Colombian Protests Lose Steam as Police Soften Tactics
Colombian Protests Lose Steam as Police Soften Tactics
(Bloomberg) -- Colombia’s anti-government demonstrations lost steam on Wednesday as fatigue set in after seven straight days of protests, and police became less confrontational.
Businesses and shops remained open in downtown Bogota, whereas a few days ago many were shuttered for fear of looting. The capital’s central plaza outside congress, which last week was packed with protesters, was only half full. Airports, mines and mass transit systems operated normally, and there has been no major looting and vandalism since the weekend.
“People are getting tired of supporting the protests,” said Jorge Restrepo, director of CERAC, a Bogota-based research institution that monitors the nation’s civil conflict. “Unless the government continues its succession of gross mistakes, this will fade away.”
When the demonstrations started a week ago, the government of President Ivan Duque aggravated the situation with blunders such as imposing a curfew on the capital, and sending the police to aggressively break up protests, Restrepo said.
Monica Rodriguez, 49, a real estate agent said she didn’t initially object to the marches, but has now had enough of the disruption they are causing to daily life.
“They are blocking streets and affecting the rest of us who have the right to work,” she said, in an interview in Bogota. “At this point I’m starting to worry about businesses and how the economy will be hurt.”
Yet the protests remain among the largest in Colombia’s recent history, and some demonstrators say they’ll stay on the streets to keep up the pressure on Duque.
“We’re not stopping. This is will go on indefinitely if we don’t see things change,” said Oscar Penaranda, 21, a student who attended a rally on Wednesday.
Colombia last week became the latest Andean nation to see mass unrest, as hundreds of thousands protested over education and labor policies, as well as unsolved murders of social leaders, among other issues. Social unrest has also broken out in Ecuador, Bolivia and Chile over the past two months.
Colombia’s feared anti-riot police have shown relative restraint since they killed a protester at the weekend. On the first days of the unrest, images of police clubbing and tear-gassing demonstrators caused widespread outrage.
The peso fell to an all-time low on Wednesday as investors fret over whether the weakened government will be able to get a tax bill passed by congress.
--With assistance from Oscar Medina and Andrea Jaramillo.
To contact the reporters on this story: Matthew Bristow in Bogota at mbristow5@bloomberg.net;Ezra Fieser in Bogota at efieser@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Daniel Cancel at dcancel@bloomberg.net, Walter Brandimarte
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