COLOMBIA

IS EXPLODING
Facundo Escobar, UWI Data.-

Huge protests have been taking place in Colombia. They began as a demonstration against
the government intent of imposing a new neoliberal tax reform. Violence by the state and
the ruling party was unleashed indiscriminately in the main cities of the country. Even after
Duque withdrew his bill from Congress (May 2nd), protests continued to grow. What is
happening? It's been 9 days in a row of unprecedented massive protests. They occur in a
context of deep social crisis. The government's response was in line with what it has always
done: appeal to violence. But this time, facing the arm of the state, there is an empowered
citizenry, starring a new stage in the historical conflict process.
Manifestations of the post Peace Accords phase. People are no longer afraid; they have come
to occupy the streets with remarkable organizational capacity and will to fight. The pro
imperialist oligarch regime is tumbling and answering back. Meanwhile it seems that there
is no political articulation on the horizon that can channel this antisystem energy, build new
leaderships and conduit the movement towards a new social force to produce a regime
change. The much sought-after shift from a 21st century oligarchical regime to a popular or
even a socialist regime.

Rooted crisis in Colombia
An oligarchic bloc has consolidated itself in power since 1948, providing continuity to anti-
popular and repressive governments, carrying out strong and persistent policies in favor of
a handful of powerful families. Everything in the name of democracy.
The Colombian economy is an economy that has been dismantling the State through the
privatization of strategic sectors such as energy, mining, communications and financial
services. Anti-national interests, transnational looting and predation logic prevails.
Colombian governments have expanded the exemptions and deductions for the big capital,
that has accumulated profits in a staggering way, especially during the Uribe Vélez
governments (2002-2010). Control over capital flows is ineffective or non-existent. Small
businessmen and middle classes were left high and dry. The working class is unemployed,
starved or overexploited. Also, skeptics of the political system. The peasants are without
land. The latifundio and the logic of the landowner predominate.
Colombia is one of the most unequal countries in the world, because of the very high and
massive levels of poverty but also because of the concentration of wealth (and land) in few
hands. Nearly half of its population is poor and more than 6.3 million had to leave their land
after having survived massacres carried out by the army and paramilitaries and the
glyphosate sprayed by Plan Colombia. Unemployment reached 14.5% this year. Half of the
economy is informal. There are serious difficulties for vaccination. Infection outbreaks are
going on, forcing partial closures of shops.
In this context, president Iván Duque (who had promised in his electoral campaign "More
salaries, less taxes") tried to carry out a new neoliberal tax reform. It would have been the
third in his mandate and the sixth in ten years for Colombia. The aim was to satisfy the
demands of the risk rating agencies, the IMF and the OCDE, to continue with the policy of
unbridled indebtedness.
The reform was aimed to raise $ 8 billion between 2022 and 2031 in new taxes and other
fiscal devices. People's sweat was supposed to pay the bills of the crisis of Colombian
capitalism. It was intended to increase VAT up to 19% on the basic family basket products,
fuels, and agricultural inputs (a coup de grace for peasants and rural producers in benefit
of multinational agribusiness companies); raises in prices of public energy, sewerage and
gas services were planned. It was proposed to expand the number of taxpayers.
Municipalities were authorized to install urban tolls within cities and take a toll on
motorcycles (a vehicle widely used by the popular classes). Even an Internet service VAT
was assumed in the midst of the virtualization of work and education.
Did Duque and the ruling bloc suppose that this reform could be viable? Did Duque assume
that the people didn't know who was going to pay the costs? Nothing of the sort. In fact, the
regimen expected that there was going to be resistance, but presumed that it was going to
be easy to end it. But something changed. And the government is still formatted to face other
kind of adversaries.

Rebellion breaks out
The dominant bloc faces a new specter, and it seems that they only know to respond through
the violence and militarization of the conflict. But now the adversary is not the insurgent
guerrilla neither is easy to be demonized or reified.
People are mobilizing, creating and developing grassroots organization. Massive and
powerful public expressions where civil society organizations articulate. They discuss,
establish action programs, express themselves in the streets, through marches, blockades,
strikes and cultural manifestations creatively and sustained over time. The protesters are
building a new experience, a new political culture.
Uribe hits the nail right on the head when he says that the dominant order is facing a
"dissipated molecular revolution." Until the 2019 mobilizations, the occupation of public
space by popular protest simply did not occur on a massive scale. But a few months before
the unleashing of the pandemic, unparalleled numbers of Colombians have taken to the
streets. After years of terror and fear, street scene occupation seems to be consolidating
(something that has been common in other countries of the region for decades). The
pandemic came to freeze this scheme for a moment. Today that has been undoubtably
unleashed.

