Diarios de Covid. Desigualdad e infraestructura en Colombia

Por: Felipe Fernández Investigador asociado de la Freie Universität Berlin

Todos estos días de confinamiento leo el diario de la escritora y ensayista Carolin Emcke en el Süddeutsche Zeitung a propósito del acontecer pandémico. Es mi nueva rutina, y siento que la necesito. Los textos que abro en mi portátil todas las mañanas en la versión digital de este periódico no son más que una amalgama de experiencias personales - caminatas por una ciudad desolada - y críticas reflexiones políticas - ¿cómo nos imaginamos en medio de la crisis? Leo atraído por la complejidad (o el deseo mismo de complejidad) que considero necesaria para comprender lo que pasa allí afuera. Se puede entrever en los textos la incertidumbre y la imposibilidad de escribir con absoluta certeza: todo va, y todo pasa, demasiado rápido, y no sabemos hacia dónde. Es un paseo intelectual, lúcido, pero a ciegas. Después de leer el diario, veo las noticias. Noticias de Colombia en la página de La Silla Vacía y El Espectador, noticias de Alemania en el Tagesschau. Veo estadísticas, escucho a los expertos, y leo novedades, o especulaciones, sobre las nuevas medidas que adoptan o adoptarían los gobiernos. Lidiar con Covid parece ser, sobre todo, un inestable experimento político, estético y tecnocrático. Así empiezan los días: con el diario de Carolin Emcke, y con las noticias.

Hasta hace pocas semanas estaba llevando a cabo mi trabajo de campo, cuando de pronto los rumores de un virus, a los que nunca les presté suficiente atención, se fueron convirtiendo en noticias serias y decisiones políticas que empezaron a apagar el país. Me fui y no pude volver, a Buenaventura, donde adelantaba mi pesquisa sobre la infraestructura urbana para la provisión de agua. Estoy en Cali, de donde soy, a salvo, confinado en un pequeño apartamento. No todos están a salvo y lo sé. De Buenaventura me llegan noticias por WhatsApp. Las personas de las que me rodeaba allí viven (o vivían) del “diario”, de los pequeños ingresos generados por actividades informales como el transporte de pasajeros en motocicletas o el jornal en locales comerciales. Ahora ya no tienen ingresos. Eran pobres en la normalidad y ahora lo son aún más con la pandemia. Uno de ellos, de mis amigos, está enfermo, aparentemente no de Covid, pero ciertamente no puede ahora acercarse a las instituciones del Estado para recibir las ayudas otorgadas a propósito de la crisis. Otros amigos le llevaron un “mercadito” y algo de dinero, como él mismo me contó. Muchas de estas personas fueron desplazadas por la violencia de la zona rural del Pacífico, en la década de los años 2000. Llegaron obligados a sobrevivir en la hostilidad urbana de una ciudad-puerto, crudo ejemplo de la crasa desigualdad que atraviesa transversalmente a Colombia. La literatura académica sobre los epicentros urbanos del Sur Global hace constante referencia a la inventiva de los marginados para sobrevivir en el eterno estado de excepción de precariedad material, política y social en el que viven: la informalidad de la reventa, prestación de servicios, trabajos esporádicos, autoconstrucción de viviendas y reparaciones improvisadas. Con Covid, emerge un estado de excepción aún peor, y esa inventiva de supervivencia se limita drásticamente. Yeison* me dice por WhatsApp que en Buenaventura la cosa “está muy suave para los mototaxis”: es decir que no hay mototaxis porque no hay pasajeros, y por ende no hay ingresos para los que prestan el servicio. La asistencia estatal, único salvavidas para estas personas en el lockdown en el que me paso leyendo diarios y noticias, es una incertidumbre: “¿Qué documentos deberé reunir para aplicar a la ayuda? ¿dónde me la entregarán? ¿cuánto será?” También aquí, en la coyuntura de una emergencia sin precedentes, el Estado existe a través de una infame tecnología burocrática que exige papeles, sellos, certificados, y que obliga a las personas a hacer eternas filas, a ser pacientes del Estado y sus ayudas (hay sobre este tema un muy interesante estudio del sociólogo argentino Javier Auyero).

