In pictures: Colombian protests sharpen Cali’s class war with Latin American news

In a affluent suburb of Cali, Colombia, next door to neighbors police throw weapons at protesters.

They believe they protect property from the public.

After a 50-day social day protests Against the government of right-wing President Ivan Duque, Cali’s class division seems to be widening.

The southeastern city, known for its social inequality and racism, has been the epicenter of violent unrest during the protests.

Turned on May 28, a wealthy crowd from some nearby neighborhood huts showed up in the Ciudad Jardin neighborhood and tried to burn down the police station.

Neighbors responded with gunfire.

“It was like a civil war, with civilians worried about their homes and property, and police on both sides protesting … trying to impose this anarchy and chaos on our neighborhood,” said 30-year-old publicist Andres Escobar. AFP.

Escobar admitted that he fired his automatic pistol “in the air” several times that day. It was the deadliest day of protests in the city, killing 13 people.

That day was the clearest example of “marked by class differences, racial differences and different ethnicities” exacerbated by the pandemic, said sociologist Luis Castillo of the University of the Valley of Cali.

With luxury shops, palaces with pools and avenues with palm trees, Ciudad Jardín looks like a Beverly Hills mini.

Almost no neighbors took to the streets to protest Duque.

They also did not protest against the widespread police condemnation of the protesters.

First of all he protested – initially opposed to the now-withdrawn tax reform proposal – on April 28 mostly unions and students demanded a change of government.

But for the first time, young blacks and mixed races from poor neighborhoods came together.

Calin, where the 67 percent poverty rate is much higher than the rest of the country, is clear about “racial segregation,” Castillo said.

This helps explain why black and poor neighborhoods were created when the pandemic hit the informal sector hard.

With AFP the protesters ranged in age from 15 to 35 and work in the informal sector, are unemployed or are students.

They require jobs, education and health services.

Some draw diagrams of the cook and others of the dead friends on the floor, all of them listening to reggaeton and burning for hours outside.

They say they have weapons, but they can only show shields, sticks and stones in the house.

These people are tired of “seeing their families in misery,” said Plein, the “front-line” coordinator of the Puerto Madera road district, who was shot dead in incidents involving police.

“We want those with some money to have the rights of the poor,” Plein said.