Colombia protests: police soften tactics, but will it help?
- The daily protests jolting the South American country proclaim a wide array of complaints
- Social unrest has also broken out in Ecuador, Bolivia and Chile over the past two months
Colombia’s anti-government demonstrations lost steam on Wednesday as fatigue set in after seven straight days of protests, and police became less confrontational.
Businesses and shops remained open in downtown Bogota, whereas a few days ago many were closed for fear of looting. The capital’s central plaza outside congress, which last week was packed with protesters, was only half full. Airports, mines and mass transit systems operated normally, and there has been no major looting and vandalism since the weekend.
“People are getting tired of supporting the protests,” said Jorge Restrepo, director of CERAC, a Bogota-based research institution that monitors the nation’s civil conflict.
“Unless the government continues its succession of gross mistakes, this will fade away.”
When the demonstrations started a week ago, the government of President Ivan Duque aggravated the situation with blunders such as imposing a curfew on the capital, and sending the police to aggressively break up protests, Restrepo said.