Yesterday saw another day of nationwide protest in Colombia, with citizens out on the streets in all major urban centers, demanding a serious government response to their call for real policy changes, including abandoning the IMF-prescribed cost-cutting for key social programs, addressing poverty and unemployment and above all, putting an end to police and military brutality, which has left at least 42 dead and hundreds more injured in the last two weeks of protests. International press coverage has zeroed in on the role of the Mobile Anti-Riot Squad, or ESMAD, the police unit responsible for most of the killings. In yesterday’s protests, the police were reportedly restrained during a day in which there were a total of 514 protest actions affecting 221 municipalities nationwide. The Argentine daily Página 12 reported comments by Jorge Vargas, head of the National Police, who said the police were given orders to “guarantee peaceful protests,” although the city of Barranquilla reported major clashes with the police.
Of great concern is the impact street protests will have on the COVID situation in the country, at a time when hospital systems in major cities are in crisis. In Cali, the epicenter of recent violence, there is a 95% occupancy rate of ICU beds. In Medellín, ICU saturation has been at 100% for the past few weeks. And the capital of Bogotá is facing a “hospital collapse,” according to Mayor Claudia López. The daily El Tiempo reports today that there is a 500-person waiting list in Bogotá for ICU beds, according to Health Minister Fernando Ruiz. The head of the San Ignacio Hospital in Bogotá, Julio Cesar Castellanos, warns that the caseload is reaching its highest peak of this third wave of the pandemic, with no sign yet of a decrease in cases. Pointing to huge public protests as a risk factor for infections, health officials are also reporting more cases of young people getting sick.
After the violence and brutal repression of the past two weeks, with a lot of negative international publicity for Duque, the Colombian President has now announced that
he really wants a return to “normalcy” and has offered to negotiate with the National Strike Committee that is coordinating the protests, to “listen to and address” its demands. The Committee announced that it will meet tomorrow in Bogotá to evaluate Duque’s invitation to negotiate and what steps he has taken to move the negotiating process forward. But, given the devastation of the economy and profound social crisis—Duque is having a hard time keeping his government intact, with two of his cabinet ministers having resigned in a two-week period— nothing short of the programmatic approach proposed by the Schiller Institute will work.
