Colombia

Este es Luís Alberto Velásquez Molina y él sabe algo que la Policía Colombiana no quiere que usted descubra.

Luís es de Medellín, una ciudad famosa por sus bellas mujeres, la cirugía plástica, y Pablo Escobar.

Medellín es ademas el corazón de Punk Rock Latino Americano.

Luis vive en la parte alta de las colinas de Medellín en una comuna llamada Villatina. Este sector no es ajeno a la violencia policial.

Este hombre vivía a pocas cuadras de Luis. El tenía 12 años de edad cuando su hermano de 17 fue asesinado por la policía junto con 7 otros niños en la Masacre de Villatina.

A pesar de la gran cantidad de evidencia que implicaba a la policía en el asesinato de los 8 niños, ellos nunca fueron condenados. Los familiares de las victimas siguen buscando justicia 22 años después.

Luis es un modelo a seguir para los jóvenes de Villatina. Ellos recuerdan ver a su banda Sonido Libertario tocar para los jóvenes de la comuna.

Luis quiere enseñar los jóvenes de Villatina que la música, no la violencia, es la mejor forma de protesta contra una sociedad tan injusta.

Luis padece con una enfermedad terminal hace 14 años y necesita una dieta estricta y diálisis para sobrevivir. “Cuando bebo demasiada agua,” dice Luis, “mis piernas se hinchan.”

14 años de diálisis a 3 veces a la semana por 4 horas en cada sesión equivalen a 8.736 horas con un tubo de metal bombeando y filtrando la sangre a través de su brazo.

Luis esperó 10 años para recibir un trasplante de riñón en 2009, pero su cuerpo lo rechazó apenas un año después. Estuvo a punto de morir.

A raíz de sus circunstancias, 28 bandas de Punk Rock en Medellín organizaron un concierto llamado “Punk Para Ayudar un Amigo” para recaudar fondos para comprar Luis una casa humilde en Villatina. Su recuperación fue lenta y muy dolorosa.

Además de sufrir una enfermedad terminal, “Luchito” como los punkeros lo llaman, tuvo un accidente de transito que dañó permanentemente su tobillo derecho dificultando su movimiento.

Pero eso no significa que Luis puede dejar de ser un camello, o camellar como dicen en Colombia, cuando de trabajo se trate o de rebuscarse el día a día para conseguir moneditas.

Luis creó una tienda ambulante fuera del cochecito de un bebe y colocó altavoces para escuchar Punk Rock. Después de la diálisis el lleva su tienda de dulces y cigarrillos al Parque Periodista donde ha trabajado 6 noches a la semana por los últimos 8 años.

A los 42 años Luis no es tan fuerte como su juventud. Pero eso no lo detiene gritar Punk cuando Sonido Libertario se reúne.

Luis estaba exhausto después del concierto, pero valió la pena, cantar Punk lo anima salir de la cama cada mañana para que su hijo de 10 años no se convierta en huérfano.

En el 29 de diciembre de 2012, el Policía de Medellin encontró una granada militar en una bolsa negra cerrada colocada al lado del tienda de ambulante de Luis. Luis fue capturado por la policía a pesar que el nunca tuvo dicho paquete en sus manos.

La noche antes de su audiencia judicial en 18/09/13 Luis regresó de su trabajo en el Parque Periodista a medianoche, se despertó a las 3:30am para tomar 2 buses 1,5 horas al hospital, recibió 4 horas de diálisis, y luego tomó otro bus a la corte. Estaba agotado.

Un testigo que vive al lado del Parque Periodista dijo bajo juramento que estuvo con su nieto cuando vio a un desconocido poner una bolsa negra al lado de la tienda de ambulante de Luis apenas un momento antes que llegara la policía.

La policía destruyo la evidencia contra Luis antes de la audiencia con el pretexto que la granada era “demasiado peligrosa.” La cierta cantidad de cocaína encontrada en la bolsa negra cerrada fue usada por la fiscalia para hacer ver a Luis como un adicto al vicio.

Los únicos químicos que Luis puede tomar sin enfermarse fatalmente son unas dosis agresivas de medicamentos farmacéuticos.

A pesar del testimonio del testigo a favor de Luis y la falta de evidencia en su contra, la Juez Catalina Rendón lo condeno Luis a 12 años de cárcel.

