A joint chronicle on the 6-M

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Carolina Giraldo contributed with this article

This morning I woke up with the intention to join my love to go to this march, because I had several reasons for not attending the 4 February march, among them work and other personal issues. From the latter, time said I was right (because of the second re-election campaign and the exacerbated, absurd nationalism), because despite the 4-F march was massive and maybe spontaneous, it responded to the then current situation (not for that legitimate in its contempt against the disgusting FARC) and it was taken advantage from by the government and its friends quite well. That was more than predictable because of the media and official support it received.

In the last few days I was inquiring into the true reasons of the 6-M march, which was already prepared from last year (before the 4-F one), its growing national and international support it was getting and I realized that it was systematically discredited by the very same Colombian government, which refused to participate in it.

Around 10 a. m. when I left home, I noticed that the Transmilenio bus system was temporarily suspended. It was because of the entry to Bogotá of the peasants who were coming from Soacha, which happened at that part of the city. As I was going to downtown, the only "mobilized" were the police: carabinier police, traffic police and military service-serving police auxiliares. No marchers. I passed by La Hortúa, near San Juan de Dios Hospital around 10:30, but I just saw a small group of demonstrators walking with a lot of police agents by their side, who were waiting for the other marchers, the ones coming from the meeting point at Avenida 30 and Avenida 1 de Mayo (in front of a National Learning Service [SENA] centre) and the campesinos coming from Tolima department.

I met Carolina around 11 a. m. at Calle 26 and Carrera 7a. I came walking from south, from Bolívar’s Square and I watched some interesting things, though I immediately felt that the attendance (as it was foreseeable) was not as massive as on 4 February. Besides that, I saw a lot of lack of organization in the march: there were many dispersed groups of demonstrators. Carolina came from the north of the city and told me that on her way to our meeting point she had seen no sign of demonstrations, beyond two persons who got off from the same Transmilenio bus she rode. From the moment we met, we started taking pictures and walking to Bolívar’s Square. Something told us we had arrived at the right time.

On our way we saw demonstrators and marchers of all kinds. Some of them, as it was easy to predict, were shouting slogans against re-president Uribe or the paramilitaries, other ones were calling for an humanitarian exchange and other few ones demonstrated against FARC and all kinds of violence. There were also those who seized the opportunity to show their support for Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and Colombian senator Piedad Córdoba, which was also predictable.

There were university students (from public and private schools), public high school students, SENA students and teachers, groups of peasants, natives, afro-Colombians who are victims of forced displacement, workers and teachers unions, people from the Communist Party, the Workers’ Socialist Party, some relatives and apparently survivors from the Patriotic Union genocide and, above all, people mourning and seeking for answers about the disappearance or death of their relatives. These persons were the ones who moved us the most, because they were the true feeling of this march.

Besides, several politicians showed up, as Bogotá Mayor Samuel Moreno Rojas, his Government Secretary Clara López, former governor of Valle del Cauca Angelino Garzón, Alternative Democratic Pole (PDA) congressmen Germán Navas Talero and Jesús Bernal Amorocho, PDA Bogotá council member Ati Quigua, Liberal Party leaders Juan Fernando Cristo and Héctor Elí Rojas, former Bogotá Mayor Antanas Mockus, columnist María Jimena Duzán and writer William Ospina, among others.

Next to them, some spectators and people who also demonstrated on 4-F, including relatives of those kidnapped by FARC (among them people from País Libre NGO). It’s worth noticing that among those spectators there were people holding posters with photographs of disappeared or murdered persons.

The march was "peaceful" until 3:30 p. m., noticing that the regular agitators or “tirapiedra” (stone-throwers) who got up with their own tricks around 4:30 p. m.

Carolina told me that she had liked this march more than the 4 February one, because there was more diversity, in the protests and the slogans which, according to her, pallow to see the Colombian conflict in their diverse dimensions, specially with the forgotten victims. Nevertheless, the march was open for the rhetorical, old-fashioned, boring, and bored slogans which are useless to make a progress in the critical views of the conflict (among them likely FARC infiltrators and supporters). What an opinion she gives us, quite accurate.

I think the march had some nice details around art, music and creativity, as many of the banners and acts inside the demonstration showed. That’s a shared opinion with Carolina. That allowed to reconstruct part of the conflict’s historic memory and a claim for the truth, the justice, and the redress for the victims of violent acts perpetrated by every side in the conflict (paramilitaries, guerrillas and some State agents). We also witnessed a diversity of political positions with no room on 4-F. But we also saw a demonstration tending more to militancy than spontaneity.

Despite all of the above and with cold head, the biggest feeling that 6-M (and why not, the 4-F too) left both of us is that Colombians need more sensitivity and memory, which will not be solved with more demonstrations, despite all the respect this kind of mobilizations deserve. Again, our problem is a cultural and political one. We felt Colombia lost a big opportunity to make a single domestic and international demonstration to contempt all kinds of violence, from disgusting, liars, cynical FARC, creepy, unscrupulous and also cynical paramilitaries, a ruling class insensitive with the victims who, as one of the banners said, have no class or social stratum, and opportunist politicians. Oh, and what about the complicity of some mainstream media when it comes to make the victims who mobilized today invisible. That’s disgusting and scary.

We should leave our hearts and reason to mobilize toward the common sense of respecting life.

* Photos by Germán Quimbayo and Carolina Giraldo / Special for equinoXio

This article was originally published 7 March 2008 in equinoXio. Translated from Spanish by Carlos Raúl van der Weyden Velásquez

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