Colombia has been one of the countries with the greatest conservative tradition on the entire continent.
Since the formation of unicolor majorities, both of the Conservative Party (1886-1930) and the Liberal Party (1930-1945), the fragile Colombian democracy has been built on a two-party system that, in fact and also de jure, especially since the formation of the Frente Nacional (1958), has restricted any political expression coming from the left.
The electoral competition of progressive parties in Colombia began, stricto sensu, in 1972, with legislative elections in which different expressions such as the Independent and Revolutionary Workers Movement (Moir), the Colombian Popular Front and the Colombian Communist Party, created in 1930, obtained almost 800 thousand votes.
However, the successive elections left different attempts at adhesion, with their subsequent rupture, which made the Colombian left transit without any political relevance.
It had to wait for the beginning of the 1990s, and specifically the approval of the 1991 Constitution, for the left to play some kind of role, since, with the armed conflict, on many occasions this was reduced to the insurrectionary connotation that the guerrillas raised the flag.
Thus, the ADM-19, heir to the recently demobilized M-19 guerrilla, obtained a decent third place in the 1990 elections, with just over 10% of the votes in favor of its candidate, Antonio Navarro Wolf.
Since then, expectations of a progressive turn, stimulated by the demobilization of several guerrilla groups or by the change brought about by the advance of the constitutional order of 1991, collided with reality.
The overcoming of the extemporaneous Constitution of 1886, while recognizing immeasurable possibilities of transformation and modernization of a precarious social state like the Colombian one, consolidated a neoliberal, open and deregulatory model like few others on the continent.
So much so that few things have done more damage to the newborn Constitution of 1991 than the “Washington Consensus” of 1989.
The violence produced by the conflict has also done its part to undermine the possibilities of any glimmer of progressivism in Colombia.
First, in the 1980s, stirring a political genocide on the militancy and leadership of the Patriotic Union party. A formation that emerged in 1985, after the Uribe Accords with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-EP), and which should make possible a transition to democratic life on the part of the left that aspired to the dream of social revolution.
The paramilitaries, in collusion with state agents and members of the Public Force, perpetrated a targeted and systematic political violence that resulted in thousands of deaths, including that of presidential candidates such as Jaime Pardo Leal and Bernardo Jaramillo, and others such as Carlos Pizarro Leongómez (commander of the M-19 and first leader of his political party).
Furthermore, since 1993, under the acronym Autodefensas Unidas de Córdoba y Urabá (ACCU), and since 1997 as Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), paramilitarism has reached its highest levels of violence against society.
Social activists, community leaders and trade unionists were subjected to unrestrained violence, resulting in hundreds of massacres and several thousand deaths.
Any of the above was synonymous with guerrilla sympathizers and therefore, for paramilitarism, they should simply be eliminated.
Likewise, the FARC-EP and the ELN (National Liberation Army), with their crimes, actions against citizenship and involvement in drug trafficking during the 1990s, ended up denaturalizing themselves, losing any sign of sympathy for the most vulnerable sectors. of a country that, if that wasn’t enough, found in the guerrillas an additional problem, not trivial, for a life of scarcity and lack of opportunities.
Added to this scenario was a deeply corrupt political system at the service of traditional elites, which tended to patrimonize the State and to weave all kinds of clientelistic relationships, in which the democratic left could not even have serious difficulties in running for elections with minimal possibilities of success.
The same thing happened with other additional factors, such as proximity to the US geopolitical code, the militarization of public space caused by tough security policies, as was the case during the presidencies of Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010), and a strongly parochial and disinterested political culture, especially in rural areas.
While all this was juxtaposed over the decades, the democratic left was imbued with infighting and circumstantial alliances, later blurred by personalisms and ideological disagreements.
In the same way, social mobilization tended to function more like an explosion of rage, and on many occasions lacking any compass, because for many decades, and unfortunately for the democratic left, the guerrillas attributed to themselves the role of the only capable interlocutor. to raise the banner of social transformation through its confrontation with the State.
However, the same factors that have long hampered the left’s electoral participation are now blowing in favor of political change.
The signing of the Peace Agreement freed up space for the left by blurring the war/peace axes that for so long dominated Colombian electoral competition.
This lack of definition, which does not mean that armed violence does not continue to be a problem to be solved, makes it possible to make visible, problematize and politicize aspects, problems and issues of a social order (housing, education, health, employment) that give a new meaning to the programmatic proposal. from the left.
In addition, although still far from a relative capacity for structuring, the social mobilizations of 2019 and 2021 against the government of Iván Duque also show a change in the repertoire of the protest mechanisms and political demands used by citizens.
A demand that is less and less accepted from the preconceived idea on the part of the country’s elites in conceiving democracy as something devoid of conflict and as a strict concession of rights.
Social conflict, the ability of democracy to institutionalize this conflict and the understanding of rights as conquest are a new aspect that Colombian citizenship must discover.
Finally, it cannot be ignored that the dominant neoliberal model in a constitutional order that offers many possibilities finds in the above an ideal scenario to shed light on a multiplicity of contradictions and tensions that still have to be resolved.
Thus, the Colombian left found in Gustavo Petro, a former member of the M-19, as well as a recognized senator and former mayor of Bogotá, the type of leader it needed.
He is a candidate who has managed to bring together almost all leftist movements, platforms and formations.
In 2018, it obtained the best result in history for the democratic left in Colombia, leading to an electoral dispute on the left/right axes.
Now, four years later, and leading the National Historic Pact, it has been the most voted force in the Senate and the second most voted in the House of Representatives.
Furthermore, the internal consultation that was supposed to encourage Petro as a party candidate, and in which the name of its vice-president, Francia Márquez –a black woman, lawyer, activist and victim of violence–, appeared on the scene, was accompanied by levels of very high levels of participation, which allow us to affirm that both parties are facing a historic opportunity to lead Colombia to the first leftist government in its history.
Let’s hope nothing stops you.
Translation of Giulia Gaspar
