Featured image: Hundreds of millions of unarmed Colombians has been protesting peacefully for the last week and have only receive police repression and human rights violations from Ivan Duque's government. File photo.
Although Colombia is ablaze with massive protests everywhere and brutal police repression, its politicians and media could not resist the temptation to blame Venezuela for the social unrest. Of course, this also made it much easier to avoid addressing Colombia’s systemāthe disastrous management of the COVID-19 pandemic, horrific police brutality, and neoliberalismāas the cause of the uprising.
On social media networks, the defenders of Colombia’s āimperfect democracyā justified the repression as the way to prevent their country from āending up like Venezuela.ā
A week into the strike and demonstrations, a tenacious campaign has tried to install in the collective imaginary the conception that the demonstrations are the unjustified creation of vandals and delinquents. Right-wing elements repeat the same scriptāpopularized by the Lima Groupāad nauseum: blame “Castrochavismo” and President Maduro, aka Super Mustache.
Los centros de investigaciĆ³n de Ecuador šŖšØ y Colombia šØš“ detectaron la injerencia desde Venezuela de NicolĆ”s Maduro en la violencia que azota a Colombia.
La entrevista: https://t.co/EKV4ECCna8
— LenĆn Moreno (@Lenin) May 5, 2021
A little help from LenĆn
Ecuadorian President LenĆn Moreno came to the aid of Duque and the Colombian right-wing narrative, appearing with a fortuitous “discovery.”
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The Ecuadorian president, from a pompous Democracy Forum held in Miami, USA, assured that President Maduro is behind the violence in neighboring Colombia.
Moreno, who is two weeks away from completing his term, and whose approval rating has dippedĀ as low as 7%, assured that Ecuador’s intelligence services discovered that “Maduro has his filthy and bloody hands in Colombia.”
After this statement by Moreno, former Colombian President AndrƩs Pastrana took it for granted, recycling this claim to the media, thus starting a cascade of voices repeating the crazy, and completely unsubstantiated accusation.
Intelligence or brutality?
For his part, Colombian senator Antonio Navarro Wolff categorically ruled out LenĆn Moreno’s theory. He dismissed Moreno’s claims, and commented that this wasn’t a “discovery” of the intelligence service at all, but an indication of its “brutality.”
Meanwhile, Venezuelan Communication Minister Freddy ĆƔƱez referred to the attempts to implicate or blame Venezuela for a local event such as social discontent in Colombia, as “the best somnorific [sedative] for the exploited,” and also “the best excuse to massacre unarmed people protesting.”
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Medios como @ELTIEMPO han promovido la estigmatizaciĆ³n de #Venezuela, matriz que se ha traducido en miedo electoral, xenofobia y en el mejor somnĆfero para explotados.Ahora conocemos otra utilidad:es el pretexto para masacrar a un pueblo desarmado que protesta. #SOSColombiaDDDHH https://t.co/l7Of6PuoBL
— Alfred Nazareth (@luchaalmada) May 6, 2021
Social organizations in Colombia report that the police repression by IvƔn Duque has already produced a score of deaths.
Former president Ćlvaro Uribe recently tweeted about "dissipated molecular revolution" (DMR) as the cause of the latest cycle of protests in Colombia. The odd phrasing raised a lot of questions. It's an striking case of the "mainstreaming" of the far right in Lat Am /1
— Luis HerrĆ”n š„ (@yo_herran) May 4, 2021
It is feared that killings by police violence could increase yet, with the dissemination of neo-Nazi security doctrines such as that of the “dissipated molecular revolution” theory shared by former President Uribe in a tweet, framing the protests as a form of war initiated by criminals to overthrow democracy.
Mexican historian Luis Herran explained in a tweet that the concept of “molecular revolution,” crafted originally by French philosopher FĆ©lix Guattari, was “appropriated by Alexis LĆ³pez, longtime member of neo-Nazi groups in Chile, and now an infamous ‘theorist’ (and opponent) of this alleged model of revolution.”
Featured image: Hundreds of thousands of unarmed Colombians has been protesting peacefully for the last week, and have been met only with police repression and human rights violations from IvĆ”n Duque’s government. File photo.
(RedRadioVE) by Carlos ArellƔn, with Orinoco Tribune content.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SL
