This statement was published by Movimiento Ecosocialista de Colombiaon May 18, 2021 and by Correspondencia de Prensa on May 19, 2021. It was translated into English by the ISP.
April 28, 2021 marked a new stage in the history of mass mobilization and the exercise of social protest in Colombia. The national strike called by the labor federations ended up becoming a great popular uprising. That same day,regional capitals witnessed mobilizations of workers, informal sector workers, students, neighborhood organizations, women, Indigenous and Afro communities. It was a diverse and gigantic social expression of a desperate people backed into a corner by decades’ long neoliberal—and who during the pandemic were left to their own devices. This popular uprising has a line of continuity with the urban mobilizations of November 21, 2019. But, on this occasion, medium-size cities and rural areas were also included in the protests.
This massive protest has already achieved results. The withdrawal of the proposed tax reform, the departure of Minister of Finance Alberto Carrasquilla and his economic team, the resignation of Chancellor Claudia Blum, the bogging down in Congress of health, pension and labor reforms that are part of the “package” the ratings agencies and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) demanded from the Duque government.
These results have been obtained despite the unprecedented police and military deployment against social protest in the country. The 50 murders, 400 disappeared, the hundreds injured and dozens of sexually abused women—and in the case of 17-year-old Alisson Meléndez, raped in detention by an Immediate Response Unit in Popayán, which led to the tragic decision to commit suicide—have flowed from the posture of “civil war” that the ESMAD (Mobile Anti-Riot Squad), the police, the army and armed civilians have taken to the civilian protest. In Cali, the repression included the use of assault rifles, grenades and gas on crowds of protesters and surrounding neighborhoods or residences. Even machine-gunning from military helicopters as happened in Siloé. On the outskirts of Buga, on the Pan-American highway, military units were flown in, and the nearby neighborhoods are still surrounded by ESMAD and attacked with tear gas and explosives. In Popayán, the militaristic response to the uprising of popular anger against police abuses has already cost one student their life and left many missing and injured. Something similar has happened in Yumbo. These military “theaters of operations” were authorized personally and directly by President Iván Duque, the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces Eduardo Zapateiro, the general director of the police Jorge Luis Vargas. To them must be added the responsibility by omission of local mayors—who handed over control of their cities’ “public order” of the cities without discussion. All of them are responsible for genocide and terrorism against the people. They must be tried as such before the International Criminal Court and the international organizations created for this purpose.
This military barbarism confirms that we are witnessing the collapse of the so-called “Rule of Law” and confirms that there is an abysmal separation between the institutions of a precarious representative democracy and the social demands of the majority of Colombians.
The systematic and programmed application of State terrorism also shows the crisis of peripheral capitalism in the country associated with the worst economic crisis in the history of capitalism, aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic. We have reached the dead end of a state and its elites incapable of solving the most basic needs of the population—now, or in the medium and long term.
The social explosion spilled over the classic forms of popular protest and made possible expressions of solidarity like the indigenous “Minga” (an indigenous word meaning a coming together many different organizations for a common purpose) in Cali that blockaded the cities and put up barricades in their defense as a key part of a truly national strike.
Those who have led the blockades, the so-called “front line,” is made up of young people marginalized by neoliberalism, lacking in health, education and work. They come to protest out of outrage, united by hopelessness. They do not believe in conventional institutions, nor in political parties, whether they are from the left or the right. They organize themselves “from below” in painstaking processes of coordination given the demands of self-organized street resistance. They reject personal leadership and proclaim “horizontality” in decision-making. They have gained great social legitimacy in the neighborhoods where they operate and facilitate popular assemblies. These urban blockades, as stated in public declarations by the Archbishop of Cali, Dario Monsalve, “are almost the only way for national strike activists to make themselves heard…” They also emerged as a response to the siege of the cities by the Armed Forces.
The fact that the protest has been going for two weeks and that the government, local businessmen and merchants have blamed the blockades for shortages of basic necessities and fuel—despite the protesters’ enabling of “humanitarian corridors” for essential goods and services—has opened a discussion on the prospect of maintaining them. In this regard, we believe that any decision on this matter must be preceded by guarantees of non-prosecution and non-criminalization for all those who lead the blockades, supervised by human rights organizations and, if possible, with international oversight, and with explicit commitments from the national government and local leaders regarding their demands. What has been happening in Cali since the failure of negotiations with the city administration is the opposite of what’s needed to reach a solution. Neighborhood leaders who attended the meeting were fingered by the police and are currently being detained in their homes for prosecution.
