The massive peasant strike in Colombia that started August 19, and soon spread to major cities, continues with no end in sight as representatives of President Juan Manuel Santos hope to hammer out an agreement with the organizers.
As violence erupted on Thursday 29 leaving at least two dead, 147 wounded and 40 arrested, President Santos ordered the militarization of Bogotá, the nation’s capital of 7 million, according to the daily El Espectador.
That same day 72 road closures by protestors in 37 highways in eight regions of Colombia were reported. In south and central Bogota, demonstrators destroyed windows with stones and the police used tear gas to disperse them.
(The blog Las2orillas says that some of the violence was, in fact, the work of provocateurs from the Colombian police infiltrated to discredit the protests.)
The “Paro” as Colombians refer to the massive civil protest, highlights the devastation of Colombian agriculture, neglected for decades, aggravated by neoliberal policies that have lashed the peasants by the flow of imports from free trade agreements with the U.S. and the European Union.
Tatiana Acevedo provides in El Espectador the background to the massive outbreak of popular discontent:
With strikes by miners, coffee growers and in the area of Catatumbo as a prelude, the national agrarian strike started by coffee farmers requesting the Government timely payment of subsidies and intervention in to lower prices of fertilizer and other supplies and lower coffee production costs to make it more competitive. Potato farmers, dairy producers and onion growers blocked roads in the areas of Nariño, and the highlands of Boyacá and eastern Cundinamarca.
Their grievances included lack of support for small farmers, high cost of gasoline and agricultural supplies and the lower cost of imported produce. Tomato farmers in Ráquira joined in, as did cocoa farmers in Santander, who were galvanized by low prices, imports and uncontrolled smuggling. Within days, teachers, public health workers and students voiced solidarity with the farmers, organized their own demonstrations, and presented their own demands.
Carlos Amaya, Congressman for the Colombian Green Party and himself of peasant origin, told María Jimena Dussán of Semana:
With the signing of the Free Trade Agreement, we were flooded with produce mainly from the US — the farmer was already planting at a loss. Their options were to stop growing or launch a major strike […]
They are very clear in their demands: lower the price of fertilizers, which are the highest in the world; establish safeguards to some products like milk, onions and potatoes; control of smuggling and a lower the high price of fuel which to higher prices . And I would add another issue: the absence of training in rural areas. In the countryside, almost nobody studies and those who go to the cities to study stay there. Modern methods are nonexistent and farmers continue to plant in obsolete ways.
Congressman Amaya also complained about unkept promises by the government.
Strike participants, as do many Colombians, view the Trade Agreement as one of their main scourges. The BBC reports that:
Small-scale farmers say that free trade agreements with the European Union and the United States, which have recently come into force, are flooding the market with agricultural products at prices they are unable to match.
The strike, initially dismissed as nonexistent by President Santos, has evolved into a serious political crisis, evidencing crippling weaknesses in his team, cornering him into a defensive position at a time when he prepares to launch his reelection campaign.
And that is a gap that a broad range of political forces seek to fill, according to political commentators.
Juan Manuel Urrutia, El Molino Online columnist and contributor in Colombia, describes players in the most serious protests seen for years in the nation.
In Caldas, where the global drop in coffee prices and the low competitiveness of small farmers have caused a major crisis, the Revolutionary Independent Labour Movement ( MOIR) is the force behind the group Dignidad Cafetera, says Urrutia.
In Catatumbo, an armed strike that turned violent was organized by coca leaf growers, with the support of guerrillas from FARC and ELN as well as members of former paramilitary bands.
The FARC also have been active in the protests through Marcha Patriótica led by former Senator Piedad Córdoba.
Also a familiar and polarizing face has made a cameo appearance
To everyone’s surprise one of the main culprits of countryside neglect and the impoverishment of small farmers, Alvaro Uribe, announced his support for the strike, claiming it stemmed from the lack of social dialogue from the Santos administration.
The lack of preparation by the administration is frightening. It is Surprising that the President says as if nothing that he did not know promises to the potato growers were unfulfilled and that the agriculture minister remains in office.
This gap in the cabinet has been filled by the Defense sector. Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon continues to insist that the strike has been “infiltrated”, particularly by FARC. That explains why the President has gone from denying the existence of “the so-called agricultural strike ” to ordering the “militarization” of Bogota and deploying 50,000 soldiers to help the police in ensuring that there’s movement in the roads.
The call for “militarization” is further evidence of the failure of [President Santos’s] political team .
Even if a way out of this impasse is found, adds Juan Manuel Urrutia, it runs the risk of being temporary and short-lived:
“The elephant in the room is that the agrarian issue in Colombia requires deep structural solutions and not cosmetic measures like buying surplus milk to distribute to poor children, or continuous support for prices that foster low competitiveness — the issues that led us to this strike”.
Twitpic: Irene Urango @ireneurango
