Thread by @l_eslava

A 🧵to contextualise what's happening in Cali, the epicenter of Colombia's national strike, based on a long ethnographic engagement with the young people behind the protests, police officers and local officials that @LinaBuchely and I have been conducting since 2016. 1/

Some background to the current strike first. The huge mobilisations over the past 12 days are a continuation of the protests that took place in Nov. 2019 (#21N) against the current Duque government, its attacks on the peace accords and the country's economic situation. 2/

The 2019 protests were the largest & most coordinated mobilisations in Colombia's history. People from across the spectrum called for economic reform, and for an end to the assassination of peace leaders & to the ESMAD, the country's infamous anti-riot police. 3/

Together with petitions to ensure the right to education and against rampant corruption, the call for the elimination of the ESMAD was particularly important because they all affect young people directly - the natural victims of police brutality and lack of opportunities. 4/

The assassination of 18 year old, #DilanCruz in the midst of the 2019 protests by an ESMAD officer using an irregular anti-riot rifle, further enraged protesters and broadened the support base for the strike. 5/

But then the #Covid19 pandemic and the confinement measures arrived. Protests were cancelled during the first semester of 2020, giving carte blanche to the government to pause some of the 12 points agreed between the government & the directors of the #21N national strike. 6/

As the pandemic deepened & Colombia's economy further collapsed, the effects of an earlier extremely regressive fiscal reform by the Duque government began to show. So did years of neoliberal policies that had dismantled the national health system. 7/

As we have shown in the @Ruptures21 @iel_collective project, *Informality in Times of Covid-19*, Colombia, like many others Global South countries, was also hit hard by the pandemic with 61.2% of people working in the informal economy - ie. without access to social security. 8/

A clear sign of the profound state of disarray of the economy and the level of destitution of many arose early on in the pandemic. People across Colombia's popular neighbourhoods began to hang red flags on their houses to signal that they had run out of food. 9/

In this context of long-in-the-making socio-economic, political and sanitary crisis, people's precarities quickly became ultra-precarities. With the @Ruptures21 team we explore this tragic transition in this documentary. 10/👇🏽

In the face of the (new/deeper) crisis generated by the pandemic, the government put in place a series of policies, some of them extremely valuable (e.g. #IngresoSolidario), which helped to ameliorate the situation. 11/

However, these measures haven't been able to stave off the devastating consequences of #COVID19 or reverse years of regressive policies that have left the country in shatters. TODAY Colombia has around the same death toll per/mill as Brazil & India (!!!) 12/

In economic terms the situation is equally disastrous. The pandemic has pushed 3.6 mill new people into poverty. With this, 42.5% of the population is now in poverty today, with 15.1% in extreme poverty, as recently reported by the excellent @DANE_Colombia. 13/

And as if this situation wasn't bad enough at the economic & sanitary levels, police brutality & the assessination of peace leaders has continued. Things exploded, on this front, on 9 Sep. 2020, when the police killed #JavierOrdoñez in custody. 14/

The killing of #JavierOrdoñez, a lawyer and father of 2 girls, reignited a wave of national protests in which 13 people died and +400 were injured. At that point (Sep.2020) things began to spiral out of control in terms of clashes between police and protestors. 15/

Running alongside these tensions, there have also been mounting concerns about the government's failure to respond to the killing of community leaders & ex-FARC combatants. Since 2016, 900 social leaders have been assessinated, a trend that has continued during the pandemic. 16/

This brings us to 28 April 2021, the 1st day of the current national strike. Its main objective was to bring down the Duque government's new tax law. Although fiscal reform is needed to fix the nation's finances in the face of the pandemic, the bill was plagued with issues. 17/

Leaving the super-rich untouched, the government proposed to tax public utilities & pensions, allow the price of staples & petrol to increase and, most of all, to use a large % of the savings from the reform to prop up the financial sector and buy a new fleet of war planes! 18/

As clashes with the police reignated once again, forcing the goverment to withdraw this fiscal reform bill, seven additional petitions surfaced on the strike's agenda, inc. Universal Basic Income, free education, and the ban of the use of #Roundup in the 'war on drugs'. 20/

These petitions, plus a broader call to reform the police, explain why Cali has become the epicenter of the current strikes. Cali is located in the south-west, close to the Pacific Coast (Colombia's main Afro-region) and Cauca (base of numerous Indigenous communities). 21/

Cali has an industrialist ethos yet its economy remains anchored in a tradition of sugar cane monocropping. The result is an extremely unequal & socioeconomically & spatially segregated city. A rich–occasionally philanthropic–class coexists with a large poor population. 22/

Years of neoliberal policies imposed on Colombia & Cali have also undermined the city's industrial potential, leaving the local economy dependent on services, the informal economy & narco-trade. Unemployment, racialisation & violence are increasingly endemic in Cali today. 23/

Like many cities in the Global South, Cali–a city of 2.2mill–also has a very young population. Sharp, good dancers! & some still part of a shrinking middle class & benefiting from the existing education infrastructure, young Caleños are famous for their progressive politics. 24/