Leo en el periódico La Silla Vacia que el confinamiento no significa lo mismo para todos los colombianos: “Materiales precarios de construcción, espacios pequeños, hacinamiento y falta de servicios públicos no solo vuelven más duro el aislamiento, sino que ponen en riesgo la salud de familias para las que incluso lavarse las manos, la medida más básica de prevención del contagio, puede ser imposible” (La Silla Vacía 2020). Dice, además, que 1 de cada 4 colombianos vive en estas condiciones: aún más expuestos a los riesgos que consigo trae el virus. En el artículo se habla de algunas regiones del país donde predomina este precario paisaje material. Entre ellas, claro, está Buenaventura. Y así, vuelvo a la interesante reflexión de que Covid no existe y se expande exclusivamente en cuerpos, sino en la fragilidad de las viviendas y la infraestructura urbana. En una conversación por WhatsApp con mi amigo Laurin, también antropólogo, llegamos a definir la infraestructura en tiempos de pandemia como un “virus host”, un “anfitrión del virus”. En esta precariedad infraestructural y burocrática deben confinarse, y experimentar e improvisar, muchos de los habitantes de Buenaventura.

Cuando leo el diario de Emcke y las noticias, siento el vértigo de lo que acontece a partir reflexiones, estadísticas y novedades. Pero estoy a salvo. No así muchos de mis amigos en Buenaventura. Aquí lo que importa no es el virus, su carácter homogéneo en cuanto fenómeno biológico, sino su entrelazamiento con aquello que entendemos por contexto: la infraestructura, los ingresos, los afectos. De ahí las formas tan diferentes de lidiar con él. Covid nos remite a los diseños de este mundo tan desigual.

*nombre cambiado

Amaya Rueda, Daniela et al. (2020): ‘Quédate en casa’ significa cosas muy diferentes según la casa. Publicado en: La Silla Vacia (URL: https://lasillavacia.com/quedate-casa-significa-cosas-muy-diferentes-segun-casa-76080) Fecha de consulta: 15.04.2020

Auyero, Javier (2012): Patients of the State. Durham: Duke University Press.

Political Report # 1427 Climate Justice Means Solidarity with Colombia

Political Report # 1427 Climate Justice Means Solidarity with Colombia by  James Patrick Jordan, Alliance for Global Justice

