“Let’s save Colombia” is a well-used phrase that, from the lips of professional politicians and politicos by trade, has given the right to McCarthyise those on the left and the progressivism they propose to bring the country to a civilised stage.
Germán Ayala Osorio*
These are the stages in which all forms of violence (structural, symbolic and physical) are overcome, where for more than a century we have naturalised and made the Macondian landscape part of that which surrounds the Colombian territory.
Those who invoke that phrase or other similar ones such as “getting back on track and to Colombia” express their annoyance and animosity towards this other power option that competes with them, because they feel they are the absolute owners of the truth but, above all, immaculate and eternal owners of the country’s destiny. A few days ago, the former illiberal president, César Gaviria Trujillo, invited the country’s conservative groups to form a coalition. Gaviria offered up the Liberal Party as an ideological, electoral and political platform to “get back on track” in a country like Colombia, where its ruling elites had never exactly suffered a defeat, until 2022. This was the year in which Gustavo Petro became the President of the Republic, with this resulting in no substantial change in the balance of power.
Petro himself recognised it: “We are the government, but we have no power.” On the other hand, the controlled nature of politics has allowed them to guarantee high levels of certainty to reinforce the profile of “people who live off the income” of its most visible members.
Due to the above, “getting Colombia back on track” means taking over the government again, to continue subjecting Nature and millions of Colombians to different forms of violence.
As memory is fragile, let us remember those who, in 2022, invoked this type of phrase to gain followers, frighten the naive and naturalise the process of stigmatising everything that smells of the left, progressivism and even centre-left proposals. “Let us save Colombia”: John Milton Rodríguez’s proposal to form a new coalition. This headline is from Semana magazine. Rodríguez is a right-wing politician and preacher of the ‘Fair Free Colombia’ movement, and he was an atheist and communist in the past. What an ideological turn Pastor Rodríguez has taken!
In 2002, with his saviour and messianic pep talk, he invited the representative figures of the Uribe-ised right (in reference to the ultra-right former president, Alvaro Uribe) to sign a national agreement. “This National Agreement will allow us to face the corruption of the Colombian political caste with determination, and the threat that a possible Petro-Chavista regime and the so-called “progressivism” represent for the country, which would lead Colombia to ruin and misery, just like our beloved neighbour, Venezuela, is suffering.”
Two years ago, it was the wily pastor Jhon Milton Rodríguez who proposed “Let’s save Colombia” from the clutches of communism… which then never came. A few days ago, former president César Gaviria proposed to do the same, but with the phrase “let’s get back on track.” This is nothing other than a reconquest of the President’s residence, the Casa de Nariño, so that from its cold rooms the corporate right can continue to subject natural and historical ecosystems to the whims of unsustainable development, in keeping with its climate change denial discourse.
As the 2026 elections are approaching, the right will have to content itself with the isolated cries of “Petro out” from those who are widowed by power from suffering defeat in 2022. That defeat meant a significant loss in public contracting, as well as putting the brakes on the highly disruptive and damaging anthropic activities in the socio-environmental, landscape and ecological terms to which they had become accustomed.
Or a loss because the current government’s anti-drug policy is affecting the illegal economy to which they are usually connected along the various stages of the cocaine production process.
The future of the country swings like a pendulum between false prophets, preachers, messianic politicians, some thugs offering a firm hand and aging political leaders responsible, to a great extent, for the structural violence that characterises Colombia.
They all call for “national unity” which is nothing other than a stratagem to govern with the same cabals as always, whose most visible representatives will be in charge of maintaining the historic conditions of poverty, misery, exclusion, and concentration of land and wealth to just a few people, to guarantee the duplication over time of those sneaky saviours who appear every four years.
*German Ayala Osorio: Colombian writer, journalist, with a Ph D in Sustainable Regions, political scientist and professor, author of the blog La Otra Tribuna.
(Translated by Donna Davison – Email: donna_davison@hotmail.com) – Photos: Pixabay
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