[Imc-finance] Update Colombia

[Pablo Ortellado]

Colombia

Just an update on what happened in Colombia.

After being unactive for a while, a new IMC Colombia group was formed a 
couple of months ago. There's a group in Bogota and another one in Medellin 
(although the group in Bogota is larger). We set up two meetings where I 
tried to tell them a little about the IMC network and also show some of the 
projects the older IMCs in the latin America are involved with. There were 
an interest in starting a free radio in National University campus - using 
the same strategy as free radio activists in Brazil that use university 
autonomy to protect radios from police; there were also some interest in 
setting up free internet centers and newspapers. Colombia is very far from 
Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay where the older and most active IMCs in South 
America are and they knew very little of our political situation and of the 
different projects our IMCs were involved with.

Political situation right now makes social/ political work in Colombia very 
hard. With many guerrillas and armed groups being active, its very risky to 
work openly with social organizations. Its very hard to have one's own 
space and there are general paranoia of police or militia infiltration. 
This makes very difficult to keep the IMC an open and public group. It also 
makes very difficult to cover issues relating to the guerrillas and the 
paramilitary groups. They have decided to write very balanced editorial 
stories basicly documenting what happened and linking to documents of both 
parts involved (the paranoia is so big that some people fear accessing FARC 
website directly and read their statements through foreign IMC websites, 
for instance).

Despite all the problems, many groups are involved with media projects in 
Bogota and are using their experience to help Indymedia. Among them, the 
most structured is the "Desde Abajo" collective who was part of the first 
Indymedia group but now is only one among other groups. Desde Abajo do a 
very interesting work with print media, being responsible for a monthly 
publication for the past 13 years (many people consider it the most 
important alternative publication in Colombia). There were also other 
groups with editorial projects, video projects and radio shows. My 
impression is that they have a very consistent group and only need more 
time to structure themselves. Very nice people.