Back in 2015, I went with leaders of the Fensuagro agricultural workers federation to observe a series of consultations in the coffee growing areas of the Department of Tolima. These consultations were to ask rural communities about what their hopes were for the pending Peace Accord, and what kinds of benefits and developments they looked forward to via the agreement. A major component of the accord, which would be finalized in November 2016, was a commitment by the state for rural development to create alternatives to the cultivation of crops with illicit uses, open up new markets, and build decent roads to get those crops to those markets. I was very surprised by the main content of the consultations. Yes, the farmers talked about their expectations for peace. Yes, they talked about the relief they longed to experience cultivating crops without fear of war and political violence. But what they talked even more about had to do with their concerns around climate change. In every community we visited, we heard about how the farmers were being impacted by new weather patterns that were shrinking the zones where coffee could be grown. They also talked about new infestations of pests that were plaguing their fields as a result of warming temperatures. The issue of substitution was no longer just one of converting illicit cultivation to licit. They were discussing substituting new crops for coffee because the ecosystem had been irreversibly altered. Since the Peace Accord was implemented, virtually none of the commitments of the state for rural development have been honored. The administration of US President Donald Trump has advocated repeatedly against those commitments and called for forced eradication of coca and marijuana fields with no development in return. The White House has demanded a return to the spraying of entire communities with the carcinogen glyphosate (developed by Monsanto as RoundUp), that defoliates not only illegal crops, but also natural vegetation as well as alternative and legal agricultural production. The puppet administration of Colombia’s President Ivan Duque has been all too willing to comply with Trump’s demands. This has coincided with the highest levels of political violence against popular movements and rural communities in many years. An oft repeated statistic is that every 30 hours a social movement leader or human rights defender is murdered in Colombia. Most these can also be described as environmental activists and land and water protectors. As many as 75% of the victims are from rural communities. Colombia’s rural, indigenous, and Afro-Colombian communities are truly on the front line when it comes to combating the effects of climate change and other attacks on the environment. Earth defenders are killed, and families are forcibly displaced because the territories they inhabit are coveted by oil companies, mining companies, hydroelectric companies, big agribusinesses wanting to impose vast fields of monoculture crops, and narco-traffickers. One example is the village of Las Vegas in the municipality of Dolores, Tolima, where coffee growers were being forced off their land because the area had been found to contain oil reserves. I have also traveled extensively in Colombia’s far north, where the Department of La Guajira is found. In that department, every year 600 to 700 Wayuú indigenous children die because of a drought exacerbated by coal mining developments. There and in the next-door Department of César, big coal mining projects like Cerrejón and the Drummond mines are diverting water resources and contaminating the water that remains. The region’s rivers and streams are the lifeblood of local agriculture. The theft and contamination of these water sources has worsened the effects of the drought, pushing hunger, and malnutrition to epic proportions. It is no secret how oil and coal mine development contribute to global warming. However, what is less understood by many is the intimate link between the struggle for climate justice and ecological sustainability, and the struggle for liberation from Empire and the spread of global capitalism. The diffusion of transnational and private access to resources is backed up by the military might of the United States and its allies. When we investigate what propels global warming, threat number one is the US/NATO/Transnational Corporate Empire. It follows, then, that the best way to save the Earth is to dismantle that Empire. The Empire has invested more than $12 billion in Colombia to militarize that nation. Whether repressing its own popular movements within or providing a launching pad for aggressions against Venezuela and other independent voices in the region, the Empire is using Colombia to silence and subdue those that stand in the way of privatization. The Empire leads the drive toward ecological collapse. The single largest institutional source of greenhouse gasses is the Pentagon. In 2014, the Alliance for Global Justice was one of 37 popular movement organizations from around the world that signed the “If You Want to Save the World” declaration, which stated that, “Only five companies are responsible for 12.5% of the greenhouse gasses that are emitted into the atmosphere:  Chevron-Texaco, Exxon-Mobil, British Petroleum, Shell Oil and Conoco-Phillips. Their protector, the US armed forces is in turn the single governmental or corporate institution that consumes more petroleum products and emits more greenhouse gasses than any other in the world. Nevertheless, the US demands that the climate impact caused by the US military will not be brought up in any of the climate negotiations—and the UN accepts this. The declaration also spoke about exactly what it would take to truly reverse this rush toward planetary destruction: “The same imperialism that has caused so much damage to the Global South today continues expanding and threatening the whole planet. Consequently, the struggle for climate justice has converted into a struggle for the liberation of all workers, peasants, indigenous and ecosystems. The struggle against Empire is a struggle to save life on Earth.” Any serious effort to save the world, to end war, to establish peace and justice, including climate justice, is always, at its heart, a struggle to dismantle the stranglehold of Empire. This is especially true with regards to Colombia. Colombia provides the most crucial base of operations for the Empire in Latin America. The US has access to military bases throughout the country, with a permanent presence at seven of them. Colombia is strategically positioned with coasts on both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, and sits as a bridge connecting South America with Central America, the Caribbean, and Mexico. Together, the neighboring nations of Colombia and Venezuela form the strategic heart for Empire’s designs in the Americas. The defense of Venezuela’s autonomy and support for Colombia’s liberation are two of the most vital components of any effort to stop the Empire’s march toward total domination of the region. On Friday, September 20, young people around the world are conducting a Climate Strike that will serve as a valiant wake-up call to all of us to take action to curb the ecological disaster we are facing. The following Friday, September 27, solidarity activists throughout North and Latin America are coming together to serve notice to Colombian embassies and consulates of a new permanent grassroots campaign to end the political violence and displacement in Colombia. The actions on September 27 will kick off the campaign for the People’s Travel Advisory on Colombia. This campaign is a response to an ongoing effort to portray Colombia as a safe paradise for tourists.  We are saying, as internationalists, that Colombia is not safe until political violence has ended and the Peace Accord is honored. Both the Climate Strike and the September 27 actions are interrelated. It is up to us to make the connection: climate justice and liberation from Empire are two goals that cannot and must not be separated, that can only be achieved together. Striking for the Climate and standing up for peace in Colombia are good places to start. Original article can be found (here). URL:      Click here for article

