The Spanish anarchist website A Las Barricadas [1] reports that Nicolás Neira Alvarez, a 15-year-old student who was marching with an anarchist contingent May 1 in Bogota when it was attacked by the riot police, has died of injuries sustained that day. Nicolas died on the sixth in the hospital, after five days in a coma. Apparently the target of the police attack--with tear gas and savage beatings--was the contingent of the Polo Democratico, a left-opposition party to which Bogota's Mayor Lucho Garzon belongs. Since the police are controlled by the national government in Colombia, this may be hardline President Alvaro Uribe's way of sending a message to the populist mayor. This was the second Mayday since Garzon took office, and the second to see harsh police violence. (See WW4 REPORT #93 [2])
The special police unit involved in the incident, the Metropolitan Anti-Disturbance Security Corps (SMAD), also brutally attacked marchers at the Medellin Mayday celebration last year, resulting in several injured, as we reported [3] at the time.
See our last post on Colombia [4].
