The chiaroscuro of social protest in Colombia, 1975-2002

Abstract

“The chiaroscuro of social protest in Colombia” shows the crossed tendencies observed in the country’s collective social action over the last 27 years. Despite harsh economic and political conditions and degraded violence, social actors continue to resort to protest as a way of presenting their demands and showing the precarious conditions in which they live. There are significant changes in the protagonists, as the weight of workers and peasants declines relatively while that of urban dwellers increases, and in the motives of protest, which shift from material demands to more cultural and political ones. The latter is an interesting sign of the repoliticization of the social world, showing that subordinate sectors in Colombia are far from defeated.