🗞️ The government has raised Colombia’s minimum wage by 9.5% - now set at 1.5 million pesos monthly. Inflation closed at 5% at the end of last year, meaning the minimum wage has an estimated real growth of 4.5% with the new increase.
The decision followed a failure to reach consensus with unions and the private sector, though President Gustavo Petro said he hopes the shift will lift five million Colombians out of hunger and three million out of poverty.
The president’s New Year’s address, delivered from a grocery store in Santa Marta, focussed on the economic achievements of 2024, announcing economic growth of nearly 3% in the last year, along with halved inflation rates and unemployment now below 10%.
🗞️ Civil society group Indepaz has also released final figures for political violence in 2024: 76 massacres occurred during the year, with 267 victims – 17 massacres fewer than in 2023 and the lowest death toll since the pandemic.
Indepaz also reported the murder of 173 social leaders over the course of the year, and 31 signatories to the 2016 Peace Accords with the FARC.
🗞️ The number of migrants crossing the Darien Gap fell in 2024: around 300,000 people made the crossing from Colombia to Panama last year - down 42% from 2023 according to Panamanian authorities.
🗞️ After 22 years of campaigning, a Medellín women’s group has been vindicated in their claim that there are victims of state and armed group murders buried in La Escombrera, a rubble pile near the Comuna 13 neighbourhood.
On 18th December, the Search Unit for Missing Persons discovered skeletal remains in the rubble, as part of a search operation begun last August – itself the result of years of struggle by the group Mujeres Caminando por la Verdad. In the following days, the remains of two more bodies were discovered.
For two decades, the group has insisted that there are up to 500 bodies buried in the rubble pile, many the victims of forced disappearance and murder in the aftermath of Operation Orion - the largest urban military operation in Colombia’s history, in which the government allied with paramilitary groups to drive insurgents out of the neighbourhood.
For more on La Escombrera and Mujeres Caminando por la Verdad, check out this interview with Luz Elena Salas - poet and activist with the group.
🗞️ A key witness in the murder of Paraguayan prosecutor Marcelo Pecci, killed on his honeymoon in Cartagena in 2022, has been found dead in his prison cell in Bogotá. Pecci had been in charge of several of the region’s most important drug trafficking and money laundering cases.
Francisco Luis Correa, a former military officer, was in prison for the murder, but is not considered to have been the intellectual author of the killing, only a go-between for cartels and hitmen. He was expected to testify as to who ordered the crime in exchange for pardon for the homicide charges.
Correa's lawyers have suggested that this murder was an intimidation tactic, designed to deter other witnesses from testifying. The perpetrator of Correa’s murder has reportedly been identified, though the killing has yet again raised questions about security within Colombia’s prison system.
🗞️ The Colombian government has announced that it will send a representative to attend the 10th January inauguration of Nicolás Maduro, returning to Venezuela’s presidency following a disputed election last July.
Until now, Colombia’s position has been to refuse to acknowledge Maduro’s victory, or that of opposition candidate Edmundo González, until the electoral records were published. The records have not yet been released, but Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo said that attendance is a condition of ongoing diplomatic relations with Venezuela – a key tenet of Petro’s foreign policy.
Mexico and Brazil have also refused to recognise Maduro's victory, but both countries will be sending representatives to the inauguration. The Chilean ambassador, meanwhile, has now been withdrawn from Venezuela - just days before the event.
González, who also claimed victory in July’s elections, is currently on a regional tour, but has said that he too will be in Venezuela on the 10th of January to be inaugurated as president, and has also invited Petro to attend his inauguration. Nine regional former-presidents, including Colombia's Andrés Pastrana, will accompany González to Venezuela later this week.
Meanwhile, Venezuela’s pro-government prosecutor's office has published an offer of 100,000 US dollars for information leading to the capture of González, accusing him of conspiracy, usurpation of authority, and incitement to disobey the law, among other crimes.
🗞️ In other international news, Colombia made its debut at the United Nations Human Rights Council, where the country will have a seat for the next three years. Petro announced that his priorities for the tenure will be tackling the systematic violation of human rights in Palestine, the freedom of Peru’s former-president Pedro Castillo, and political agreement in Venezuela.
The latter two issues have caused some degree of controversy, Castillo having been accused of a self-coup in Peru in 2022 and negotiation with Maduro’s regime having long been controversial on the international stage - as well as within Colombia itself.
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