Faced with rumbling social anger and violence between law enforcement and rioters, President Ivan Duque ordered on Friday May 28 the deployment of the army in the streets of Cali, epicenter of demonstrations that have left three more dead during the day.

"From this night begins the maximum deployment of military assistance to the national police in the city of Cali", announced the president in this city of 2.2 million inhabitants, the third in the country, where he has chaired a security council.

New protests left at least three people dead in the city on Friday, including an investigator from the Cali prosecutor's office who shot at the crowd, killing a civilian, before being lynched by protesters.

The violence comes exactly one month after the April 28 uprising against a quickly abandoned tax reform project led by right-wing President Ivan Duque, which aimed to increase VAT and broaden the income tax base.

These three new deaths bring the number of deaths to 49, including 2 police officers, listed by the authorities.

Some 2,000 people were injured and 123 are missing.

Human Rights Watch reports up to 63 deaths.

"The situation in Cali is very serious," tweeted José Miguel Vivanco, director for the Americas at Human Rights Watch, who urged President Duque to take "urgent de-escalation measures, including a specific order to ban the use of guns by state agents. Colombia cannot deplore more deaths ".

For a month, the scenario has almost always been the same: during the day, the demonstrations are peaceful and hyper-creative, at night, the rebellion turns into riots where fireworks mortars and Molotov cocktails mix with live ammunition.

>> To read on France 24: Colombia: why social anger does not fall

This unprecedented revolt shakes the big cities, where barricades are erected and road blockages are causing shortages and exasperating part of the population.

The government, despite mediators responsible for negotiating with the National Strike Committee, initiator of the movement, is unable to defuse a crisis which, for the moment, does not threaten to overthrow it.

This sudden crisis has above all revealed, according to analysts, the dull anger of a politicized youth, impoverished by the epidemic, who no longer wants to be silent.

Inequality

For half a century, the conflict with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) obscured a reality that has become too glaring: according to the World Bank, Colombia ranks among the most unequal countries in terms of income and has the most informal job in Latin America.

The state has concentrated on its fight against the guerrillas - the struggle against the ELN and the Farc dissidents continues - and has completely abandoned social demand.

In 2019, a year after the election of Ivan Duque, students took to the streets to demand better free public education, jobs, a more united state and society.

The pandemic put an end to the mobilization in 2020 without the 42-year-old head of state making too great concessions.

The backlash is all the stronger, with poverty which has accelerated to reach 42.5% of the 50 million inhabitants, the pandemic plunging the most vulnerable into poverty.

"At least a decade of fighting poverty has been lost," said political scientist Sandra Borda.

The 2016 peace agreement, which disarmed what was once the most powerful guerrilla on the American continent, ended an outdated conflict, far from the new urban generation "discovering politics," explains academic Hernando Gomez Buendia, author of the book "Between independence and the pandemic".

While a third of young people aged 14 to 28 do not work or study, "Colombia is becoming", he said, "a country of urban conflicts". 

"There is an active part of society which has long been excluded from politics, from the world of work and now from the education system, and which is tired of being excluded. It is the one who is demonstrating in the streets today. ", explains Sandra Borda.

Unlike the social upheavals in Chile, where the social uprising led to constitutional reform, or in Ecuador, which has just organized elections, Colombians have not yet had a "valve" to vent their many frustrations, believes Cynthia Arson, Latin American Program Director at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

The unpopularity of Ivan Duque, who is due to leave office in 2022, seems to work in favor of the left, which has never presided over the country.

The former mayor of Bogota and ex-guerrilla Gustavo Petro is now leading the polls.

With AFP

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