BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA, December 2—The brutal murder-by-cop of Javier Ordoñez was the last straw. The video of their initial interaction, which was widely shared on social media, shows Javier Ordoñez pleading "please, no more" as cops repeatedly electrocuted him with a stun gun. He later died of head injuries while in police custody.
Outraged youth attacked the police and the CAI (Immediate Attention Command), and destroyed everything in their path, in various sectors of the city, some took the opportunity to loot, vandalize, and destroy. The police shot indiscriminately, killing 11 civilians in the capital Bogotá and three in Soacha and in other cities in the country. Not unlike the protests following the murder of George Floyd in the U.S., the rebellion spread throughout the nation here.
In Colombia, a corrupt paramilitary narco political class has governed for more than 60 years, where all kinds of atrocities are committed by the rulers and the bourgeois class. Everything goes unpunished and is getting worse every day. Capitalism is in crisis and is not capable of solving the minimum basic conditions for the survival of the working class. To maintain itself, capitalism uses all its vicious tools, typical of the system: sexism, racism, individualism, persecution, imprisonment, murder, etc. These conditions for our class in Colombia and in the world are terribly similar.
The U.S. is the champion of racism, individualism, sexism, persecution, torture, imprisonment, murder among other barbarities, especially against Black, immigrant, and Latin workers throughout its history. Lately, we have seen the frequent killings of many Black workers by the police going unpunished by the state. The Colombian police, reproducing the same patterns of behavior of the U.S. bosses, are systematically applying brute force, torture, massacres, and disappearances of all kinds of leaders and of young people in many parts of the country. The government of President Iván Duque is a faithful student of the former president, former Senator Álvaro Uribe Vélez, a pioneer of all barbarities known to all for many decades. Uribe has yet to pay for any of his murderous crimes against the working class.
The police are professionals in the art of infiltrating protests. They use many of their members to unleash chaos and to delegitimize any lawful action, so the state can prosecute. This is how high-ranking police officers speak of the connection of young people with groups outside the law such as the ELN (urban guerrillas), the FARC (rural guerrillas). These cops are laying a smoke screen to unleash the persecution and prosecution against these young fighters. The “indignant” mayor of Bogotá and the general population ask for reforms to the police. Then the defense minister and the congress, to appease the growing anger, agree to endlessly debate the matter.
Indigenous workers  mobilized against the massacres, and on Tuesday the workers' union confederations, teachers, students, and social groups also mobilized in various parts of the country, for possible labor and pension reform, among other demands.
The events of September 9, the day of Javier’s murder, which occurred after the death of Javier Ordoñez, were not  prepared, organized, well thought, but rather occurred out of indignation, repudiation,  and spontaneity. Spontaneity, a phenomenon that is not subject to any preparation or direction, is driven by reacting to heat of the moment and circumstances. Spontaneity does not give time to think, to discuss:is it anti-Marxist and anti-dialectical? Thus it can lead to political mistakes.
The Progressive Labor Party does not bet on this type of phenomenon that does not have any political and ideological sharpness, that has no future. Everything that is not prepared in advance, that is not subject to analysis, to discussion, will be doomed to failure, and this is what happened. To advance the working class must carefully prepare its political acts.