The national strike and bankruptcy of the neoliberal model Colombian

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Tens of thousands of workers and peasants in Colombia held a national strike began on August 19 across the country to demand improved living conditions and a different economic model. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of Colombians have been hitting the streets since that day in different cities to participate in protest marches.

The main promoter of unemployment were coffee growers and other farmers. These sectors were subsequently joined the truckers, miners, teachers and health workers who have been adversely affected by neoliberal policies implemented by recent Colombian governments.

Among the workers’ demands include revision of gas prices, easy access to health care by farmers, detention bill of health reform and policy issues mining and energy extraction and other .

The health workers are fighting health care reform Santos government, aimed at privatizing the country’s medical facilities. Cuts in state funding have led to some 500 public hospitals to the brink of bankruptcy.

The miners, meanwhile, are protesting government plans Santos pursued close small mines and promote the systematic exploitation of the country’s resources by large multinational mining corporations. Santos recently gave security forces the power to confiscate the machinery of informal mining.

The farmers demanded that the government provide more support to small-scale agriculture, including the approval of grants to offset the costs of agricultural production and protect them from the effects of the entry into force of the free trade agreements, which have damaged Colombian countryside seriously.
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The Colombian executive has ordered the security forces to act forcefully against those blocking all roads and warned that those who do so will be prosecuted. There have also been accusations stigmatization and cons of the protest leaders. Some of the latter denounced even before the strike received death threats from criminal gangs.
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Protests also assume, as has been said, a reply to the dominant neoliberal model in the country. These policies have benefited a wealthy minority, while they have damaged the interests of workers and popular classes. Colombia today is in crisis and is the fifth country in the world and the first in Latin America with greater inequality between rich and poor.

Striking workers have called for a halt the implementation of free trade agreements. Since the adoption of such treaties, Colombia imported meat, poultry, milk, coffee, rice, corn and kept ruined situation of agricultural workers because they can not sustain competition. For example, milk imports have grown by 500% and sugar by 200% in recent years and all at the expense of domestic production.

As noted in a recent statement Confederation of Workers, the vast majority of Colombians condemn the situation in which the government “has plunged the country by imposing its harmful, and anti-union policies at all levels do nothing to apply the imperialist neoliberal recipe “.
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