Luego por negligencia o incompetencia de la Juez, olvidaron avisar a la cárcel que Luis necesita diálisis para sobrevivir – casi se muere apenas días después.

Los Punkeros de Medellín están cabreados.

Ellos creen que los cargos contra Luís Alberto Velásquez Molina fueron fabricados en una práctica peligrosamente común en Colombia se llama “Falso Positivo”

Las víctimas de los falsos positivos son principalmente los mas vulnerables de la sociedad Colombiana: la gente pobre y los campesinos.

Informes secretos muestran que la policía puede ganar hasta $3.000.000 COP ($1,565 USD) comisiones para las armas que descubren cuando se hace un arresto.

Si se hubiese permitido a los abogados que defendieron a Luis, tener acceso a la evidencia antes que fuese destruida, habrían sido capaces de verificar si la granada faltaba a un almacén de la policía.

Los punkeros de Medellín creen que todos, sin importar de donde vienen o a que clase social pertenecen, merecen un juicio independiente y justo.

Establecieron una petición en CHANGE.ORG pidiendo al Juez Javier Zapata Ortíz que notara las obvias inconsistencias del caso y que tenga compasión por la salud tan frágil de Luis.

Hay 5.434 firmas y contando…

Ademas los Punkeros están usando la música para luchar contra la violencia de los Falsos Positivos para ser fieles al espíritu pacifista de Luis Alberto Velasquez.

La primera ronda de conciertos fue en Medellín, Bogotá, y Bordeaux – Francia. La segunda ronda comienza el 9 de febrero en Lima – Peru y continua en Colombia en fechas que se anunciarán pronto.

Alrededor del mundo – desde el primer articulo viral en Ingles, hasta los reportajes Venezolanos y los blogs en Portugués Brasileños – la gente está observando muy de cerca los graves abusos de derechos humanos contra este cantante musical muy enfermo de salud.

El pueblo colombiano y la comunidad internacional sabe que si Luis muere en la cárcel se convierte a otro mártir, junto con los miles de campesinos inocentes muertos, en la lucha contra los Falsos Positivos.

Uribe ya esta afuera; La impunidad y los falsos positivos ya no son bienvenidos en Colombia – especialmente en el Parque del Periodista – hogar de las estatuas conmemorativas de 8 niños asesinados por la Policía de Medellín en la Masacre de Villatina.

Johana Mazo Ramírez (8 años),
Johny Alexander Cardona Ramírez (17 años),
Ricardo Alexander Hernández (17 años),
Giovanny Alberto Vallejo Restrepo (15 años),
Oscar Andrés Ortiz Toro (17 años),
Ángel Alberto Barón Miranda (16 años),
Marlon Alberto Álvarez (17 años),
Nelson Duban Flórez Villa (17 años),
Mauricio Antonio Higuita Ramírez (22 años).

Falta poco tiempo para lograr salvar la vida de Luís Alberto Velásquez Molina pero tu puedes ayudar en tres pasos fáciles:
1. Firmar el petición en CHANGE.org
2. Compartir este pagina con amigos.
3. Seguir noticias en Facebook y Twitter.
4. Todos los compras de “Police Bastard” del banda del Reino Unido DOOM apoya la causa de Luis Velasquez

NOTICIAS

El banda de punk rock britannica DOOM esta recaudando fondos para Luis con los ventas de su album “Police Bastard”.

NOTICIAS

Luis Alberto Velasquez Molina se le concedió carcel domiciliaria despues de 7 meses en el carcel de Bellavista. Este es una grande victoria para Luis porque ahora puede vivir con dignidad rodeado con su familia y queridos amigos. El siguiente articulo escribí sobre la corrupción de la sistema jurídica en el caso de Luis Alberto:
Punk Rockers, Kangaroo Courts, and the New Face of the False Positive Scandal in Colombia

La foto abajo es de Luis apenas horas despues que salió el carcel, escribiendo un mensaje a todos lo que ayudaba en la lucha para su libertad:

“Soy Luis Alberto Velasquez Molina y soy inocente. Gracias a todos los personas alrededor del mundo apoyando mi con tus firmas, y gracias a DOOM, la Doctora Marialena, Doctor Muñoz, y la energia de los punks del mundo.”

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This is Luís Alberto Velásquez Molina and he knows something that the Colombian Police do not want you to find out.

