Colombia has elected a new government, which will be led by Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez, who will take office on August 7.
This unprecedented victory for the left represents a major achievement for Colombian democracy and constitutes a historic event with influence in Latin America.
The limitations of Colombian democracy
Ruling elites and certain media outlets have insisted that Colombia has the most stable democracy in the region.
This is because the country, unlike most Latin American countries, did not have long periods of military dictatorship, with the exception of the 1953 military coup of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, who ruled until 1957.
However, in 212 years of republican history, the country has been ruled by a small number of family dynasties that during the 19th and 20th centuries clung to power through the Liberal and Conservative parties.
Although these parties lost importance in the 21st century due to the emergence of new political forces, they continued to be decisive in elections and continue to dominate political life in various regions of the country.
Therefore, Gustavo Petro is not just Colombia’s first leftist president. He is also the first president who did not depend on the support of traditional parties and whose triumph was largely due to the support of the social bases, especially young people, women and the population living on the periphery of the country, which was the most affected. by the armed conflict.
Until these elections, Colombian democracy had not had a true alternation of power, unlike other Latin American countries, in which the change of political forces in power had already been achieved.
Undoubtedly, Petro’s victory is historic, considering that the left in Colombia had no real possibility of coming to power until a few years ago.
From 1987 to 1995, five presidential candidates were assassinated, four of them from the left. Unión Patriótica, a product of the 1985 Peace Accord, was exterminated and more than 4,000 militants and politicians from this alternative party were murdered, kidnapped or disappeared.
Political violence has been the resource used by armed groups, but also by political elites, to prevent the arrival of alternative forces to power.
For this reason, the Peace Agreement signed in 2016 advanced in discussing guarantees, not only for the political participation of the guerrillas but of other historically excluded political forces, as well as the role of the opposition.
The Francia Márquez factor and the importance of peripheries
The ruling elites in Colombia, as in most Latin American countries, have, since the formation of the Republic, excluded indigenous and black peoples.
With the exception of some public positions, such as certain ministries, the indigenous and Afro-Colombian population has not been part of the State’s leadership.
Furthermore, institutional and institutionalized racism is not dissociated from the machismo that has dominated politics in the country.
Therefore, although in the 2018 elections Colombia had for the first time in its history a woman in the position of vice president, Martha Lucía Ramírez, the fact that on this occasion the post was taken by an Afro-Colombian woman, Francia Márquez, is a historic event.
Márquez, unlike Ramírez, does not belong to the country’s political and economic elite, as he comes from a mining town and entered politics due to the social and environmental activism he carried out in his territory.
In addition, the elected vice president, unlike the previous one, recognized herself as a feminist and defended women’s rights. For this reason, many Colombian women who are part of excluded groups feel represented in the figure of Márquez.
The vice-president-elect also represents several excluded social sectors that, quoting Eduardo Galeano’s poem, are part of the “nobody”. That is, poor women, Afro-descendants, indigenous, peasants, LGTBTQ+ population, among others.
In past elections, the figure of the vice presidency had not been so important. Neither was it in the other current vice-presidential formulas.
Therefore, a large part of Petro’s victory is due to the figure of Márquez, who, precisely, faced the male, white and urban elite that has governed the country, which opens spaces for participation for women excluded from politics, not only in Colombia but also in Latin America.
Finally, political and economic centralism has restricted democracy in a large part of the national territory. The difference between large cities and the periphery is often overwhelming in terms of guaranteeing rights and access to basic services.
The Colombian departments in which Petro won correspond to the periphery of the national territory. Most are border departments, with the exception of those bordering Venezuela, where the challenger comes from. Rodolfo Hernández.
In fact, Petro voters in several of these territories are the same ones who voted “yes” in the 2016 peace plebiscite, when by a small difference he won the “no”, led by uribismo.
In this sense, a large part of Colombia that was not taken into account in the country’s decisions, and where democracy does not work like the center, was decisive for Petro’s victory.
But implementing a government program oriented towards social and environmental justice, the energy transition and the quest to reduce social inequality will not be an easy task, given that the country’s political and economic elite will have to renounce certain privileges.
Therefore, it is expected that governance problems will arise due to the opposition of these sectors, as happened with Fernando Lugo in Paraguay or Dilma Rousseff in Brazil. However, Petro called for a major national agreement and, so far, has managed to bring together various political forces for dialogue.
Colombia is getting to know, for the first time, what authentic alternation in power is, which implies an important step towards rethinking its democracy.
But this change will also affect the agenda of other Latin American countries, which need to expand spaces of participation for “the nobody”, the excluded, those who have historically been considered incapable of running the State.
