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The change in Claudia López’s position with respect to the marches was reported by María Isabel Rueda in El Tiempo, remembering, first, that the mayor of the city came to say that “statistics do not lie”, referring to the fact that after the protests and disorders in the city there are peaks of the coronavirus pandemic.
“But, just as he decided that the Bogota demonstrations contagious […], suddenly [López] became softer “Rueda writes, and reproduces —to make the contrast clear— the mayor’s words on the occasion of the arrival of the indigenous minga to the capital: “If the minga arrives in Bogotá, we will receive it here with the best logistics conditions, security and coexistence that guarantee their legitimate right […] Just as we can work with biosecurity and live with biosecurity, we can also protest with biosecurity”.
Based on this observation, the columnist concludes: “That is, for the Bogota marches there is contagion, even for the days without VAT, which he criticized so much, but for the [marchas] of the minga, the contagion can be controlled”. Another aspect of López’s speech that is contradictory to Rueda is the fact that the mayor promised to personally facilitate logistical measures for the minga, “as a warm welcome”, after they were “rallying” with the government to who corresponded that responsibility.
López has argued that this responsibility belongs to the National Government because, according to her, 9 out of 10 marches in Bogotá are against the administration of Iván Duque. That thesis was reiterated this Monday in an interview with La República, in which he also took up another recurring argument: the minga would not have arrived in Bogotá if the Government and aborigines had met in Cali. “Now they say that they meet here, they would have met and we save this tension. But this is the capital of all Colombians and we receive with respect and guarantees”.
“The mayor, brave for some things, is cowardly for others”says Rueda, raising his tone. “Like many, it dies of the fright that, for demanding respect and order in the city, so that the minorities who protest do not risk the safety of the majorities, they are not going to accuse them of being ‘stigmatizing’ the social march […]. Asking the minga for a better opportunity to travel to Bogotá, in the midst of the pandemic, is to stigmatize it. “
But Rueda puts everything in a broader context. “The mobilization squares, to arrive two days before the national strike, while they look for a place to settle, and then take to the streets to make political trials of President Duque. Thus, the political strategy of social unrest that began to develop last year and had to be suspended due to the pandemic is resumed. It does not matter that […] Duque had or had not gone to attend the minga in Cali. No one is going to dissuade them, because this is part of a careful political agenda towards the 2022 elections., which indicates why all the mediations, including that of half the cabinet that did travel to Cali, were frustrated ”.
In fact, that political dimension that Rueda warns was in evidence in the words that López expressed at a press conference when he received the indigenous minga, this Sunday afternoon, in which he criticized the supporters of former president Álvaro Uribe for not supporting the mobilization of aborigines. “Uribismo, which has organized marches in Bogotá and Colombia to defend its leader who was in prison, You cannot come and tell the country that to defend a convict you can leave, but to defend the rights of Colombians, you cannot“, He said.
Camila Zuluaga, without mentioning any name, reinforces Rueda’s idea and maintains in her column of El Nuevo Siglo that “a clear example of the advantage that some politicians have taken from the coronavirus in their speech is their reaction to the minga”. And he also recalls the recommendations “with which they have been bombarding us since March”, which establish that “the agglomerations go against any protocol to combat the pandemic.”
“However, the gathering of thousands of indigenous people in the Palacio de los Deportes, endorsed and supported by many, is radically different from what has been demanded of us”, Warns Zuluaga in his column. “At the beginning of the year, various leaders, senators and mayors argued ad nauseam that the only way to deal with the virus was to turn off the economy and create a basic income that would allow citizens to stay at home without starving. Now, those same politicians say that the alternative is to go out, have social contact and claim the government to get out of the crisis”.
For this reason, he asks for “a coherent management” that sends “a clear message” to the public, and rejects “agitations that favor the permanent political campaign within social networks”, where, Zuluaga estimates, “politicians are more concerned about the ‘likes’ and to avoid the digital inquisition, than for real life. The guidelines for managing the pandemic cannot be changed according to what suits your political discourse best.”.
Like practically all Colombians, Luis Carvajal Basto recognizes in El Espectador that “the arrival of the minga in Bogotá is an expression of unsolved problems that deserve to be heard and addressed.” But, like Rueda and Zuluaga, he warns that that arrival of the aborigines to the capital “coincides with the interests of political sectors that have the next presidential election in their sights”.
But Carvajal Basto also puts the mobilization in other contexts, that of health and the economy, and asks several questions: “The mobilization occurs at a time when the pandemic and its consequences do not end. Europe is moving towards a first outbreak, which will come to us at some point, in the face of which France has not found any remedies other than curfew and the United Kingdom has had to ban family visits. The economic effects are yet to be established, but in Colombia we know that GDP will fall by up to 7% and up to $ 60 billion has been allocated to the emergency, for now. Where will they come from? How long will it take to recover the jobs, formal and informal, lost? Is it time to add mobilizations and strikes to a serious public health problem?”.
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