The various policies and repressive state agreements have generated the crisis. The mining industry is destroying watersheds and it causes territorial and environmental desolation, the TLCs have failed, dairy workers, truckers, small miners and coffee growers and the whole of the agricultural business; national health and education have turned into a business widening the pockets of private companies, their workers don't get wages and are more than two million people unemployed, each day casual work is growing. While the government is spending 74% of the national budget of 2013 in war and public debt and for this reason increasingly decreases social investment.

Sown uncertainty has converted roads and highways, streets, towns and cities have been turned into human rivers stressing the need to search and find a way out through dialogue and consensus to just demands on the agricultural crisis, the absence of access and use of land, the right to peasant territoriality, effective participation of communities and small traditional miners in the formulation and development of mining policy, with real guarantees for the exercise of political rights of the rural population, and social investment in the rural and urban population in education, health, housing, utilities and roads, and curb casualization, outsourcing and labor flexibility.

"The paralysis by 10,000 mine workers of Drummond, which completes nearly a month, and the announcement of the Catatumbo farmers to turn to ways to support the indefinite national strike join together. The existence of more than 75 rallies and 15 road blocks have been reported" (El Espectador, August 21, 2013). At the close of the third day, the number of injured stood at 50, while 85 were the people arrested. The road blocks (bloqueos) increased to 18 with the determination of the people to stay in the fight until solutions are reached, because they have always been victims of government inefficiency and no longer believe in their promises, they argue.

President Juan Manuel Santos via tweeter said "we respect the right to social protest" but ordered the deployment of a force with an unknown number of members of the army and police, plus 16 thousands riot which established check points at the main access roads to the assembly points of the protest, forcing many vehicles carrying protesters to turn away from main roads in several regions. Arbitrary arrests amount to over 100 people, among them six journalists of the the alternative press. the injured were 45 and two people are said to have been killed by the security forces. There are offers to pay rewards to protesters to inform on those who run the strike, so legitimising the network of informants or "cooperating people" imposed by former President Alvaro Uribe.

BACKGROUND

What are the protesters asking for?

1. The implementation of measures to resolve the crisis of agricultural production.
2. Access to land ownership.
3. Recognition of rural and peasant territoriality (ZRC, expansion of the indigenous and the Afro community councils).
4. Effective participation of communities and traditional small miners in the formulation and development of mining policy.
5. Real guarantees for the exercise of the political rights of the rural population.
6. Social investment in the rural and urban population: education, health, housing, public services and roads.

* Member of the Peace Delegation of FARC-EP

Source: Peace Delegation FARC-EP website