Luís is from Medellin, a city famous for beautiful women, plastic surgery, and Pablo Escobar.

It’s also the heartland of Latin American Punk Rock.

Luis lives in the hills above Medellin in a comuna called Villatina.
Villatina is no stranger to police violence.

This man lives a few blocks away from Luis. He was 12 when his 17 year old brother was executed by police along with 7 other children in the Villatina Massacre.

The police accused of orchestrating the massacre were never sentenced.
The victims families are still seeking justice 21 years later.

Luis is a role model for the youth of Villatina. They remember seeing his band Sonido Libertario or Libertarian Sound play for them in the comuna.

Luis wants to teach the youth of Villatina that music, not crime and violence, is the best outlet for anger against an extremely unjust society.

Luis has lived with a terminal illness for 14 years and needs a strict diet and dialysis to stay alive. “When I drink too much water my legs swell up.”

14 years of dialysis at 3 times a week for 4 hours a session equals 8,736 hours of a metal tube pumping and filtering blood through his arm.

Luis waited 10 years to receive a kidney transplant in 2009 but his body rejected it a year later. He almost died.

That’s when 28 punk bands from Medellin organized a concert they called “Punk to help a Friend” and raised enough money to buy Luis a small home in Villatina. He made a slow and painful recovery.

Besides from suffering a terminal illness, “Luchito” or “our Little Fighter” as the Punkeros call him, was in a car accident that permanently damaged his right ankle making movement difficult.

But that doesn’t mean Luis can stop being a Camel, or Camellar as they say in Colombia, when you work without food or breaks to scrape enough spare change together to survive.

Luis created a D.I.Y. mobile shop out of a child’s pram with speakers to blast Punk Rock. After dialysis he wheels his shop carrying sweets and cigarettes to the same park he has worked 6 nights a week for the last 8 years.

At 42 years old Luis is nowhere near as strong as his youth. But that’s not gonna stop him screaming Punk whenever Sonido Libertario gets together.

He’s exhausted after the performance but its worth it. Punk fires him up to get out of bed every morning so his 10 year old son wont become an orphan.

On the 29th of December 2012, Police discovered a military grenade in a black sealed bag placed on top of the lollypops and bubblegum in Luis’ cart.

The night before last weeks court date Luis got home from work at Park Periodista at midnight, woke up at 3:30am, took 2 buses 1.5 hours to the hospital for his 5am-9am dialysis session, then another bus to court.
He was exhausted.

A witness sitting in Periodista Park with his grandson the night of the incident swore under oath he saw a third party place a black sealed bag on top of Luis’ cart moments before police arrived.

The prosecutor used the cocaine found inside the black sealed bag to paint Luis as a user of vicio or vice. The only chemicals Luis can consume without becoming extremely sick are an aggressive dose of medication.

Neither Luis nor his defense lawyer were permitted access to the evidence being used against him. The evidence had been destroyed on the pretext it was “too dangerous” and Luis was taken away in handcuffs.

Medellin’s Punk Rockers Are Pissed.

They believe the charges against Luís Velásquez were fabricated in a common practice called “False Positive” when police and military frame innocent civilians to earn commissions.

Victims of False Positives are primarily poor people because they cannot afford legal defense. They are easily forgotten.

Leaked reports show armed forces can earn up to $3,000,000 COP ($1,565 USD) commissions for weapons they discover when an arrest is made.

If the defense were permitted to examine the evidence against Luis before it was destroyed they may have been able to verify if the grenade was missing from a police warehouse.

Medellin’s Punkeros believe everyone, irrespective of where they come from or what level of society they belong, deserve fair trials.

They set up a petition on CHANGE.ORG and every signature sends an email to the judge they say condemned an innocent man to his death inside a Maximum Security Prison. 1,095 emails and counting…

The Punkeros of Medellin saved the life of Luís Alberto Velásquez before. This Sunday they’ll do it again as Medellin’s best punk bands and their fans get together to raise money and awareness for his cause.

They want to scream a message that False Positives and Police Impunity are not welcome in Periodista Park – home of the memorial statues of 8 children executed by police in the Villatina Massacre.

