April 9 is traditionally a day to remember the victims. It is distasteful and disrespectful to the memory of Colombia´s victims, the murdered, the disappeared, and the kidnapped, to turn the date into a day for politics. On April 9, 1948, the great Liberal Jorge Eliecer Gaitan was murdered sparking a near revolutionary force that ripped apart first Bogota and later the rest of country. The “Bogotazo” was a unified cry of anguish of hopelessness and despair as the people realized the oligarchs of the state had crushed their hope for change. Gaitan shone a light on a Colombia in which a true democracy was possible, in which the idea of government by for and of the people was a real possibility. As they extinguished this light, the governing classes unleashed an armed conflict that is still with us today. The FARC has its origins here, in the exclusion of all political actors not belonging to the Liberal Party or the Conservative Party hegemony; the stitch-up that followed the “Bogotazo” was an agreement which saw both parties alternate power, sharing between them the wealth and bureaucratic jam of the state. This, to the explicit exclusion of all others. (via Colombia News | Colombia Reports A march for politics, not for peace | Colombia News | Colombia Reports)