UNAL Protests

So that's what tear gas tastes like...I crossed the bridge right as the soldiers in riot gear were ascending the stairs on the other side. Gee, I'm glad I didn't decide to go talk to the chanting students. It all seemed so innocent. Then the students, about 15 of them, carrying banners and shouting, "Defend the people," stepped out into the street, blocking traffic.

That was too much for the waiting Esmad (Escuadrón Militar Antidisturbios Esmad) forces, who immediately started gassing the university entrance. Across the 26, a crowd gathered of students unable to get to class, shop workers, retired people, to watch the scene unfold. A news crew from Caracol Radio set up, just another day on the job. Everything was eerily relaxed. The students set up camp just inside the university, using the carts of those unfortunate vendors who didn't catch on fast enough as blockades. Some protestors threw what looked like rocks, although it could have been candy bars (I wasn't getting too close). The special forces fired more tear gas.

After about the fourth tear gas canister, Flash! Bang! A "papa" (exploding potato) was tossed back at the soldiers. I asked an employee of "El Sabor de la Abuela" what it was, why they were protesting, etc. "It's the president," he said. "This is a public university, see, and he wants to privatize it. And a boy was killed a month or so ago, that's why."

To me the shocking thing is not that youth protest, or that authorities respond with some show of force. It's the degree of force, the rapidity with which it is employed, the complete intolerance of protest, that amazes and saddens me. The students (or whoever they are) don't just start throwing explosives, they start out chanting, shutting down roads occasionally, marching and carrying signs. But the expectation is that there will be some degree of violence. I just hope no one gets hurt this time.

[Update: the students were apparently protesting to show their support for indigenous groups demonstrating in Cauca. These protests against land reform, coca eradication, the TLC, and reelection have shut down the Panamerican highway since Tuesday. Two marchers have been killed, and possibly as many as 70 wounded. In Colombia, I learned today, it is illegal to block roads. That's why Esmad stepped in so quickly after the students blocked 26. Article in Indymedia.]