Political Report # 1419 'Based in hatred': violence against women standing in Colombia's elections

Political Report # 1419 'Based in hatred': violence against women standing in Colombia's elections by  Julia Zulver, The Guardian

Killing of Karina García reflects targeting of female contenders, amid mounting security concerns. The body of mayoral candidate Karina García was found shot and incinerated in her car in the Cauca department of southern Colombia, on 1 September. For weeks, García had reported receiving threats and asked the government for increased protection during campaigning for the local and departmental elections at the end of the month. Since the political race officially began, seven candidates have been murdered around the country. These elections will be the first to take place since the historic signing of a peace accord between the Farc rebels and the Colombian government in 2016, ending more than 50 years of war. The assassinations, attacks and threats against candidates take place amid concerns about increasing violence in Colombia. Some analysts attribute the killings to armed groups looking to gain territorial authority and the control of the illegal drugs trade. Those candidates who support the implementation of the peace process, including the eradication or substitution of coca crops, risk becoming targets. Amid the rising tide of violence, national women’s organisations are voicing concerns that attacks on female political candidates are shaped by gender dynamics. Carolina Mosquera, researcher at feminist organisation Sisma Mujer, said women are being targeted both for running as candidates, and for disturbing the patriarchal order. “Male candidates are being attacked, but not for gendered reasons – not because they are men.” Irina Cuesta, a researcher at thinktank Fundación Ideas para la Paz, told the Guardian: “Our research has found that when women leaders are attacked, it’s through threats to their family members, sexual violence, and generalised warnings against the work they do. The contents of the threats are openly sexist and question [women’s] political processes more generally.” She describes a wave of femicides that took place in Puerto Asís, Putumayo, earlier this year. Among victims were women who planned to register as candidates in the coming elections. “There is a political message behind these aggressions against women leaders and candidates, particularly in the territories where stereotypes and tolerance to gender-based violence are useful tools for illegal armed actors.” María Emilsen Angulo is running to be the mayor of Tumaco, a port town on Colombia’s Pacific coast notorious for violence, drug-smuggling and the presence of armed groups. In May, Angulo was approached by a group of armed men who told her to end her political campaign. “I was worried, because I know how things work around here, but I continued cautiously. The second time they came to me, it was much more vulgar, crueller,” she says, in her campaign office in the centre of Tumaco. “They threatened me and told me that they know where my daughter is, where my husband is, that they know where we travel and how we move, and if something happened, it would be my fault.” She and her team decided to pull out of the running, but later surprised the community by officially registering again. “Women need to keep advancing to get access to the spaces that we still can’t reach. There should be an equality when it comes to governing this country, there should be more women counsellors, representatives, governors, mayors.” She has hired private security, but remains fearful. “When you launch a political campaign, you put your life at risk, your family at risk,” she says. “I feel that there are no guarantees for my safety. I want to do my job, but there are stronger interests out there.” Ten years ago, Laura Montoya nearly died after being attacked by a paramilitary group while in the office of her radio station. A journalist and activist for many years, she is now running for a seat in the departmental assembly of Putumayo, a southern province bordering Ecuador and Peru. In 2018, Montoya received a death threat via an anonymous phone call, and earlier this year her name appeared on a menacing pamphlet signed by a paramilitary group. Despite ongoing fears for her safety, she decided to launch a political campaign. “Women are gaining ground, but we still have further to go, and this has to begin from above, with policies that can represent real changes,” she says. “There is a gendered issue here. There is a deep-rooted machismo. I work alongside men who are involved in the same activism and they haven’t received the threats that I have.” Her department, Putumayo, continues to be one of the top coca-growing parts of the country, and armed groups are once again trying to gain control of the illicit trade. When it comes to women running for office in this context, Montoya is clear: “Women have become more empowered, but [participation] is still lacking because of the fear, the lack of guarantees for their security.” According to 2011 law, each party’s electoral list must include 30% women. Despite this, only 12% of all mayors in the country are women. Ana Güezmes García, the Representative for UN Women in Colombia, said “one of the biggest challenges is women’s participation at the local level”. “To consolidate the peace process, we need to invest in women … and create a culture of security for them,” she added. “Gendered violence is based in hatred. The level of murders and extreme violence we have seen in Colombia is very worrying and requires a strengthened response from all of the institutions. It’s the community leaders who face the biggest risks of threats and violence, which is why it’s extremely important that what we saw happen in Cauca mobilises everyone to respond, investigate and sanction what happened.” During her campaign, Karina García’s political slogan was: “One woman, one hope”. “She wanted to bring a new sort of leadership to Suárez [her municipality],” says Mosquera, “but when so few women are willing to risk entering electoral politics and then they see events like this, the message becomes extremely clear: don’t participate or this could happen to you too.” Original article can be found (here). URL:      https://theintercept.com/2019/09/24/puerto-rico-austerity-congress/

