The country is going through a crisis without pause, where an absent state tries to solve political and social problems with bullets.
Pablo Biffi
05/05/2021 12:15
Clarín.com
World
Updated 05/05/2021 12:24
What is happening in Colombia?
President Iván Duque's failed tax reform is just the tip of the iceberg of
a deeper crisis
,
not only social and economic, but also political.
The situation is similar to that of Chile in 2019, when the
increase of 30 cents
in the price of the subway unleashed the anger of the young people first and of the whole society later to take to the streets against a "model" that was supposed to be successful. , but that over more than 30 years had caused profound inequities.
Or to that of Ecuador, when the same year President Lenín Moreno decided, among other unpopular economic measures, to
free the price
of fuel, unleashing a wave of demonstrations in the streets that forced the government to back down with the announcements, after of a dozen deaths and 15 days of protests.
The pressure in the streets of fearless young people born in a democracy changed the "status quo" in Chile at a stroke, the
product of a sensible political reading
of its ruling class: with opposition support, the government of Sebastián Piñera faced a profound constitutional reform still running in an almost desperate attempt to sustain the "model" but make it more "equitable."
In Ecuador, the withdrawal of the most controversial measures and the incipient electoral process that was beginning -and that culminated with the triumph of Guillermo Lasso in April- helped to decompress an always latent situation of social conflict, once again with the indigenous as standard-bearers of the protests.
Colombia: a crisis without pauses
Colombia, meanwhile, has dragged on a political crisis almost without pause since the inauguration of Iván Duque, in August 2018.
A president "imposed" by the
almighty
finger
of the right-wing Álvaro Uribe
,
each more hated than loved by a society that is already in November 2019 had taken to the streets against the government's economic policies and in defense of the peace accords with the FARC guerrillas of 2016.
A protester confronts a policeman in Bogotá.
Photo: dpa
Look also
In photos: repression in the streets, a week of protests, riots and police violence in Colombia
"Only" four dead for a country that
naturalizes death
after decades of an internal war of all against all.
And it had protested again in September of last year after the murder of young Javier Ordóñez at the hands of the National Police in Bogotá, recorded on video.
Two weeks of protests in the capital and in several cities of the country left
13 dead as a result of the repression in just two days of demonstrations.
Signs
Two signs that the Duque government - and a large part of the political and ruling class of Colombia - did not know how or did not want to interpret: the
tiredness of society
, above all young people, with an increasingly suffocating economic reality and an absent state. and for the few who intends to
solve with
police
bullets
what politics must solve.
In this context, Duque's failed tax reform was
a shot in the feet,
in a country of 50 million inhabitants overwhelmed by the coronavirus pandemic, which already leaves more than
75,000 dead and almost 3 million cases.
CASES
0.000.00000.000
per million inhab.
Xxxxx
DEATHS
00,0000,000
per million inhab.
Source:
Johns Hopkins
Chart:
Flourish
|
Infographic:
Clarín
The project sought to
raise taxes
on basic products of the family basket, increase the cost of fuels, expand the taxable base of income tax, a solidarity tax for high salaries, a wealth tax for two years or VAT for funeral services and internet services.
According to the government, the initiative sought to obtain resources
for about 6,000 million dollars
annually to be able to continue with social programs to assist the poorest and those who have lost everything due to the pandemic.
But the tax reform was only the temporary motive.
Colombia, the fourth largest economy in Latin America, suffered
a 6.8% drop
in its GDP
in 2020
, the largest in recorded history.
Unemployment, which in the midst of the strictest confinement measures exceeded 20%, closed the year of the pandemic at 15.9%, while poverty rose to 42.5%, according to the National Administrative Department of Statistics.
A setback of almost a decade.
Duque's decision to bring
the army out onto the streets
to stop the protests only aggravated the situation.
The repression and the dead - at least 19 and more than 80 missing - outraged a society tired of deaths, fed up with a state that tries to resolve conflicts
at gunpoint.
These data serve, in part, to understand why the withdrawal of the project to negotiate another in Congress and the late and desperate call of the president to dialogue do not seem, at least for now, to
stop the protests
.
The National Unemployment Committee, which brings together some 40 organizations, redoubled the bet with the call for a new mobilization, now for the withdrawal of
a health reform project
(which would in fact "privatize" an already very expensive asset in the country), better management of the coronavirus pandemic and a minimum income according to the food basket.
"They are killing us"
With a weakened and unauthorized president even by Uribe (he demanded that he withdraw the tax reform) and a disjointed opposition that tried to gain ground already thinking about the presidential elections next year, the streets continue to vibrate hand in hand with young people who - like in Chile or Ecuador - they follow their own rules, far from party political leaderships, guided by a preservation instinct:
"They are killing us
," their posters say.
As the writer Ricardo Silva Romero pointed out in a wonderful column in the Bogotano newspaper
El Tiempo
entitled, precisely,
Suicide
: "Colombia is, according to the UN, the
most dangerous
place
in
Latin America for human rights defenders. According to Global Witness, the place on Earth where environmental leaders are killed the most. It is, according to Dane, that plague-battered society in which 1,700,000 families no longer eat three meals a day. "
"It is, according to different world indices, one of the most macho, unequal and most violent countries for workers: 3,240 trade unionists were assassinated from 1973 to 2018. But its provocative ruling class and few ideas, which since Law 50 of 1990 It has been repealing labor conquests and ruining social pacts, it continues to be surprised by the outbreaks and demanding that politics not be done with anything: with reform, with war, with peace, with health,
with hunger, with politics, with nothing".
ap