May Day March 2018

'Freedom Now! No more frame-ups!' Supporters of jailed FARC leader Jesús Santrich carry signs demanded his freedom.

Members of the FARC's political party -
also known as the FARC - march thru downown.

Surprise, surprise: this year's May Day paraders denounced Trump and called for Santrich's freedom. They were right on one count - Donald Trump has no place is decent society. But evidence against Santrich - a one-time FARC guerrilla leader who is now in prison on drug trafficking charges and may be extradited to the United States - looks quite strong. Perhaps the strongest evidence against Santrich is the fact that the Santos administration, which made the peace deal with the FARC the centerpiece of its reelection campaign - appears to agree that santrich is guilty - despite the huge embarrasment to the peace deal.

I was shaken - emotionally - by a group of mixed martial arts fighters, who labeled themselves anti-fascists, but appeared thoroughly fascist to me. When I took their photos - as I did of all the groups which passed me - they very obnoxiously stuck their own cameras into my face and took my photo, to attempto to intimidate.

Che Guevara: everpresent.

A phalanx of police protects a government building.

FARC supporters show off the flower symbol.

Despite all the evidence, a faile dream never dies.

¡Revolución ahora!

These 'antifascist' marchers looked pretty fasist to me.

A cause I can believe in: marijuana depenalization.

An 'anti-fascist'demonstrator photographs me to intimidate me from photographing them.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

'Land, Peace, Bread' - and Tragedy

'Land, peace and bread.' Sounds great, doesn't it?

Every day, countless people pass by this mural on 26th St. not far from the Universidad Nacional, but I bet few recognize the catastrophic significance of what the dove is advertising.

'Land, peace and bread,' such beautiful sentiments, was the slogan of the 1917 Russian Revolution, which introduced the world to communism and its famines, totalitarianism and mass-murder. Because the Nazis gave right-wing fascism such a bad name, communism's sins are less well known. But The Volokh Conspiracy, a libertarian blog, uses the commonly cited figure of 100 million communist murders, including the Ukranian famines, Mao's Great Leap Forward and Cambodia's Killing Fields.

Nevertheless, the dream lives on, to a greater or lesser extent, in places like the nearby Universidad

The communist 'Voz' magazine celebrates
the Russian Revolution.

Nacional, whose marchers often carry images of Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara. But one doesn't have to look any further than Venezuela to see the impacts of a sort of socialism and a planned economy: People there are hungry, medicines are unavailable, crime has skyrocketed and Venezuela just entered hyperinflation. Meanwhile, its incompetent government is turning more and more authoritarian. Many thousands of Venezuelans have fled to Spain, Florida and Colombia - depriving the country of its most talented and educated young people. (Which why communist nations had a habit of building walls around themselves to keep their people in.)

It also provides a hint of what might have happened here in Colombia if the FARC had somehow obtained power. The mural was commissioned, incidentally, by the government of Bogotá Mayor Gustavo Petro, a one-time leader of the M-19 guerrilla movement.)

The paradoxical thing, of course, is that communism is based on wonderful ideals: equality, cooperation, from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. And on and on. Unfortunately, the tools those governments used to reach those goals - such as totalitarianism and forced collectivization of farms - clashed terribly with human nature.

If only communism were possible, then this would be a much better world. But it isn't, unfortunately.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Development by Rural Radio

Popular Cultural Action.

'You should buy a
NEW battery radio.

In the age of the internet and smart phones, old fashioned radio often gets overlooked. That's not yet true, however, in the countryside, where in some areas radio is the only source of local news.

During the 1940s, '50s and '60s, the Colombian government tried to use radio to promote land redistribution and health care, teach literacy and even promote family planning - and got embroiled in polemics with religous conservatives and anti-Communists.

Today, radio is still important in rural areas, in some of which it is the only

The BLAA exhibition.

 local news source. However, in some places that radio station belongs to the military or police, making one question how objective and inclusive the news is.

There's an exhibition about Colombia's rural radio on now in the BLAA library on Calle 11 in La Candelaria.

A priest reads to the radio.

'How to reach a man's mind.'

A young, apparently VP Nixon, talks radio.

Agrarian reform.

'The great communist threat.'

Services for the campesino.

'It's no sin to talk about that' (family planning).

Mother and Child.

'Land Distribution Plan.'

'Agrarian social reform is Christian and not communist.'

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Marching Off, Stage Left

For reasons we could debate, Latin American teachers' unions appear to often be wildly, inordinately far-left. Perhaps it's the mixture of a truly proletarian labor force with a level of intellectualism not often found among mine or factory workers.

One of the most surreal incidents I've experienced in my years in Latin America was an interview with a teachers' union official in La Paz, Bolivia. The woman had just returned from a union conference, and described to me the debates there: It was the Trotskyites vs. the Stalinists. (She was one of the Trotskyites.)

I left the interview wondering which decade I was in.

I felt the same way today when I passed these red communist flags carried by striking teachers. The teachers' demands are pretty standard: higher wages and benefits. Those won't require a revolution, which isn't likely to occur anytime soon, in any case.

'Let's go UPN.' The Union Patriotica Nacional is a far

The teachers' march on Carrera Septima.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

May Day 2017: A Good Time for Workers?

The CGT, a confederation of unions.

On Carrera Septima a man holds signs saying
'What peace?' and 'No more magnicides.'

 Workers, unions and leftist political parties staged their annual May Day march today, demanding greater worker rights. But how are workers doing? Pres. Santos provided a cheery perspective: 22 million Colombians have formal jobs, the president said, the highest number in 16 years. And Santos claimed that in 74 of his 80 months in power the number of employed has risen.

In contrast, Luis Alejandro Pedraza, president of the CUT labor confederation, says that workers are losing out - both economically and with their lives. The level of union membership has plummeted, he calculates, from 16% of workers

A man takes pictures with a
background of riot police.

in 1986 to 3.7% now, and he says that both the government and private companies avoid paying full benefits by hiring workers using short-term contracts.

Most fundamentally, however, Colombia has few good jobs because its economy depends heavily on exporting raw materials with little added value. A manufacturing economy builds a middle class, but those jobs keep shifting to China.

Still dreaming a lost dream: Communist Party marchers.
(The libertarian Volokh Conspiracy blog wants to rename May Day 'Victims of Communism Day.')

'Denounce!' mistreatment of workers.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours