After a week of demonstrations marred by violence and whose police repression was condemned by the international community, Colombia was preparing, Wednesday, May 5, for a new day of mobilization against the right-wing government of President Ivan Duque.
Unions, students, indigenous people and other sectors began to gather in the early morning in the main cities of the country, including Bogota, Medellin and Cali, against the policies of health, education, security, and to denounce the abuses. law enforcement. Anger at their actions led to serious violence on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday in Bogota, where thirty civilians and sixteen officers were injured in attacks on police stations.
The mobilization began on April 28 at the call of the national strike committee against a tax reform project, since withdrawn by President Duque, who indicated that he would present a new text, excluding the most contested points, including an increase in the value added tax (VAT) on goods and services, as well as a broadening of the income tax base. The initial project drew strong criticism; the opposition, unions and even representatives of the ruling party felt it was affecting the middle class too much and deemed it inappropriate as the pandemic worsened the economic crisis.
According to the latest official report from Monday morning, at least nineteen people were killed and more than eight hundred injured during various demonstrations across the country, most of them nonetheless peaceful. Local NGOs report higher figures. The UN, the European Union, the United States and human rights organizations on Tuesday denounced the disproportionate use of force by the police.
Five dead in Cali
The night before in Cali, where soldiers were deployed as reinforcements, clashes had left five dead and thirty wounded, according to the local security secretariat. The government argued that dissidents from the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), which rejected the peace agreement signed in 2016 by the ex-guerrillas, as well as the National Liberation Army (ELN), the last rebellion of the countries, and drug trafficking gangs orchestrated the unrest. Access to Cali remained blocked Wednesday morning by demonstrators, while this city, the third in the country and one of the most dangerous in Latin America, began to suffer from shortages, in particular of fuels.
While supporting the police, Ivan Duque said on Tuesday that he would open “Spaces for dialogue” with the different sectors, but without specifying the terms. This conservative president, whose popularity is at half mast at 33%, has been faced with multiple protests since 2019, in a country plagued by nearly sixty years of armed conflict.
Latin America’s fourth-largest economy is facing its worst recession in half a century, with gross domestic product (GDP) falling 6.8% in 2020 and official unemployment of 16.8% in March. While nearly half of the working population in this country of 50 million people live in the informal economy, poverty has worsened and affects 42.5% of the population.