Violence in the roots
Colombia is a democracy that has had 5 progressive presidential candidates assassinated
since the beginning of the second half of the 20th century. At the turn of the century, the
Colombian government had already lost control over half of its territory to powerful non-
state actors. Civil war, paramilitaries, drug trafficking, powerful revolutionary groups. More
than 450,000 people died because of the armed and political conflict between 1948 and
2018. Between 1984 and 2002 Colombian State and paramilitary organizations kidnapped,
killed or disappeared around 5,000 members belonging to legal FARC-affiliated Patriotic
Union: a whole political party was annihilated. Between 2002 and 2008 during president
Alvaro Uribe´s government his military and paramilitary mates killed at least 2,300 non-
belligerent civilians in extrajudicial executions by passing them as casualties in combat: the
infamous "False Positives". By 2008 Colombia turned to be the most dangerous place in the
word for trade unionists. At that time about 60% of all trade unionist in the world were
assassinated or disappeared in Colombia by state or paramilitary agents. More recently, the
Institute for Development and Peace Studies (Indepaz) reported in February this year the
murder of 1,140 social leaders since 2016. These are crimes carried out by security forces,
para-statal actors and criminal armed groups that have the protection of the Government.
Meanwhile, in keeping with their vision, the government says that the protest responds to
the guerrillas. That is clearly false. FARC-EP and the ELN have not been directly involved in
this rebellion. In any case, the power of the demonstrations far exceeds the capabilities of
the insurgency.
The government is trying to underestimate and demonize the protesters along with the
precious help of the big media. The former mayor of Bogotá, Enrique Peñalosa, said that
“vandalism [understand protests] is being financed from Venezuela”. The ruling party has
called for the "National Commotion" to be decreed. On Tuesday night in Cali the internet
was suspended in the typical style of dictatorships. Duque insists on seeking a consensus
among elites, as a way to solve the subversive assault on the established order. Among the
historical consensus of the elites, violence it’s at the top of the list. That is why the response
of Duque and Uribismo was a leap forward, double the stakes and unleash violence. The
realm of chaos is a domain of construction for them. They are the War Party. Just to keep in
mind: Colombia ended up being the third-largest recipient of US military assistance at global
scale, only behind Egypt and Israel. The Colombian state has been on war against insurgency
since 1960s.
Although Uribe spoke out against the tax reform, he publicly demanded the use of lethal
force against the protesters through his twitter account. This engendered a massive protest
on the net demanding that the former president's account be blocked. Álvaro Uribe tweeted:
"Let us support the right of soldiers and police to use their weapons to defend their integrity
and to defend people and property from the criminal action of vandalism terrorism." The
company deleted his tweet, alluding that he violated the company policy by "glorifying
violence" against protesters during the first days of unrest.
Chaos creates a favorable situation for criminal organizations. They can operate better in
what they do and sum up new functions, e.g. assisting repression. In Cali a truck loaded with
people approached a street sector full of protesters. Some people got out of the truck and
started firing lead bullets at them. They got up the ruck again and escaped. Nobody stopped
them. In Pereira, a car stopped next to a big group of protesters. A young physical education
student received eight bullet and died. WhatsApp chains circulated in Palmira declaring 10
young city leaders as military targets threatening them with death. It was a terrorist action
carried out by a paramilitary group calling themselves ‘Black Hand’. The examples multiply,
the methods vary. State and criminal organizations interpenetrate each other. The
environment is conducive to its development and evolution.
In the meantime, al least 37 people were killed since April 28th. There are hundreds of
clashes with security forces day to day across the country. There are more than 1,000
detainees, many of them had been sexual assaulted or tortured. The Search Unit, an
organization responsible for finding people considered missing in the context of the armed
conflict, registered 379 disappeared persons during the National Strike.

National Strike
Unions, social movements, civil organizations, peasants, students, staged a national strike
called for April 28. It was a day of massive, diverse and national scale political actions that
never ceased to increase in participation, reaching 8 days of mobilizations and still
marching on. The protests, which were mainly urban, were massive in Bogotá, Cali,
Medellín, Barranquilla and Cartagena. The brutal repression unleashed by the ESMAD
transformed the outrage into irrepressible fury where youngsters were the protagonists.
The president sought to militarize the public space. This sparked more resistance. The list
of petitions went from the fight against the reform, to demanding for an effective response
and solution to health, employment, housing and hunger problems.
Cali, the third urban center in the country, became a symbol of resistance. It is the capital of
the department of Valle del Cauca. Barricades and blockades have effectively paralyzed
transport and economic activity there. With more than two million inhabitants, it turned
into a receiving point for thousands of displaced peoples by violent paramilitary groups in
the Pacific region, Buenaventura, Cauca, Nariño and El Choco. The city has always spoken
out against the extreme right. It is an anti-Uribista territory.
On May 4, the peak of the conflict moved to Bogotá, where a pitched battle took place
between the protesters and the repressive forces. On May 5 there was another great
national mobilization day. Progressive and leftist parties started a round of dialogues with
the president. But they don´t represent the protests. In the best of cases, they are part of the
protest, but a part that by far cannot drive neither interpellate the rebel masses. As this
work was going to press indigenous movements were marching to Bogotá.
Ten months remain for the parliamentary elections and one year for the presidentials. The
withdrawal of the reform is undoubtedly a political and symbolic defeat for the ruling party
and the President Duque. In the midst of the Covid crisis, this could scare off allies in
Congress. Members of the ruling Democratic Center party already criticized the proposal.
No congressman would like to be associated with a tax increase. Not even Uribe, who argued
that it would be necessary to go for a "social and moderate tax reform agreed with
majorities."
The Historic Pact coalition, led by Gustavo Petro and Iván Cepeda, may come out stronger.
Their parliamentarians led the opposition to the reform from the institutional point of view
and supported the national strike.
Duque called the leaders of the national strike to negotiation talks. But there are no such
figures. There are base leaders, that are at the front of multiples and diverse small
organizations, but articulated in the streets, in the dynamics of the massive conflict, going
beyond the institutions, occupying the public space, they give birth to a colossal popular
monster. Just another demonstration of the capabilities of the Latin American masses. But
also, it is the ratification that in Colombia there is still no party that can dispute power to
the oligarchic bloc.
Everything is in motion; everything changes day by day. The painful land of García Márquez
makes a new cry, where the looming revolution and the raging massacre combine at the
same time.