians so it's not always clear what any given hit is about except to their friends) - the western media has little interest in any of the ongoing political violence.

 

[planetgeli]

It amuses me that Colombia hasn't had a dictatorship as such, but when I went there (and I've been around a bit) there is nowhere else in the world that compares to the amount of machine guns I saw on their streets.

 

[Brainaddict]

Another unique aspect of Colombia you might not know: while being one of the most consistently right wing-governed countries in the world, it has one of the most left wing constitutions in the world - which guarantees all sorts of economic rights such as the right to housing and healthcare. It was essentially a compromise with the left wing in order to try and curtail one of the many periods of violence that engulf the country: Colombian Constitution of 1991 - Wikipedia
Of course it's very difficult to get such a constitution enforced in a country run by the right wing (and far right). They have rather predictably deliberately sabotaged court processes by de-funding courts and so on, in order to stop people getting access to justice. Of course the other reason the ruling class sabotage the courts is in order to prevent their extensive criminal activities being tried. Having said that the constitutional court is still very powerful and acts as a channel for left wing demands, for instance for universal healthcare - with varying degrees of success.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

Another unique aspect of Colombia you might not know: while being one of the most consistently right wing-governed countries in the world, it has one of the most left wing constitutions in the world - which guarantees all sorts of economic rights such as the right to housing and healthcare. It was essentially a compromise with the left wing in order to try and curtail one of the many periods of violence that engulf the country: Colombian Constitution of 1991 - Wikipedia
Of course it's very difficult to get such a constitution enforced in a country run by the right wing (and far right). They have rather predictably deliberately sabotaged court processes by de-funding courts and so on, in order to stop people getting access to justice. Of course the other reason the ruling class sabotage the courts is in order to prevent their extensive criminal activities being tried. Having said that the constitutional court is still very powerful and acts as a channel for left wing demands, for instance for universal healthcare - with varying degrees of success.

As far as I'm aware they don't have a welfare state though. They get some kind of assistance, but it's not the same as welfare and is very limited as far as I'm aware, hence the demand for UBI.

 

[planetgeli]

As far as I'm aware they don't have a welfare state though. They get some kind of assistance, but it's not the same as welfare and is very limited as far as I'm aware, hence the demand for UBI.

I saw the biggest welfare/assistance queue I have ever seen in Colombia. Winding about a half a mile through the streets queueing up for food vouchers (I think). It was depressing.

 

[Brainaddict]

Yeah, I just try to push back a bit on the narrative that Colombia is a place of violence, poverty and narco-trafficking. That's all true but it's also a place of huge left wing movements that have built resilience in the face of constant repression, and they do achieve things even though they are not allowed in power.

What might not be obvious from afar is that the social movements themselves have to contribute to the erasing of themselves from the official record. This is because the farthest left you're really allowed to be in official policy/acceptable discourse is a social liberal. That means when far right-aligned narco gangs attack a rural co-operative that doesn't accept the seizure of their land by local landlords, this is presented for public consumption as 'Human rights violations in x village as three villagers are shot in the head by local gangs', when in fact the honest way to present it would be 'Right wing landlord attack on left wing social movement in x village'. If you say in the national media that the dead villagers were members of a left wing social movement the middle class will think they probably deserved it, so you have to give an account of innocent victims having their rights violated. Likewise many of the 'human rights organisations' based in Bogota are in fact fairly far left organisations, but to say so publicly might get their members shot in the head in a back alley, so they just talk about human rights. This dishonesty is sadly necessary, but helps contribute to widespread ignorance internationally about the size and strength of Colombian social movements.

 

[Brainaddict]

As an example of how little is known of left wing movements outside Colombia, I see that neither Congreso de Los Pueblos nor Marcha Patriotica have wikipedia pages in English

Congreso de los Pueblos - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre

es.wikipedia.org

Marcha Patriótica (movimiento político) - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre

es.wikipedia.org

The former is the civilian network aligned with the ELN (but often having to pretend not to be) and the latter is the grouping aligned with the FARC (but likewise often pretending otherwise). Between them they can bring the country to a halt if they call a strike and have done multiple times, with protests of a million plus people nationally.

I haven't been in the country since the development of the peace process so I don't know how those groupings are evolving now, but it's kind of mad that they don't even get an English wikipedia entry. I expect they are the driving force behind these current protests.

 

[Dystopiary]

Columbus statue pulled down:

 

[yield]

Colombia’s Future Is Up in the Air
07.14.2021

Beginning earlier this summer, Colombia was rocked by weeks of unprecedented anti-government protests that left behind wreckage in many of Colombia’s cities, from Cali to the capital Bogotá, reminiscent of the bitter days of its civil war. But despite heavy police brutality, many Colombians felt hopeful that real change was within reach.

Today, Colombia’s cities have returned to a bizarre state of tranquility. Leaving a trail of damaged infrastructure, the protests were suspended in early June amid a surge in COVID-19 cases. But Colombians have pledged to restart the protests on July 20, when the new legislative period starts. Union leaders are already working on laws to present to Congress on that date.

The protests started as peaceful marches on April 28, 2021, in response to proposed tax reforms, which increased food and utility prices, as well as a hike in income tax. But a year into the pandemic that has pushed more than 3.5 million Colombians into poverty, that tax reform — which would have seen anyone with a monthly income of $656 or more affected — only fueled long-brewing anger.