International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

Petro's Triumph and the limitations of “late progressivism”

Daniel Libreros C — 2022-08-05T08:26:59Z

“As soon as the electoral result was known, popular jubilation exploded. Thousands of people poured into the streets and squares of all cities to celebrate victory, while videos of people sharing that same euphoria for the "historic change" circulated in the most remote places in the country.”

- IV571 - August 2022 / Colombia

After the social explosion of November 2019 in Colombia

Daniel Libreros C — 2020-02-15T08:09:53Z

On 21 November 2019 Colombia experienced a social explosion unprecedented in the history of the country since the middle of the last century. On that day, the National Strike Directorate (CNP, Comando Nacional de Paro) called for a protest march against the announcement of regressive economic counter-reforms. The CNP is made up of the central trade unions (Central Unitaria de Trabajadores – CUT, Confederación General de Trabajadores - CGT, Confederación de Trabajadores de Colombia - CTC) and by organizations of students, peasants, Indians, pensioners and environmental activists who, in recent years, have led the resistance by these social sectors to the policies of the Colombian state.

- IV541 - February 2020 / Colombia

The electoral triumph of Uribism and the dilemmas of neoliberal peace

Daniel Libreros C — 2018-11-24T08:27:06Z

Iván Duque, candidate of the Democratic Centre, a political party created by former president Ã lvaro Uribe in 2013, won the second round of the presidential elections on Sunday, June 17th, with 10,373,080 votes, that is 54 per cent of total votes cast.

- IV526 - November 2018 / Colombia

Thoughts on the political conjuncture beyond the referendum results

Daniel Libreros C — 2016-11-23T16:18:32Z

On October 2, 2016, Colombia's referendum on the approval of the peace agreement between the government of Juan Manuel Santos and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombiaâ€”Ejército del Pueblo (FARC-EP – Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – Army of the People) resulted in a rejection of the agreement by 50.23% to 49.76% of votes cast (on a turnout of 37% of the registered electorate). What were the reasons for this negative result?

- Features / Colombia

Peace policy and the reconstruction of politics

Jorge Gantiva Silva, Daniel Libreros C — 2013-08-10T12:54:49Z

Land is at the centre of the peace negotiations in Havana between Colombia's Santos government and the FARC guerrilla movement. It is no accident that the first point on the agenda is recognizing the centrality of the land to the Colombian conflict. It should not be forgotten that the FARC arose in the form of the Frente Nacional as a means of peasant self-defence in answer to the despoliation of the land by the big estate owners and against the military offensive of an authoritarian regime that repressed the demands of the peasant masses and which in later decades adapted the institutional system to the demands of international capitalism and neoliberal globalization around the binomial: latifundio - “state terror”. Although the subject of land does not alone explain the armed conflict, it expresses in every way the form in which the type of prevailing political regime in Colombia was constituted, and is central to understanding the history and configuration of political domination.

- IV463 - August 2013 / Colombia