Abstract, Black Women’s Struggles against Extractivism, Land Dispossession, and Marginalization in Colombia

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Black Women’s Struggles against Extractivism, Land Dispossession, and Marginalization in Colombia

by Castriela Esther Hernández Reyes

The neocolonial turn toward extractivism intensifies the use of violence while fostering land dispossession, racism, and militarization of social life. Afro-Colombian women resist this process by using their subjectivities politically, strategically, discursively, and textually. An examination through the lens of black/decolonial feminism of the first national Mobilization for the Care of Life and Ancestral Territories, led by 40 black women from the Department of Cauca in 2014, shows that black women’s emotions and collective affections were driving forces that exhibited both their exclusions and their resistance. These feelings may be seen as catalysts through which their lived experiences are expressed and performed in the material world. Examination of this event suggests that a more radical analysis of black women’s historicity, subjectivities, and struggles is needed to better capture and understand experience-based epistemologies that challenge hegemonic forms of knowledge production.

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Abstract, Extractive Capital, Imperialism, and the Colombian State

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Extractive Capital, Imperialism, and the Colombian State
by Kyla Sankey


Since the turn of the century, Colombia has become increasingly dependent on mining exports to drive economic growth. While the surge in mining investments in Colombia and the problems associated with this form of economic development have received much attention from scholars and policy analysts, the common explanation is that the state has been undermined or eroded by emergent global forces. However, nation-states should be seen not as victims but as authors and enforcers of new processes of capital accumulation. The Colombian state has acted as the principal guarantor of the political and territorial conditions necessary for this form of extractive capitalism by reconstituting property and contract laws, signing free-trade agreements, reconfiguring the internal state apparatus. and expanding military forces.

Political Report # 1354 "Narcopols": Medellín Cartel “Financed” Senate Campaign of Former President Álvaro Uribe, Colombian Senators Told U.S. Embassy

Political Report # 1354 "Narcopols": Medellín Cartel “Financed” Senate Campaign of Former President Álvaro Uribe, Colombian Senators Told U.S. Embassy by Michael Evans, Director, Colombia Documentation Project, National Security Archive

The color of the people of Mexico is one of the things that had a most profound effect on my psyche when I first visited the place of my birth in 1976 at the age of 22. The people came in all colors, though primarily different shades of red-brown, owing to the nation's Indigenous roots. Having grown up in a white-dominant society, it was an affirmation of my own brown skin color, in sharp contrast with the artificial color of official Mexico. I was used to seeing government bureaucrats and those that graced the nation's television screens with light skin, bleached blond hair and artificial blue or green eyes. The truth is, more than 40 years later, the nation's color line has seemingly not changed much at all. When I first noticed this preference for light skin in Mexico, it was present at every turn and every corner. It wasn't just a case of difference, but also disdain. Apparently, all things that were light were "good" and all things dark were "bad." This was especially true of television. White or light skin was preferred for virtually every role, except the ones for the subservient, demeaning and outlaw roles. This was most pronounced in advertising. Virtually all commercials used the same obscenely blond baby or the same blond couple to sell or promote anything and everything. This had a shocking effect on me as I had been part of the Chicano movement and had just graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles. The movement was political, fighting for our human rights, but it was also an explosive time of cultural pride; it is what birthed the slogans: "Brown Power," "Brown is Beautiful" and "Brown Pride." No longer would we accept subservience, nor would we ever again be ashamed of our color or our Indigenous roots. I thought the Mexican reality would have been opposite of the United States'. Bewildered, when I inquired, even the Mexican revolutionaries explained that racism was a US problem: a product of its history, not Mexico's. Rather, Mexico was afflicted with a deep-seated classism, not racism, they said.

