Last Friday (27 July), Bogotá woke up with its main avenues blocked. The powerful taxi drivers’ group did it in protest because 8 of them have been murdered this year, the latest one, Mario Orlando Velásquez, 39, on Thursday night. The above 17-minutes Caracol TV report, broadcast at Friday noon (and co-presented by lovely Silvia Corzo), summarizes the chaos and everything most Bogotans had to go through in order to arrive to their workplaces or their schools or colleges.
It was too late when Bogotá mayor, leftist Luis Eduardo Garzón, himself elected mostly because of the votes of groups as the taxi and bus drivers’, ordered police to dissolve the protest and unblock the streets by force, after the local government and the taxi drivers’ representatives concerted a meeting for talks toward the resolution of their concerns around 10:00. The following video, posted by a left-wing group magazine, shows the police abuses in some points of the city. One taxi driver says they’re fighting for their own lives:
Since the Transmilenio system was blocked (their drivers were caught playing parqués), and some bus drivers joined the protest, people had to walk, ride a bicycle or trucks (even TV crew vans) in order to get to their destinations. Despite most people agree the drivers’ reasons to protest are fair and right, a lot of them don’t endorse the way they chose. The latest location unblocked was Quirigua, a neighbourhood northwest of the city, where the traffic started to flow again after 12:30.
The above Caracol TV news report compares the way Colombian Senate treated pro-Cuban ELN leader Francisco Galán and paramilitary leaders Salvatore Mancuso, Ramón Isaza, and Iván Duque alias Ernesto Báez three years ago, with its scorn and indifference towards 30 victims of the violence by these groups, FARC, and some members of the Colombian Army this week. While Galán and the Mancuso boys were listened and applauded, the relatives of the dead Colombian common people puts to this “40-year low intensity war” weren’t even heard by almost 80 of the 91 Senators (from 102). Most of them were from pro-Uribe parties, even though some of the victims have suffered from attacks, massacres, death threats and murders perpetrated by FARC or ELN guerrillas (Uribe’s enemy number 1), such as El Nogal car-bomb in 2003, or the violence from the drug-dealing cartels, as former police officer Ricardo Gómez. Victims from Machuca and Bojayá massacres, relatives of FARC hostages and people murdered by paramilitaries because they belonged to the Patriotic Union party in the 1980s narrated their tragedy, but around 24 July at 20:00 only 35 of the 91 Senators who signed the attendance list were listening their testimonies. (more…)
After the murder of 11 deputies by FARC guerrillas, Colombians decided to go to the streets and yell “No More Kidnappings“. It started as a citizen initiative, but soon the democratic security government, big companies and mainstream media supported it and invited people to join. The huge demonstration took place on Thursday 5 July at noon. Even Second Lifers protested. But leftist Alternative Democratic Pole preferred to convoke its “own march”, because it didn’t want to be supportive of president Uribe, who is also considered [by them] responsible for the death of the local lawmakers.
They marched today, I was there, but what I felt was the loneliness of the deputies’ families, amidst callings from political caudillos taking advantages from banners, flags and puppets calling for rejection [of kidnappings], I saw the pre-candidates for next elections fishing in Cali river’s troubled waters. But the saddest thing and that what I didn’t want to listen was the way deputy [Carlos] Charry’s daughter [Carolina] was treated while she read a grateful letter in behalf of the families and who was booed by the crowd as she said:
“… Our deads belong to us. Thank you for mobilizing to reject the government’s policies…”
And it’s them, the relatives, who in a unobjectionable mix of pain and loneliness sheltered by a blanket have in my opinion the best version of what happened: unfulfilled promises, cancelled appointments, begs everywhere in a 5-year restless search for their release and nothing could achieve it, the will of the parts in order to help in the right moment was an already earned right and they couldn’t get it, and to their surprise, now, when they clamour for their deads the voices of pain seem to be selfish and strategic and they will surely hold up the path to reach an ending.
