The candidate elected this Sunday (19) in Colombia reaches the presidency after three attempts. Gustavo Petro, 62, ran in 2010, when he was left out of the second round, in an election won by Juan Manuel Santos. In 2018, he reached the final round and lost by a small margin to Iván Duque.
Born in Ciénaga de Oro, in the north of the country, Petro has been in politics since studying economics in Zipaquirá. At 17, he joined the M-19 guerrillas. Due to his work in the group, he was arrested for conspiracy and illegal possession of weapons in 1985 and was behind bars for 18 months – he says he was tortured in the period.
Petro was in prison when the M-19 carried out one of the most violent attacks in the country’s history, the invasion of the Palace of Justice, in 1985. The action left 101 dead, including several ministers of the Supreme Court of Colombia. After signing an agreement with the State in 1990, the M-19 demobilized and began to participate in Colombian politics, forming part of the 1991 Constituent Assembly, which drafted the current Constitution. From there, several members embraced the path of democratic politics.
The president-elect was one of them. He rejected armed struggle and was elected to Congress. He was a senator on two occasions, and in 2012 he became mayor of Bogotá. The following year, he was removed by the courts for an alleged irregularity in the city’s garbage collection. The case ended up in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which recommended the reappointment to the post, which took place four months later.
The removal episode was what projected him nationally. In a protest that filled Plaza Bolivar to ask for his return to office, Petro said: “I want you to be aware that we are beginning to experience days of history. This is not just another demonstration.” From then on, he was consolidated as a great orator. In this campaign, his rallies drew crowds in far-flung villages across the country.
In 2016, it supported the negotiations carried out by Juan Manuel Santos and the agreement signed with the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). In his career as a congressman and mayor, he was a staunch opponent of uribismo and the armed confrontation with the guerrillas. He promised, in the campaign, that he would reopen dialogue with the ELN (National Liberation Army), suspended by Duque.
On the other hand, his speeches against the Colombian “oligarchy” and his proximity to former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, as well as his past in the armed struggle, made him a target of criticism from the right. Petro, however, affirms that his government will in no way resemble the Chavista regime. “Chavez made Venezuela even more dependent on oil, I propose the opposite.”
Petro also condemns the human rights violations of the Chavista regime and says that he will not carry out expropriations nor will he act to stop Colombia from being a country open to investment. He also promises a reform so that the super-rich – about 4,000 people in the country – pay more taxes, which would be aimed at alleviating poverty. According to the 2018 census, the poor represent 33% of the population, but it is estimated that this number has already reached 40% with the impact of the pandemic.
Among his promises is that Colombia will stop depending on an extractive economy and bet on agrarian reform. “May the countryside provide our main riches”, he says. According to him, strengthening the economy in the interior of the country would also be an instrument to reach the long-awaited peace with the dissolution of the criminal factions that currently operate in drug trafficking.
The new Colombian president is the son of a housewife, Clara Nubia Urrego, and a primary school teacher, Gustavo Petro Sierra. He moved from the north of the country to Zipaquirá to study. In an interview, his daughter Sofia stated that her father still has a lot to learn about feminism.
“He’s part of that left where the problem of gender was not central.” Petro himself recognizes that he strives to improve in this regard. In recent weeks, Sofia has joined the campaign, speaking out and wearing T-shirts claiming feminism. She says she remembers seeing her father cry when Che Guevara was murdered in 1967, and says she grew up in a left-wing environment. In 1973, it would be his turn to be moved, as he tells in his memoirs, when he watched the bombing of La Moneda Palace, in Chile, during the military coup that started a long dictatorship in that country (1973-1990).
Influenced by his father and the political events he witnessed, he read the works of Lenin and Marx while still in his teens. A fan of Nobel literature Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez (1927-2014), he adopted the pseudonym Aureliano when entering the guerrilla, a tribute to Aureliano BuendÃa, from “One Hundred Years of Solitude”.