Johana Mazo Ramírez (8 years),
Johny Alexander Cardona Ramírez (17 years),
Ricardo Alexander Hernández (17 years),
Giovanny Alberto Vallejo Restrepo (15 years),
Oscar Andrés Ortiz Toro (17 years),
Ángel Alberto Barón Miranda (16 years),
Marlon Alberto Álvarez (17 years),
Nelson Duban Flórez Villa (17 years),
Mauricio Antonio Higuita Ramírez (22 years).

You can help Luís Alberto Velásquez Molina too by sharing this page and signing the petition on CHANGE.ORG

Also all money raised from purchases of the “Police Bastard” EP by UK punk band DOOM are being sent to Luis Alberto Velasquez so he can afford to buy healthy food inside the atrocious conditions of Medellin’s Bellavista Prison.

UPDATE

Luis Alberto Velasquez Molina was granted house arrest after seven months in Bellavista Prison. The following photo shows Luis in his house in Villatina, a few hours after being released from prison, writing on the bottom of my article on Colombia Reports the following thanks:

“I am Luis Alberto Velasquez Molina and I am innocent. Thank you to all the people around the world for helping me with your signatures and to DOOM, Jake, the Doctor Marialena, Doctor Muñoz and all the energy of punks of the world.”

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Its not every Sunday that the priest of a rural Colombian city called Tunja begins his sermon with a story of an illiterate Indian girl who grew up in the shadow of the British Empire.

The 8th of September was not a normal Sunday.

For the three weeks previous farmers from the province of Boyaca and its capital Tunja had blocked the roads to strangle the food supply en route to Colombia’s biggest city Bogotá.

Boyaca is not only Bogotá’s backyard, its also the breadbasket for this city of 7 million mouths and has fed it since the time of the Spanish.

After decades of having their human rights ignored the National Agrarian Strike with its epicenter in Boyaca was a last resort to get urbanite Colombians to pay attention: the countryside is in crisis so consumers can save a few pesos at the supermarket.

The strike had abated the day before and Tunjas Cathedral was packed with people who came to see three of the movements leaders who fought against forces far greater than themselves: the Colombian government castrated by consecutive Free Trade Agreements with foreign powers, the United States that provides the country with billions of dollars in military aid (and expects its back scratched in return) as well as omnipotent multinationals like Monsanto.

Their names were Florentino Borda, Walter Benavides, and César Pachón and they spoke to the gathered mass in front of a banner stating, “Thankyou for believing in the #RevolutionOfTheRuanas”

The name of the Indian woman was Kasturba Mohandas Gandhi and the priest recounted a question once asked to her about the man she married who brought the British Empire to its knees.

Her reply: “I did not marry a man,
I married a cause.”

This is the story of Boyaca’s cause.

 

The Seeds of Discontent

Before dawn 12 hours earlier a man they call Pacho from the nearby town of Paipa rigs his car with a speaker and microphone transforming it into a mobile soapbox.

Mist hangs heavily over the back roads that bend up the mountainside and visibility is limited but Pacho dodges the severed trees that had, up until a few days before, blocked all entries and exits to the town.

With steering wheel in one hand and a microphone in the other Pacho shouts out the first names of those who cut the trees and blocked the roads with aggressive threats of force – they are potato farmers and they are invited to a Town Hall Meeting that morning where farmers get to discuss the strikes resolution with Florentino Borda, Walter Benavides, and César Pachón.

Flour & Barley: Because Cocaine is not an Option

Pacho has gained a measure of success in his life and now runs a warehouse full of farming goods from fertilizer to cattle feed and tools both big and small to work the land. But sales have bottomlined, purchases are being made on credit, and customers he counts as friends are struggling to survive.

“This conflict comes from much further back than Santos or Uribe and the TLC” says Pacho referring to Colombia’s Free Trade Agreement with the United States in his history lesson of Boyaca.

In the 1970’s the crop of choice for the province was barley until big beer breweries with factories in the province began using imports from the US. The farmers switched to wheat which was used in bakeries across Boyaca but subsidized wheat and flour from the US undercut competition in the 80’s.

Over the following decades everything from contraband Ecuadorian potatoes to European imports of powdered milk made it harder for Boyacenses to do business.

In other parts of the country these Fair Trade Agreements that flooded the market with cheap foreign imports forced farmers into growing the one Colombian crop with insatiable international demand:
the Coca leaf.
Boyaca’s too cold for Coca.

