The bad economic policies implemented by Duque and the excessive favoring of big business, led to thousands of Colombians spontaneously taking to the streets in 2021, motivated by economic asphyxiation, for more than two months to demand changes and social transformations.
Hunger, inequality, social injustice, poor governance, among other factors that have been a constant during successive governments, created an effervescent atmosphere that was triggered by the imminent implementation of a regressive tax reform – the first period of 2021 – that suffocated the pockets of ‘the nobodies’, while freeing the country’s great millionaires and wealthy from economic responsibilities; this generated a spontaneous and massive mobilization, apparently lacking organization, as it did not possess the classic scheme of caudillo leadership; on the contrary, it was a collective leadership that was motivated by the determination to initiate a feat that would achieve structural transformations.
Several months of street struggle where, despite the bloody and violent repression exercised by the State against the thousands of demonstrators, we stood erect and on a fighting footing, could be classified as a process of popular insurrection, which was extinguished with the siren songs that the expectations that fed the “Government of Change” became to later instrumentalize and transform it into electoral flow.
The social outbreak of 2021 left more than 80 State Crimes committed mainly by the ESMAD, the Police and others in collusion with the paramilitaries, it also left dozens of young people with permanent serious eye injuries and hundreds of political prisoners; in addition, the 28A became the cornerstone that made possible a progressive government, which calls itself the “Government of Change”, a name that is not consistent with a weak government that in many aspects has dedicated itself to selling smoke; therefore, it remains and will continue to be indebted to those who yearned for the change and social transformation that the social outbursts marked as a roadmap, for any government that assumes its banners as a campaign slogan.
The causes and social realities that motivated the armed uprising of the 1960s and the social outburst of the 2020s continue to exist and therefore the popular struggle for changes and transformations, rather than being current, is a right and a duty of ‘the nobodies’. Because we cannot forget the popular maxim that says: Only the people, save the people!