However, many Caleños, including those educated, are trapped in a context with high levels of unemployment–the national average is 14.1%. And the poorer & darker you are, the more cramped your living space & the more limited your future. Blue= density+low-income prevalence. 25/

Violence & insecurity maps–almost exactly–onto this cartography of exclusion. In the following map @lasillavacia, you can see the eerie correspondence btwn homicides & poverty in Cali, measured according to the Colombian socioeconomic land identification 6 system/estratos. 26/

And with this, an entire discourse around the cartography of insecurity has consolidated in & about Cali. There is some truth to this picture. After decades of efforts to reduce homicide rates-following the nasty 90s-2020 still closed with 47.9 murders per 100.000. 27/

HOWEVER, local & international media (famously @TheEconomist)-fuelling the usual panic that has come to caracterise our times of law & disorder in the postcolony (h/t Comaroffs)-have made an industry out of infograph-ing the hell out of Cali's judicious forensic recordings. 28/

The image of Cali resulting from this trend is of a sort of otherwise-prosperous-yet-gothic-tropical-city: a city always haunted by crime. This adds to the traditional edgy feeling of the city, known for its music festivals and nightlife. 29/

In the midst of this explosive cocktail the pandemic has been like a match thrown into a petrol drum. During the Nov. 2019 protests, young people had already clashed with the police, upon which right-wing politicians ignited a full-blown collective panic across Cali. 30/

Then during the Sep. 2020 protests, triggered by the assassination of #JavierOrdoñez, young people clashed, more seriously this time, against the ESMAD, with plenty of collateral damage to private and public infrastructure. 31/

So the terrain was ready for the eruption of violence that has convulsed Cali since this round of protests began on 28 April. In terms of material damage the balance is very telling: 41 bus stations & 11 buses burnt down, 36 supermarkets looted, 51 banks vandalised. 32/

But these material losses are nothing when compared of the death toll. Out of the 47 people that have died during the strike so far, 35 were killed in Cali. 33/

This maldistribution of homicidal violence corresponds directly to the degree of destitution & readiness to 'fight the fight' on the part of young caleños, many from those excluded neighbourhoods that have been discussed on national & international media so relentlessly. 34/

With @LinaBuchely
& the help of a great team of RAs (you know who you are!) we have been following some of these young caleños for years, alongside the local officials & community police officers implementing programmes designed by the local mayor's office to help them. 35/

These programms are, in many ways, very sophisticated international examples of social intervention. They offer a combination of recreation & education opportunities, psycho-social support & job options, on the condition that kids leave or stay away from gang crime. 36/

These local officials & community police officers are also incredibly pationate about their work & young people and local organisers on the ground respect them. 37/

In our collective interviews with these young caleños, local officials and community police officers, we've always felt as though we were entering into a parallel reality. It is hard to believe how such strong relationships btw them can form in such a fragmented context. 38/

Slowly we have discovered that part of the success of these projects is their sense that these young caleños need "structural" support. No more. No less. In this sense the job opportunities offered by these programmes have been by far their most progressive feature. 39/

These jobs –often helping the municipality to mantain its parks and its public transport system– are a clear step away from decades of neoliberal state withdrawal from the provision of employment. 40/ cali.gov.co/participacion/…

These jobs are also a direct response to what young caleños constantly ask for. As we have heard during our interviews: 'Lo que queremos es trabajo'. [What we want is a job] /41

However, the drama with these otherwise valuable programmes is that they still take place in a broader landscape of global budgetary constrains & economic disciplining. In the battle between individualism and structure, the former continues to win. /42

In this context, the Colombian government & the mayor's office have, at different points, been willing-or-able-or-forced to extend structural opportunities but, by global design, they never go as far as they need to go. /43

The outcome of these programmes is often that young caleños are usually keen to take up one of the jobs on offer (even if they are temporary and manual), to re-engage with their schooling & enjoy the sport facilities opened up to them. 44/

However, the number of these jobs is not sufficient, and in order for young people to engage with their education & concentrate on their sports skills, they also need a solution for their other structural problems: housing, income, proper meals, help with their addictions. 45/

As @LinaBuchely
and I have argued in some of the outcomes from our work with young caleños, the world that is reasserted in these programmes is then one characterised by a resillient petiness, in the sense of smallness. See for example, this art.: revistas.uniandes.edu.co/doi/full/10.74… 46/

And because the institutional & human order that is reproduced in these & all domestic & international settings leaves structural issues unresolved, insecurity & violence continue–either for real or as that fencing-and-surveilling-everything paranoia that I discussed above. 47/

The violence that young caleños are enduring during the current protest, and that they are giving back, is part & parcel of this global economy of destitution, fears and, above all, dreams of another future. 48/

Regardless of what I have said here, in the balance of history, young caleños and their generation of Colombias -as well as Indigenous and Afro communities and grassroots organisations- will pass as those who said no more... another world now. 49/