Political Report # 1307 Dirty gold is the new cocaine in Colombia - and it's just as bloody

By Jim Wyss and Kyra Gurney Miami Herald

The Black Hawk helicopters roared over a remote jungle in southwestern Colombia, ignoring the patchwork of emerald-colored coca fields that seemed to make easy targets. Instead, they homed in on a yellow backhoe, far from the nearest village or road, tearing into a riverbank searching for a metal that has inspired dreamers and criminals since the Spanish quest for El Dorado: gold. As the choppers hovered over the muddy clearing, heavily armed police, bristling with grenades, body armor and automatic rifles, rushed at the machine. The stunned backhoe operator fought back briefly, swinging the mechanical arm like a club, before running into the jungle amid a cloud of tear gas. Within minutes, police had packed the backhoe with C-4 explosives and the $100,000 Kobe excavator burst into a ball of fire - another small victory in the country's outright war on illegal mining. Colombia's illicit mining industry, like the far-flung operation that police raided late last year, generates about $2.4 billion a year in criminal cash - three times more than the country's notorious cocaine industry, according to some intelligence estimates. And like cocaine, the vast majority of illegal gold is being sent overseas to cities in Europe and the United States - including Miami. In the process, the precious metal has become the lifeblood of gangs and guerrillas and is turning once-pristine jungles into toxic landscapes tainted with mercury and cyanide. "Today, criminal mining brings more money to criminal groups, to guerrilla groups, to mafias ... than drug trafficking," Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos warned in 2015. And that dynamic isn't changing.

Abstract, Economic Extractivism and Agrarian Social Movements: Perspectives on Low-Intensity Democracy in the Face of the Colombian Conflict

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Economic Extractivism and Agrarian Social Movements: Perspectives on Low-Intensity Democracy in the Face of the Colombian Conflict
by Leila Celis

During the mid-1980s, Colombia joined the neoliberal global economy in two ways: (1) by implementing a “low-intensity democracy” made up of reforms intended to institutionalize the social protests as a response to the crisis of governance and to promote investor security and (2) by exchanging a protectionist industrialization economic model for an extractivist neoliberal one. The new progressive legislation created inclusive institutions and recognized multiculturalism and social and political rights, but these very rights are denied by the neoliberal economy, which favors big transnational capital and the physical and legal coercion that this model requires. These two pivotal elements of neoliberalism (governance and the economy) are pragmatically incompatible. The dominant class has favored the interests of powerful transnational elites and employed both legal and military avenues. Consequently, 30 years later, the social movements have been only partially and temporarily institutionalized. Active rejection of the economic model is growing. Social organizations have appropriated the concept of human rights and adapted it to their social project, the construction of a peasant economy that opposes the neoliberal one.

Abstracts, Resisting Neoliberalism in Colombia: The Role of Human Rights

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Resisting Neoliberalism in Colombia: The Role of Human Rights
by Paul A. Chambers

The Colombian government’s noncompliance with the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement’s Labor Action Plan calls into question not only the government’s intentions but also the efficacy of human rights activism and discourse for social resistance to neoliberalism. Colombia has managed to adjust the narrative on human rights and improve its international image, paving the way for U.S. ratification of the free-trade agreement despite the fact that the human rights situation continues to be very serious. Its success in this is due to the way in which the debate on the agreement and human rights was framed—with a very narrow focus on trade unionists’ rights and a discourse that did not link civil and political rights to economic and social rights—and to the ideological affinity between neoliberalism and the dominant liberal discourse on human rights.

