What interests hide behind the recent indigenous demonstrations

Indigenous people march in Bogotá downtown on 21 November 2008 (Photo credit: Irene Tobón [aka Airin (i-ren ishii)] via Flickr, CC-BY-NC-SA licence)
With the recent popular strikes and demonstrations against the government, undoubtedly president Álvaro Uribe must have been in a black mood. Or at least in a copper-coloured […]

Two main issues have been central on the indigenous demonstration held in Colombia these days. The first one is their demand for more protection from the Colombian State because of the indigenous people murdered by the groups fighting in the Colombian internal armed conflict. The second one has to do with their constant and almost eternal fight for land.

Indigenous clash with police in Cauca (Photo: Simone Bruno vía Indymedia Colombia)
While the Colombian government deals with scandal after scandal, in the last few weeks we have witnessed, again, protests from different sectors: the judiciary branch, the sugar cane cutters, and indigenous peoples. But why if Colombia’s the second happiest country on Earth? Why if […]

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Yolanda Pulecio, Colombian military chief general Fredy Padilla de León, Íngrid Betancourt and Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos, at Bogotá’s CATAM military airport, on 2 July 2008 afternoon (Photo credit: Juan Felipe Barriga / Secretaría de Prensa de la Presidencia de la República)
“Perfect”. The term Íngrid Betancourt used to refer […]

Pedro Antonio Marín (Manuel Marulanda Vélez, Tirofijo or Sureshot) and Guillermo León Sáenz (Alfonso Cano)

On 25 May 2008, Rodrigo Londoño, aka Timoleón Jiménez or Timochenko, confirmed the death last 26 March of 78-year-old Pedro Antonio Marín, aka Manuel Marulanda Vélez or Tirofijo (Sureshot), Colombian guerrilla FARC’s top leader. The confirmation came on a video broadcast […]

Marulanda died and Colombia starts to get used to it. After the euphoria of the Uribista hawks who, headed by Interior Minister Holguín, came out to preach the enemy’s total extermination, everything will return to normal. The FARC are not over, and peace is not so close either.

This time was for real, and on a bed. In the past, the newspapers’ headlines held a wake for him 18 times, in step to military prayers, but he ran away every one of them. From Marquetalia to Venezuela, this man with sallow look, who Pastrana made Caguán’s Star, always mocked death.

From left to right, general Óscar Naranjo, director of the Colombian National Police, Ronald Kenneth Noble, INTERPOL’s Secretary General, and María del Pilar Hurtado, director of the Administrative Department of Security (DAS), on Bogotá, 15 May (Photo credit: teleSUR)
As we did on Wednesday with the extradition of 14 paramilitary chiefs to the United States, equinoXio […]

Here it comes again. Venezuela-Colombia relationships enter a limbo which gets them closer to hell, this time because of the INTERPOL report claiming the absence of manipulation on the laptops seized at the camp where FARC’ second top chief aka Raúl Reyes was killed in March.

This is the second blow against FARC and its allies in a little more than two months, because INTERPOL’s certification implies an independent warranty that the proofs found at the Ecuadorian camp were not contaminated. If the Colombian government had not taken the decision to ask an audit on the devices and their content, the opposition -specially the people mentioned in the Reyes dossier- would be screaming that Uribe and his “thugs” manipulated the information to start a persecution on his political opponents, for sure.