“We don’t have politicians that protect the community, they are selling the country and the farmers are fed up.” Pacho says as the car climbs up above the mist for a view of Boyaca’s spectular valleys.

“The same state that forgot about the potato farmers is facilitating the multinationals so that they can sell more at subsidized prices.”

Potato Farmers Do Not Want Monsanto Seeds

Three paperos or potato farmers come to greet us, “this land makes good potatoes but what kills us are the importations, they don’t let us compete and now we are broke” says community leader Alexander Camargo.

“You dont sell potatoes,” he says, “you give them away.”

Its not a lack of creativity or initiative that bankrupted the potato farmers of Paipa.

For years they have gone to the mayor with plans to help return their industry to profit but the municipal government ignored them. One such plan was a seed bank that Alexander Camargo and Luis Cipaguata dreamt of creating called Crops from a Cold Land.

After Colombia signed the TLC with the United States storing seeds became a criminal offence. Farmers that followed the tradition of their great grandfathers became criminals under new laws enforced with fines or imprisonment. Saving seeds threatened the bottomline of Monsanto.

[quote]”We need to buy foreign seeds but they are too expensive, we want to certify our own seeds” says Camargo, “if we cannot save our own seeds then they have us screwed.”[/quote]

Catastrophic Acts of God vs Government Pacts: MercoSur, TLC

The nearby town of Santa Teresa has felt the destructive nature of these Free Trade Agreements with the US and South American countries under the MercoSur umbrella as hard as 3 floods that devastated the area in 2.5 years.

“When the government took the barley off us we had to look for a different crop, some went for potatos, others for milk or onions,” says Wilson Pulido a representative for the region.

“After the floods destroyed everything everyone’s in debt and then the government floods us with Peruvian onions, MercoSur, the TLC.” he says.

“Now it costs 55,000 pesos to get a load of onions but we have to sell that load at 20,000 pesos, we are losing 70 percent on every load”

Back in Paipa Pacho drives down the valley to ready himself for the Town Hall Meeting and tells me, “What other choice do the people here have? They are honest, they don’t know how to steal, they aren’t guerrillas, they only want to work with dignity to get a better quality of life for their families”

You can only step over peoples human rights for so long until they have nothing left to lose and the stoic Boyacenses had nothing left to lose. They took the roads.

How The Movement Spread

1. The Watercooler of Dissent: Fruit & Vegetable Markets

Colombia’s National Agrarian Strike started as grassroots as it gets: in fruit and veg markets across Boyaca where farmers and sellers had been swapping stories of dwindling profits and soaring losses for years.

It was here Pacho says: “farmers communicated and organized every single wednesday”

2. Protest Leaders Organize While President Santos Laughs

On May 7th 2013 representatives for farmers convened in Bogotá to alert the the government about the crisis in its agricultural sector. Speeches on Youtube by César Pachon and Florentino Borda show how their microphones are cut which was considered incredibly condescending by farmers.

The government gave them empty promises but the congregation served an important purpose to Pachón and Borda because they were able to network with other sidelined farmers from provinces across the country to coordinate the next strike.

In August 2013 when the National Agrarian Strike began comments by President Santos deliberately belittling the size of the protests infuriated Boyacenses long fed up with their rights being ignored.

“There were only 20 or 30 people blocking the roads” says Pacho, “but when Santos said ‘this so called national strike doesn’t exist‘ overnight we trippled in size.”

The Boyacenses wanted to send a message: YES WE EXIST.

3. Citizen Journalists Shoot Police Human Rights Abuses

To beat Boyaca’s farmers into submission the Colombian government sent a largely undisciplined, downright violent, and universally feared force of ESMAD Riot Police to stop the protests.

What happened next would shock the western world but comes as no surprise to your average Colombian: these trigger-happy storm troopers dressed like Darth Vader vigilantes began looting and pillaging the countryside.

In the village of Barranco 10 minutes outside of Tunja a potato farmer named Ernesto Torres was selling black coffee to protestors blocking the via Bogotá a mere 100 meters from his home. When the ESMAD arrived protestors panicked and ran up past Torres’ house and into the hills but the police gave up chase and looted the potato farmers’ home instead.

That night the ESMAD broke Torres’ two motorbikes, tipped over a gallon bucket of honey, stole 3,000,000 pesos he had set aside to buy pesticide, smashed the windows and left spent teargass grenades on his childrens bunkbeds.