Political Report # 1272 'A social leader is killed every 4 days in Colombia': Report

By Stephen Gill,  Colombia Reports

A social leader is killed every four days in Colombia, according to a report from the Foundation for Peace and Reconciliation (PARES). The organization that monitors armed conflict in the South American country recorded 55 assassinations of community leaders and human rights activists this year alone. "Every four days a homicide is committed against a social leader in Colombia and every two days, there is one threatened," said the report. "The vulnerability of leaders and human rights defenders in Colombia remains critical. The acts of violence against this population show high degrees of systematic behavior." The report states that the motivations for these actions are to limit the participation of social leaders in politics, impede processes of truth-building, land restitution and environmental protection, reported Caracol Radio. It highlights that since Colombia's government signed a historic peace deal with the Marxist-inspired FARC guerrillas last November, a total of 181 acts victimizing social leaders and human rights defenders have been recorded up to July 11, 2017.

Political Report # 1256 Colombia's Christian Alt-Right

By ANDRÉS GONZÁLEZ, JACOBIN

The defeat of Colombia's referendum in October of 2016 was a shocking development. Liberal and left-wing observers failed to predict that voters would be won over by the Right's fear-mongering anti-peace campaign. In Colombia, ideological vestiges of the Cold War have been refashioned to direct fear and anger towards a fictional "gender ideology" that supposedly poses a spiritual threat to Christian values. In the lead-up to the peace referendum, right-wing groups were able mobilize the imaginary threat of a queer, communist conspiracy to generate panic and turn it into political capital. It's time we grappled with the gruesome consequences of a political conjuncture in which online media figures, conservative religious movements, and a generalized politics of fear all intersect to shore up support for the Right, even in a country poised to overcome a persistent conflict that has raged for more than fifty years. The War on "Gender Ideology" After four years of negotiations between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-Popular Army (FARC-EP), an end to Colombia's long internal conflict seemed near.  But in October 2016, with only 37 percent of the almost 35 million eligible voters showing up to the polls, the peace agreement was rejected by a margin of just 50.21 percent. A few days after the failed referendum, Juan Carlos Vélez, manager of the campaign opposing the peace agreement, was interviewed by La República, a well known newspaper in Colombia. According to Vélez, the success of his campaign was due to two factors: 1) the importance of digital social networks over other media sources, and 2) a differential approach to messaging that targeted different class audiences.

Abstract, Dealing with Dangerous Spaces The Construction of Urban Policy in Medellín

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Dealing with Dangerous Spaces
The Construction of Urban Policy in Medellín
by Luisa Sotomayor


In Latin America, cities with security challenges are increasingly invoking urban planning policy to rebuild governance in neighborhoods perceived as unruly. While the state’s “arrival” in marginalized areas is long overdue, it is also embedded in complex histories of violence and socio-spatial marginalization. Medellín’s Comuna 13 has historically been materially and discursively constructed as a space of relegation. Interview and focus group data show how policy cycles for Comuna 13 evolved from discretionary programs (1978–2002) to securitization and (para)militarization (2000–2003) and then social urbanism, a program of participatory urban upgrading (2004–2011). The latter, a reformist approach, aims to provide better services, foster participation, and reduce socio-spatial segregation. Underlying these positive aims, however, two contradictions remain concealed: deep-seated inequality resulting from decades of normalized exclusion and the perpetuation of a regime of hypersecuritization and (para)policing that recreates itself under new governance and spatial arrangements.

Abstract, Urban Governance and Economic Development in Medellín An “Urban Miracle”?

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Urban Governance and Economic Development in Medellín An “Urban Miracle”?
by Tobias Franz


Many of the academic analyses calling Medellín’s development an “urban miracle” fall short with regard to discussion of the political economic implications of institutional shifts. An emerging transnational capitalist class promoted ‘good governance’ reforms and the embedding of neoliberalism in the urban context. Medellín’s neoliberal development agenda is not only a market-led strategy but also a particular form of hierarchic rule and distribution of power. Increased economic activities in the tertiary sector, the promotion of flexible labor markets, and the incorporation of the city into the global economy at the lower end of the value chain have not served as sustainable growth escalators for Medellín’s economy. The city continues to have high rates of un- and underemployment and is still the country’s most unequal city. These developments can by no means be described as miraculous.

