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(Image: Sergio Fernandez) Bogota students took to the streets again in September 2019 in protests against corruption, but were brutally repressed by the ESMAD after police infiltrators engaged in vandalism. In response, students across Colombia rose up to demand the dismantling of the loathed riot police unit on top of measures to curb corruption and government compliance with agreements that ended the 2018 protests. Teachers joined the students in October that year and indigenous groups, farmers and labor unions joined to call for a national strike in opposition to a tax reform in November 2019. First national strike The national strike triggered the largest anti-government protests in more than four decades despite attempts to criminalize the protests. ....
Open Thread 2020-101 Comments Resumen Latinoamericano: Since the end of the so-called ‘progressive wave’ in Latin America, which marked the first decade of this century, the regional left was relegated to being the opposition, but in the agitated atmosphere of 2020 it regained its hopes with new electoral victories. In Chile, the proposal for constitutional reform promoted by leftist sectors was approved, while in Bolivia, the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) of former president Evo Morales (2006-2019) returned to government. Already in 2019, Peronism had returned to Argentina with the triumph of Alberto Fernandez, which awakened the first hopes among Latin American leftist sectors. ....
December 17, 2020 Colombia’s prosecution arrested some 10,000 students on bogus terrorism or rebellion charges between 2000 and 2018, a study on the criminalization of youth revealed. According to the study by the Gran Politecnica university, the prosecution arrested 10,471 students between 15 and 25 between January 2000 and February 2018. In these 17 years, only 491 students were found guilty. The remaining student, of whom 4,155 were never even taken to trial, appear to be the victim of the systematic persecution and intimidation of Colombia’s public university students whose youth apparently is suspicious. The study also revealed that one-sided reporting on the arrests in some cases had fatal consequences as the falsely accused students became the target of far-right paramilitary groups. ....