If Gustavo Petro represented a new paradigm in Colombia when he became the first leftist in power, the departure of former president Álvaro Uribe has allowed the rise of a new generation of right-wing leaders in the country. At their head is senator María Fernanda Cabal, 57, who is expected to be the main voice of opposition to the newly sworn-in president.
The most voted woman for the Senate in this year’s election, she is known for her politically incorrect style and aversion to the left. When the Nobel Prize in Literature Gabriel García Márquez (1927-2014) died, for example, Cabal published a photo of the author next to Fidel Castro on his networks, saying: “Soon they will be together in hell”. The Cuban dictator died in 2016.
“If the left disappoints, the tendency is that in the next elections the radical right will return with even more force. A so-called moderate right, like the one represented by Iván Duque, is today associated with failure in the minds of many Colombians”, he tells the Sheet political scientist Álvaro Duque.
Uribe, in turn, is consolidating his loss of political territory while responding to legal proceedings. Cabal has made his political career for the Democratic Center, a party created by the caudillo, but has increasingly criticized him — especially since he showed a preference for Óscar Iván Zuluaga as a presidential candidate in the primaries.
Since then, the senator has been testing her own flight with a youth activism organized by her son, Juan José Lafaurie, whose slogan is Soy Cabal. The day after Petro took office, she said she was ready to represent the “half Colombia” that had not voted for the current president.
He also criticized the moment when the new president interrupted the ceremony to send for Simón Bolívar’s sword that was kept in the Casa de Nariño and that Duque had not released in advance. The object is an important symbol for the former guerrilla because it had been stolen by the M19 in 1974 and only returned in 1991 as part of a peace agreement.
For Cabal, the scene was proof that the leftist is a “disciple worthy of [Hugo] Chávez” and that the sword was “just to impress, because Petro really wants to disarm everyone”.
“He doesn’t want possession to be legalized, of course, because he had guns when they were illegal. The truth today is that Colombians need guns to defend their lives. Total disarmament is exposing the innocent to criminals.”
Elected for the first time to the Senate in 2014, Cabal joined those who defended the “no” in the plebiscite for the peace agreement with the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). It is against the Special Justice, established by the document and which offers reparatory sentences, not imprisonment, for ex-combatants. “A country only exists if the laws are the same for everyone,” she says.
Born in Cali to a family of landowners, Cabal is married to the president of the Colombian Federation of Cattle Breeders, José Félix Lafaurie. His grandparents and great-grandparents are from the Cabal and Molina families, who have intermarried for generations; her parents are first cousins.
His hometown was one of the epicenters of the anti-government protests in 2021, and at the time Cabal led a resistance movement by the inhabitants of the private condominium where he lives, which ended in shooting at a group of indigenous people. The popularity gained in the episode secured his re-election in 2022.
She defines herself as an anti-communist and admirer of Brazilian Jair Bolsonaro (PL) and former US President Donald Trump. Foul-mouthed, she was kicked out of a nuns’ college as a teenager for swearing and not wanting to obey rules. Unlike her two references, however, she rejects religion because she says the church is associated with “terrorist groups like the ELN [Exército de Libertação Nacional, única guerrilha ainda ativa na Colômbia] and the ETA [grupo do País Basco também desmobilizado]”.
The senator still stands out from the Colombian conservatives for being a defender of gender policies, having helped to pass the law that defines the crime of femicide in the country.
In recent weeks, she has dedicated herself to criticizing Petro’s appointments to the ministry, hurling insults at figures such as Gloria Inés Ramírez, the minister of Labor and considered an admirer of Ecuadorian Rafael Correa and Bolivian Evo Morales. “This is an incoherent red militant. Chávez starved his own people to death. We are surrounded by leftists.”