[quote]”We left the door unlocked because its safe in the countryside, we never thought something like this could happen in Boyaca,” says Ernesto Torres, “Thank god the children were with my father.”[/quote]

“I believe the ESMAD made us stronger” César Pachón told me explaining how the deluge of videos by Citizen Journalists documenting human rights abuses by the ESMAD caused public outrage and garnered the sympathy of Colombian’s from the city.

4. The Town Hall of the Future: Red Boyaca

In Paipa’s Town Hall the mood is a mix of elation and tense relief amongst the farmers gathered. Here Florentino Borda, Walter Benavides, and César Pachón give speeches about what Boyaca gained now the strike against the government had been resolved while citizen journalist Aida Castro films and tweets their points.

The sleepy town of Paipa, like many others in the province, have risen up in protest only once before in history: during the Battle of Boyacá in August 1819 that gained Colombia its independence from the Spanish.

This August 193 years later the Colombian elite are again facilitating foreign states as well as multinationals to plunder the countryside at the expense of the human rights of farmers and their families.

What has changed however is a phenomena mushrooming across South American cyberspace called the Town Hall of the Future – online meeting places like this brick and mortar Town Hall in Paipa were concerned citizens come to discuss important topics online.

Online Town Halls like Red Boyaca are the future in bringing people together to fight for their communities by holding human rights abuses accountable thanks to the courageous grassroots reporting by citizen journalists.

There is an old saying in this cold Colombian province: “Boyacenses don’t pray to God for good crops, they pray the neighbors crops will fail.” Now however for the second time in history the stoic Boyacenses are united but this time they are hyper-connected to each other and the rest of Colombia thanks to Citizen Journalism and the Town Halls of the Future.
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On Colombia’s largest TV news source Caracol there is a segment called ASI SE MUEVE LOS REDES or THIS IS HOW NETWORKS MOVE which parades tweets that are trending and memes making rounds around social networks.

In the midst of the nation wide protests that gripped the country for three weeks this segment became a tool to whitewash what was really moving on social networks and manufacture consent to conform with claims deliberately belittling the size of the protests.

The most famous claim was when President Santos stated “this national strike does not exist.” which set off a tidal wave of memes and even youtube videos that rippled around social networks.

Despite getting thousands of shares none of them made the cut for Caracol TVs social media show so we decided to compare some with those that did.

Caracol News vs Chekhovs Kalashnikov

The following memes, tweets, and Facebook images were selected on September 2nd and compared with Caracol TVs selection for the same day. A more scientific comparative analysis would compare tweets with tweets and Facebook with Facebook but we believe the programs unprecedented focus on just twitter was because this network took second place to Facebook during the strikes.

CARACOLS CHOICE: The first pick on Caracols THIS IS HOW NETWORKS MOVE is a North American businessman who paid to promote various irate tweets in English against British Airways when they lost his fathers luggage.

@BritishAirways @British_Airways is the worst airline ever. Lost my luggage & can't even track it down. Absolutely pathetic #britishairways

— hasan (@HVSVN) September 2, 2013

CHEKHOVS CHOICE: With over a thousand more shares and likes that same day we have picked an image and quote of Cesar Pachon, a potato farmer from Boyaca who led the protests in the province and states: “We are capable of making a house, we dont need them to give us one, with our own work we are capable of buying it. Dont worry about food because we are capable of feeding this country” – translation: we dont need welfare, we need just policies that don’t bankrupt farmers.

CARACOLS CHOICE: Next up on the program was a cameo from Caracols favorite post-Chavez-punching-bag, Nicolas Maduro, showcasing the Venezuelan Presidents announcement over twitter who is now tweeting English, French, and Portuguese to accompany his mother tongue.

Now my tweets are available in English, French, Portuguese and Arabic, to tell the world the truth of the homeland of Bolívar and Chávez

— Nicolás Maduro (@maduro_en) September 3, 2013

Caracols social media team then scoured twitter to find a mildly popular meme taking the piss out of Maduro the Polyglot´s letter to Obama:
“TUBAZOOOOO OBAMA RECEIVES THE LETTER FROM THE POLYGLOT @NicolasMaduro”
https://twitter.com/THELAWYER41/status/374925770054852609

CHEKHOVS CHOICE: The same day an image with 1,266 likes 786 shares of President Santos looking like the psychopathic clown from Stephen Kings IT appeared.

