Social protest must be a protected right in Latin America: experts

Social protest should be considered a democratic right in Latin America, where the abuse of the police force to silence social discontent is frequent, in a “vicious circle” that only accentuates violence, say experts in the region.

“The police in general do not consider the protest as a democratic right, but as something to be fought. When the social protest infringes other rights, it is necessary to balance those rights and eventually it is possible to use force, but that must be done from the perspective that the protest has to be protected and not fought,” public security specialist Ignacio Cano said in a panel this Thursday sponsored by the United States Institute of Peace.

Cano, with extensive experience analyzing the use of force in Brazil and the region, insisted that this perspective that a disgruntled citizen has the right to express their disagreement, “unfortunately, is very rare in the region.”

During the meeting, researchers, former officials and human rights activists analyzed different examples of protests against corruption and social injustice and severe police repression in response, with emphasis on Chile, Colombia and Peru, the latter with more than 60 deaths in the recent riots against the new government of Dina Boluarte.

According to Cano, the police respond to two paradigms: preserve the government and defend social rights.

“Latin America is in a slow transition from the first model to the second,” he warned. “It is very common, for example, for the aggressiveness of some protesters to serve as an excuse to end the protest as a whole, as happened in Brazil in 2013 (…) What this indiscriminate repression often does is accentuate the protest and end up giving rise to a vicious circle”, added the doctor in Sociology.

Racism and political bias

Even in countries where social protest is legally protected, such as Colombia, there are still regulations that make it difficult, explained activist Angie Fernández, a member of the NGO human rights defender Equitas.

Fernández also drew attention to the racism that permeates the response to protests in many cases.

“Police violence has been racist,” declared the researcher, who recalled how in Colombia special police forces have intervened with special force in neighborhoods where Afro-indigenous communities traditionally live.

Ignacio Cano, for his part, said that “racial bias in the work of the police also happens in Brazil”, and pointed out the political bias in the response to the protests in that country in 2021.

“The extreme right-wing protesters were treated with extreme care by the police, with negotiation, without violent intervention, while the left-wing protesters were treated quite violently,” said Cano, who warned that in this “time of general dissatisfaction” and the resurgence of the extreme right, it is crucial to monitor the police response.

Control mechanisms and responsibility

Former Peruvian congressman and former Minister of the Interior, Gino Acosta, recalled that “the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has also recommended in Peru the adoption of an intercultural approach in handling social protest.”

According to Acosta, police violence has been seen mainly in the interior of the country, especially in the south, a predominantly indigenous territory.

“In this case, the repression was accompanied by a sympathetic and disqualifying speech of the protesters,” he said.

Acosta called attention to the “growing impunity of police action” and the deterioration of democracy in his country, which has lived its last three decades bannering a unstable domestic political landscape.

“There are very few investigations carried out against violent repression” in Peru, he said.

Angie Fernández agrees with this, who mentioned the few controls on the public force in the protest scenes and after it. These accountability mechanisms “exist, but they are minor and, in most cases, late.”

“There are processes that can last up to 10 years in investigation, without concluding with an effective sanction. Some processes do not start, others start in military criminal justice, so access to the victims of the process is minimal,” he said.

The police and their behavior in protests “must be guided by technical protocols and not so much by political interventions,” emphasized Cano, adding that an “increase in supervision and control mechanisms, both internal and external, of police action”.

“Without these mechanisms we will continue to witness abuses and injuries and deaths caused by the police in their actions against social protests in the region.” he concluded.

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