Colombia’s national strike — or paro (stoppage) as it is called locally —  began on April 28 with enormous protests and on May 5 entered its eighth day, with another round of mass protests around the country. Truck drivers and rural communities have joined in, paralyzing entire swathes of the country.

What provoked these protests was yet another tax reform from the extreme right-wing government of Iván Duque, the third of his government. As the Colombian economist Libardo Sarmiento Anzola wrote in Le Monde Diplomatique:

The three tax reforms of the Duque administration (2018–2022) have one common denominator: benefits for the large companies and a greater tax burden for 80 percent of the population, which is poor and vulnerable, through a mechanism that squeezes from both sides: on one hand, higher taxes on their personal income, and on the other hand taxes on their consumption of basic foodstuff.1

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