Two days after September 2nd a Gallup poll put the approval rating of President Santos at 21 percent down 27 percentage points from the previous poll.

The Wall Street Journal called it “the lowest level recorded for a Colombian president for more than a decade” which may be worrying news for the editors at Caracol as Juan Manuel Santos enters an election year.

Kalashnikov Analysis: HOW NETWORKS REALLY MOVE

Analysing social networks inside Colombia during these strikes and its obvious that much of the citizen journalism documenting the police and ESMAD brutality originates on Facebook.

These photographs and videos are uploaded by individuals (students, youths, professionals) and make ripples around their respective social networks until they are picked up by larger Facebook groups like Young Revolutionaries in Action.

These larger Facebook groups are also becoming the first point of contact for many citizen journalists seeking a wider reach for their photos and videos of the protests.

That means Facebook groups like Soy Estudiante, Jovenes Revolucionarios, and Red Boyaca are becoming the primary source for unfiltered news for many Colombians irrespective of their demographic and location.

Given that the size of each of these platforms grew exponentially during the three week protests the Colombian government may already see them as a threat to controlling the narrative over the mainstream communication mediums.
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On the 29th of August hours after the protests in the Plaza de Bolivar in Bogota a video of a seriously injured youth known only as the “Joven Herido” started making waves around social networks.

The protests had turned violent and depending on which side of the barricade you stood the blame laid at the feet of either the disproportional force of the ESMED Riot Police or a “cartel of vandals” that had infiltrated the protests and caused the militarization of Bogota.

From that protest the story of the Injured Youth became one of the most viewed, commented, and shared videos to come out of the two week nation wide strikes that had engulfed the country. A closer look at the coverage of the Joven Herido is essential to understand the media war underway between the mainstream broadcast media and Colombia’s citizen journalists.

How to Direct the Narrative in News

As the video of the Injured Youth went viral concerned citizens across Colombia began asking who he was, what happened to him, and if he was okay.

El Espectador, the oldest newspaper in Colombia as well as one of its biggest and most influential, was the only big mainstream communication medium to publish the video. Here is a comparative analysis between the coverage between El Espectador and a small citizen media outlet called Reporteros24 which bills itself as “the social network of citizen journalism from latinos for latinos”

El Espectador published the video on the 29th at 6:55 pm and later tweeted it at 9:15 and 11:53. Reporteros24 on the other hand published the video on the 30th at 6:06pm and tweeted it at 7:13.

The difference between the language they used:

Joven herido durante protestas en Bogotá. http://t.co/tiJc4arkQx

— elespectador (@elespectador) August 30, 2013

“Youth Injured During Bogota Protests”

En video: Joven herido durante protestas en Bogotá http://t.co/i5EtPaUF8A

— elespectador (@elespectador) August 30, 2013

“In Video: Youth Injured During Bogota Protests”

Impactantes imágenes de joven gravemente herido durante manifestaciones por paro agrario en Bogotá [Video] http://t.co/TjYp3ydn2X

— Reporteros24.com (@Reporteros24) August 31, 2013

“Shocking images of a seriously injured youth during the Agrarian Protests in Bogotá”

If you add 27 + 19 + 23 for the amount of retweets each got above and divide by 3 you get number 23. This makes Reporteros24 tweet the mean. Now note that the twitter account of El Espectador has 1,220,417 followers while Reporteros24 has 1,803 and do the maths – In statistics tweets like El Espectadors are called Outliers.

[pullquote]out·li·er [out-lahy-er] noun:
an observation that is well outside of the expected range of values in a study or experiment, and which is often discarded from the data set.”
[/pullquote]
This is the power of using vague and ambigious language on twitter over its descriptive and contextual opposite – its designed to be discarded.

Now lets compare the landing pages for the Youtube video on both El Espectador and Reporteros24:
[quote]”El Espectador was unable to confirm this information independently, but decided to publish it for its news value. The content below may find upsetting.” El Espectador[/quote]

[quote]This video circulating on social networks, shows the severity of injuries sustained while this young man participated in marches in support of agricultural strike in Bogota. Apparently tear gas exploded near the boy’s face. The images can hurt your sensitivity. Reporteros24 can not independently confirm the veracity, date or place of this material. Reporteros24[/quote]

Here we can give El Espectador the benefit of the doubt in that they published the video the night of the protests (a day before Reporteros24) and legitimately had no information about the boy. However for the most viewed, shared, and commented video that the newspaper published one might think its “news value” meant it deserved a follow up to find out what happened to the boy.

