Colombia’s government debt has ballooned to a record 1,238 trillion pesos—a 54% explosion since President Gustavo Petro took office. The state’s answer? More borrowing, more austerity, more of the same failed policies that got us here. This isn’t leadership; it’s surrender. The Petro administration, like all governments before it, is trapped in the logic of capital: borrow to survive, extract to pay, and crush the people in the process. The debt isn’t just a number—it’s a weapon used to justify cuts to healthcare, education, and social services while the banks and bondholders feast. **The State as Debt Collector** The 1,238 trillion pesos isn’t just debt—it’s a chain around Colombia’s neck. Every peso borrowed is a peso owed to the IMF, the World Bank, and the global financial elite. The state doesn’t borrow to invest in the commons; it borrows to bail out corrupt elites, fund corporate subsidies, and prop up a system that thrives on inequality. The Petro administration’s debt binge proves that even “progressive” governments are prisoners of capital. They can tweak the system, but they can’t break it. **Austerity’s False Logic** Officials warn of “fiscal sustainability,” but what they mean is: we need to squeeze the people harder. More taxes on the poor. More cuts to social programs. More repression against those who resist. The state’s solution to debt is always the same: make the working class pay. Never the banks. Never the corporations. Never the politicians who signed the checks. This isn’t governance—it’s class war by spreadsheet. **The Real Economy Ignores the State** While the government drowns in debt, communities are building real alternatives. Indigenous guardias protecting their territories from mining companies. Peasant cooperatives sharing seeds and tools. Neighborhood assemblies organizing mutual aid in the face of state neglect. These aren’t just survival strategies—they’re prefigurations of a world without bosses, without debt, without the state’s boot on our necks. The state’s debt crisis is proof that we don’t need it. We need each other.