Abstract, Participation without Power The Failure of Citizen Participation in Barranquilla

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Participation without Power
The Failure of Citizen Participation in Barranquilla
by Florian Koch and Lina María Sánchez Steiner


Citizen participation has become an important political strategy. A case study of the Barranquilla land-use plan employing Fung and Wright’s theories on countervailing power reveals that the citizen participation promoted to comply with legal requirements was a failure because it was manipulated by the dominant public actor. In societies such as that of Barranquilla, which employs traditional modes of politics, there is little chance of fostering successful participatory processes because there is no countervailing power to offset the established one. The violent context that surrounds the political sphere, low confidence in state institutions, and the convergence of economic and political power prevent the creation of strong and independent countervailing powers.

Abstract, Worlding Bogotá’s Ciclovía From Urban Experiment to International “Best Practice”

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Worlding Bogotá’s Ciclovía
From Urban Experiment to International “Best Practice”
by Sergio Montero


“Best practices” are either celebrated as inspirational examples that can spur policy change and learning in other places or critiqued as “one-size-fits-all” models that do not consider the complexity of local contexts. Less is known about the forms of power, governance, and legitimacy that are embedded in the construction and mobilization of certain policies as world policy models. This article critically examines the concept of “best practice” by analyzing the case of Bogotá’s Ciclovía, a weekly 70-mile street-closure program to promote urban biking and physical exercise. The analysis sheds light on the shifting rationalities and constellations of local and transnational actors, networks, and agendas that have shaped the program from its experimental beginnings in the 1970s through its construction as an international “best practice” in the 2000s.

A Partial Peace in Colombia

A Partial Peace in Colombia Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos (left) and FARC leader Timoleón Jimenez (right) shake hands after signing peace accords; Cuban president Raúl Castro stands in the middle. By Kevin Young, Against the Current

In November 2016 the Colombian Congress approved a peace deal between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas, potentially ending a 50-year armed conflict that has killed at least 220,000 people--82 percent civilians--and displaced almost seven million. The accord includes mechanisms for disarmament and reintegration of guerrilla fighters, lenient sentencing for those who confess to committing acts of violence, and an allotment of ten congressional seats for FARC politicians for eight years. Separate peace talks with the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla force are now underway.

Abstract, Dealing with Dangerous Spaces The Construction of Urban Policy in Medellín

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Dealing with Dangerous Spaces
The Construction of Urban Policy in Medellín
by Luisa Sotomayor


In Latin America, cities with security challenges are increasingly invoking urban planning policy to rebuild governance in neighborhoods perceived as unruly. While the state’s “arrival” in marginalized areas is long overdue, it is also embedded in complex histories of violence and socio-spatial marginalization. Medellín’s Comuna 13 has historically been materially and discursively constructed as a space of relegation. Interview and focus group data show how policy cycles for Comuna 13 evolved from discretionary programs (1978–2002) to securitization and (para)militarization (2000–2003) and then social urbanism, a program of participatory urban upgrading (2004–2011). The latter, a reformist approach, aims to provide better services, foster participation, and reduce socio-spatial segregation. Underlying these positive aims, however, two contradictions remain concealed: deep-seated inequality resulting from decades of normalized exclusion and the perpetuation of a regime of hypersecuritization and (para)policing that recreates itself under new governance and spatial arrangements.

Abstract, Urban Governance and Economic Development in Medellín An “Urban Miracle”?

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Urban Governance and Economic Development in Medellín An “Urban Miracle”?
by Tobias Franz


Many of the academic analyses calling Medellín’s development an “urban miracle” fall short with regard to discussion of the political economic implications of institutional shifts. An emerging transnational capitalist class promoted ‘good governance’ reforms and the embedding of neoliberalism in the urban context. Medellín’s neoliberal development agenda is not only a market-led strategy but also a particular form of hierarchic rule and distribution of power. Increased economic activities in the tertiary sector, the promotion of flexible labor markets, and the incorporation of the city into the global economy at the lower end of the value chain have not served as sustainable growth escalators for Medellín’s economy. The city continues to have high rates of un- and underemployment and is still the country’s most unequal city. These developments can by no means be described as miraculous.