Colombia’s oldest newspaper however was too busy publishing article after article about the colourfully dubbed a “cartel of vandals” guilty of throwing rocks and wrecking public property and even included the video apology of a 15 year old boy whose “reprehensible action” was to graffiti “long live the strike” on a wall which was news worthy enough to get its own article.

Network Anomalies on El Espectador

Four days later and the view-count of the Injured Youth video was rapidly climbing everywhere except newspaper El Espectador where various network anomalies saw the piece fluctuate between 27,000 and 11,000 shares. A few days later still the view count started to fluctuate between 11,000 and 4,000 shares and now sits steady on 12,000.

Is this a glitch? Or is it part of a larger plan to censor and obfuscate all news related to violations of human rights perpetuated by the country’s feared ESMAD riot police? Lets look a little deeper.

SEX SELLS vs IF IT BLEEDS IT LEADS

Sex and Gore are the media industry’s two holy cash cows and “The nymphomaniac that proposes to have sex with 100,000 men” was El Espectadors best bet in making the masses forget the previous weeks protests and the Injured Youth. The piece became number 1 in the newspapers TOP 10 for the week of 2nd to 8th of September.

Sex sells and the picture of the 21 year old Polish sex junky with her legs seductively bared on her bed no doubt helped the article skyrocket to number 1 for the week. Now lets look at the Injured Youth in the previous week:

Instead of showing the Injured Youths mutilated face haemorrhaging blood we get an image of a different youth, without a cut on him, seemingly antagonizing the ESMAD riot police that cower against the wall. El Espectador have an original photo of the youth but they decided to go against the cardinal rule in news media “if it bleeds it leads” which makes us wonder why don’t they want this story to lead?

Media Manipulation is everywhere and if citizen journalists do not hold news organizations accountable their flagrant abuse of the truth it will only become more outrageous.

To prove this point the day after the National Agrarian Strike ended, with hundreds of outstanding human rights violations by the ESMAD and half the countryside on the brink of bankruptcy, the front page of El Espectador has 12 articles about sport and one article hidden at the bottom from the “chief of state” Juan Manuel Santos acknowledging there’s a problem.

Casualty of a Media War: Photographer Federico Lennis

With 10,000 shares more than the consecutive weeks article (or 24,443 shares less depending on which view-count you believe) it is hard to fathom why the journalists at El Espectador haven’t looked further into the case of the Injured Youth.

While the mainstream media was silent citizen journalists and Facebook groups were busy scouring the web for more information about the boy and posting pleas via leveraging the power of social networks.

In the image to the left the cousin of the injured youth, named Federico Lennis, states: [quote]Hello everybody, i am the cousin of Federico and I am infinitely grateful to you all for the great support you have given us over this Facebook page. I inform you that fortunately he is good in health and talking in general….

We are working on gathering information as a family, friends, and relatives, contacts of any kind to help improve his quality of life, its to say…. we want a smile on him like before…for that we need a dentist or various im not sure, those who are interested in the case he has already lost various teeth and we need someone urgently…[/quote]

On the citizen journalist site aptly named Mentiras Medios or “Lying Media” we get an even better idea who Federico Lennis is in their two articles that reconstruct the steps leading up to his injury.

They also found a quote on a Youtube video on Noticias Capital that devotes most of the time investigating the Cartel of Vandals but interviews a man at the end who tells us what happened to Federico Lennis: [quote]Yesterday we were first hand witnesses, of the police brutality that the ESMAD introduced and the force available from the National Police in Bogota, on the road 19 with avenue 7a a youth of approximately 18 years was hit by a tear gas grenade. This completely destroyed his lips, the police did nothing to help him.[/quote]

We also see that certain elements are attempting to defame Federico Lennis by claiming he was a “masked vandal” or Capucho. Fortunately we can thank the coming of age of Colombia’s citizen journalists for not settling for censorship and revealing the truth about this 18 year old photographer who may never smile again. But hell always be remembered as the martyr who fought for a cause he believed in.

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