The candidate who leads the presidential race in Colombia, the leftist Gustavo Petro, 62, suspended this Monday (2) the campaign after denouncing an alleged murder attempt. Because of the episode, he announced that he will no longer travel to the region known as Eixo Cafeeiro, an appointment that was planned in his agenda.
In a statement, the current senator’s press office said that the security team received information that the La Cordillera group was planning an attack against him. The decision to suspend the trip would have the objective of preserving the candidate and his advisors.
The candidacy of Petro, a former member of the M-19 guerrilla group, now demobilized, displeases paramilitary groups, which emerged in the confrontation with these leftist groups over the last six decades.
La Cordillera is identified as a cell that operates in the departments of Quindío, Caldas and Risaralda. His most recent attack culminated in the murder of a local activist leader, Lucas Villa, during protests last year.
The suggestion that there could be an attack on Petro has been speculated in recent days. Last Sunday (1st), Semana magazine reported that unidentified senior army officers spoke in a threatening tone about the former mayor of Bogotá.
Magnicides are not uncommon in Colombia’s recent political history. Also a former member of the M-19, the then presidential candidate in 1990 Carlos Pizarro was murdered inside a plane, while traveling between campaign events.
In the same electoral race, there was the assassination of the liberal leader Luis Carlos Galán, at the time favorite to win the election, at the behest of the Medellin Cartel. Galán was a personal enemy of the then leader of the criminal faction, Pablo Escobar, and had been denouncing drug trafficking crimes that took place at the time, when ministers, newspaper owners and businessmen were also murdered.
After Galán’s death, the Medellín Cartel attacked and shot down an Avianca flight from Bogotá to Cali, in an attempt to kill Cesar Gaviria, who took over Galán’s candidacy. It was, however, a planning error by the group, as the politician had changed plans and was not on board. In the attack, all 107 people on the aircraft were killed.
Also in that same campaign, which would later be won by Gaviria, the communist candidate Bernardo Jaramillo Ossa was also killed.
The most remarkable assassination in Colombian history, however, was that of Jorge Eliezer Gaitán, in 1948. The leader, who was to run in the presidential elections, was killed in broad daylight in the heart of Bogotá. The perpetrator was later killed by an angry mob and his body was dragged through the streets of the capital.
The case gave rise to the period known as “La Violencia”, in which conservatives and liberals faced each other. In the following days, several public buildings and residences in Bogotá came to the ground. Among them, the boarding house where then-student Gabriel García Márquez lived. Having seen the so-called Bogotazo first-hand marked the work of the future Nobel Prize in Literature, who became an activist for peace in his country.
The Colombian presidential elections will take place on the 29th. It will be the second election after the signing of the peace agreement between the State and the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) guerrillas. In the first, the current president, Iván Duque, who is against the agreement, as well as part of the active paramilitary groups, won.
According to the most recent survey carried out by Ecoanalytical, the race would go to a second round, to be played on June 19. Petro leads with 36.4% of the votes, while in second place is the rightist Federico “Fico” Gutiérrez, former mayor of Medellín, with 30.6%. It is the first time since 2002 that the right linked to former caudillo Álvaro Uribe has not played a leading role in the election.
In March, the left linked to Petro won the legislative election with a historic result.
The pre-election environment has been buzzing in recent days. There was a collective confession by 10 former soldiers that they were in fact responsible for the so-called “false positives” scandal, when the army killed civilians and pretended they were guerrillas. Uribe responds to the lawsuit for being involved in the case.
There are sectors of the Armed Forces, paramilitaries and the right that are against the scope in which the confession was given, a Special Justice Court for Peace, an organ established by the peace agreement and which has been offering reparatory sentences and amnesties to former officers, paramilitaries and ex-guerrillas who confess to participating in crimes. An estimated 6,402 civilians were killed in the “false positives” scandal.