Regarding the political decision to end the blockades, we consider that this must be the responsibility of those who’ve organized them as a form of legitimate resistance. In other words, to the members on the front lines and in close logistical support. Those who have led street clashes and have attended to the dead, the wounded and the missing are those who have the moral authority to make this decision. The same must be said about road blockades led by truckers and peasants.
The gigantic marches that we have witnessed in Ibagué, Neiva and Bogotá in recent days, and the social organizations that have joined in, as truckers from throughout the country and coca growers in the southwest, confirm that this popular uprising is on the upswing. This is why we consider that the decisive factor is real possibility of political alternatives “from below” to the crisis of peripheral capitalism in the country. It is showing that self-organization and direct democracy expressed in multiple forms of resistance are moving toward the consolidation of a “parallel”institutions that go beyond the narrow limits of representative democracy. This uprising bypassed the traditional representativeness of the trade union organizations and the National Strike Command, confirming that their narrow protest action leaves them sidelined from demands of the broad popular movement. May Day demonstrated this in a dramatic way. While in the street skirmishes, police brutality produced scores of dead and disappeared, the trade union leaders called for a “virtual parade” to celebrate. The neighborhood and popular leaders distrust with the strike committee’s attempts at negotiations stems from this reality.
The popular uprising also highlights the inability of a congress and political parties mired in corruption and sold to big business, as well as the government agencies and high courts that have acted as accomplices in the face of militaristic barbarism. For this reason, it has started an institutional crisis that could end in the resignation of President Duque. The development of events and the relationship of forces that are established in the immediate future will determine whether Duque’s resignation is possible to achieve. That would represent a certain blow to the neoliberal and militarist political regime. We agree that it is necessary to demand Duque’s resignation as calls for it from social and political organizations are being heard with increasing force.Not following through on this demand, arguing that it would produce an “institutional vacuum” that would bring to power the vice-president or president of the congress who are supposedly “worse” than Duque—or that will open the road to a military coup, end up accepting reasons for “defending Duque from Uribismo” (i.e., the far-fight movement led by the ex-president Álvaro Uribe) that sponsored Duque’s rise to power. This not only exempts him from political responsibility, as head of the armed forces, for ordering collective murder against defenseless people. But it also starts from the mistaken assumption that the deepening of the institutional crisis that would bring about the popular overthrow of a reactionary government like Duque’s—something unprecedented in the history of the country—could only be solved within the framework of the same institution that is collapsing.
On the contrary, we consider that a popular victory like this would open up great possibilities for autonomous political action and the road to the organization of a Constituent and Popular Assembly. It would be the best way to isolate and defeat political reaction and the coup plotters, at a time when there is immense popular solidarity at the international level.
Social and popular leaders have also emphasized the following economic and social demands. We support these, which can form a minimal and urgent platform in the face of the immiseration that millions of Colombians have suffered at the hands of the Duque government’s neoliberal policies:
- Prosecution and punishment of those responsible for the murders and disappearances that took place when the military attacked social protest. Punishment of those responsible for raping women. Dismantling of ESMAD and transforming the police into a civilian body dependent on the interior ministry (i.e., outside of the control of the armed forces). Stop the assassinations and massacres of social leaders. Promote a humanitarian agreement with all armed organizations (such as FARC)to find a way out of the conflict through negotiation according to the characteristics of each group.
- Basic Emergency Income for informal sector workers and the unemployed. To achieve this objective, it is necessary to suspend the payment of the public debt that currently represents 63 percent of the Gross Domestic Product and to carry out a democratic and redistributive tax reform that establishes a wealth tax on the rich and super rich, not deductible from income taxes. We also support a tax on corporate dividends and inheritances, as well as the elimination of tax exemptions for large companies and the financial sector.
- Fulfillment of the peace agreements, particularly as regards the voluntary substitution of crops (for coca) and the implementation of collective projects that improve the standard of living of peasant and ethnic communities, based on food self-sufficiency.
- Youth employment generation program, expansion of coverage and financing of tuition for students at public universities.
Out with the genocidal government of Iván Duque!
For an alternative solution to the current crisis… a Constituent and Popular Assembly!
