Since Colombia proclaimed itself an independent democratic republic in 1810, the left has never governed. This Sunday, June 19, Gustavo Petro and his vice-presidential formula, Francia Márquez, put an end to more than two centuries of continuing conservative governments, giving way to a change of power boosted by the peace process and the social unrest, which began in 2019 and later, in 2021, it was consolidated as the most powerful in the recent history of the Andean country.
The left lands in Colombia, at least for the next four years. It is something unprecedented, since never before has a progressive project as such reached the Casa de Nariño.
This August 7, 2022, Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez, elected president and vice president, will do so, when the current president, Iván Duque, hands over the keys to the presidential palace.
The visible heads of the Historical Pact coalition won this Sunday with more than 50% of the votes in a ballot that was expected, according to the polls, to be somewhat tighter than it finally turned out. In front, the populist Rodolfo Hernández, who obtained more than 47% of the votes, admitted defeat and extended his hand to the winners.
The road for them was not easy: Petro got the electoral victory to the third. Márquez dedicated his entire life to the defense of his ancestral territories and in August 2021, with the embers of the social outbreak still hot, he decided to make the leap into politics.
After coming third in the inter-party consultations in March, Petro appointed her as his vice-presidential formula, and her leading role as a defender of “the nobody”, of the historically excluded minorities in the country, has been key so that this Sunday they voted mostly for a change that, at least in the promises, integrates them as part of the history and present of Colombia.
Petro and Márquez’s message was widely supported, moreover, by young people and women, other majorities that made up the successive national strikes in recent years. Those protests, which brought together the discontent and the historical claims of a good part of society, were, without a doubt, fuel for the leadership of those who will now lead the Latin American country to prosper.
Thus, the left of the Historical Pact ends with more than two centuries of continuous conservative governments, where the left has been linked to the guerrillas, to political violence and to a kind of cordon sanitaire between the economic patronage networks and the traditional parties and He has never come to power.
Ahead, Petro and Márquez will also have enormous challenges to demonstrate to the country that, effectively, the measures they propose serve to sew deep wounds, such as inequality, racism or the consolidation of peace, and that the alternation of power is the way to go to the future.
Both inherit a Colombia that is seen as the second most unequal country in the region, only behind Brazil. About 40% of the population lives below the poverty line and more than 12% of Colombians are unemployed. In addition, labor informality is close to 50% in the country’s capitals and the majority of citizens feel great disaffection for the political class.
In terms of security, the comprehensive and effective implementation of the Peace Agreements between the Colombian State and the former FARC guerrilla in 2016 will be, in addition to a promise, an essential challenge to offer alternatives to thousands of families who have not seen their rights recognized or repaired during the mandate of the conservative Duke.
Colombia, 212 years under conservative mandates… until now
The victory of the left in Colombia represents a historic political turn in the Andean country, since until now, it has been a conservative oasis in Latin America.
Colombian society has historically been conservative and a victim of political violence, patronage networks and strong inequality, extremes that contributed to the fact that progressivism never reached the Presidency. In addition, the projects of the democratic left have been systematically associated with the guerrillas and even suffered a “genocide”, according to the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, in the most convulsive years of the armed conflict.
Apart from the great majority of the countries in the region, Colombia has remained a democratic republic since its independence in 1810 under the shadow of conservative governments. It never had a homologous version of the Cuban or Mexican Revolution, nor did it embrace the progressive “pink tide” of the early 20th century, led by then-Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.
But the trend began to change after the peace process and, later, with the social protests, which gave rise to a left that lived for many decades in the twilight of the political front line. The AmericasBarometer 2018, post Agreements, already reflected a shift towards the center-left, where 70% of the surveyed population was located then; something that has now been confirmed, since the candidates from traditional parties did not even make it through the cut in the first round.
The links of the left with the guerrilla
Among the tasks of the elected president, Gustavo Petro, will be convincing part of Colombia that his links with the extinct leftist guerrilla group M-19 were buried more than three decades ago.
Despite his performance in public life since the 1990s as mayor, congressman or senator of the Republic, there are still sectors of society that do not forgive the fact that Petro belonged to the armed structure and that he is now going to be the first authority in the country.
Petro’s condition as a former guerrilla has been, on a general scale, another burden for Colombian progressivism, which has been associated with the illegal armed groups that were formed on Colombian soil after the Cuban Revolution. Thus, many people consider that leftist politicians have been spokesmen for the guerrillas.
In this sense, the Peace Agreements with the FARC served as a turning point to dissociate both concepts, but this idea has not yet permeated all layers of society.
The left, victim of a political “genocide”
One of the most paradigmatic cases of why the proposals of the left have not previously prospered in Colombia has its roots in the Patriotic Union (UP), the formation that emerged in the mid-1980s after an agreement between the government of Belisario Betancur and the FARC.
In the following decade, the UP was almost completely exterminated at the hands of paramilitaries and other state agents. Both the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) and the National Center for Historical Memory classified what happened as a “genocide.” In fact, the JEP exposed in April what happened with the UP had left more than 5,700 victims: two presidential candidates, national and regional positions and part of the militancy.
On the other hand, in the last century other leftist candidates were also assassinated, such as the liberal Jorge Elícer Gaitán in 1948; Luis Carlos Galán in 1989 by order of the Medellín Cartel or former M-19 leader Carlos Pizarro in 1990.
Gustavo Petro, during the campaign for the first round at the end of May, also had to interrupt his public appearances after his team’s security scheme detected threats against the life of the now president-elect from a paramilitary group.
With the reinforcement of security by the State, the candidate resumed his events in public squares a few days later, but accompanied by escorts with armored vests and shields.
The importance of “nobodies”
At this turning point for the left in Colombia, the importance of “the nobody” has been essential to establish the victory of the Historical Pact.
“Nobodies” are, as Francia Márquez has argued, those people who have systematically been left out of government decisions and have had to survive on the fringes of society. Afro-Colombians, Palenqueras, Raizales, indigenous and other minorities equally abandoned by the State.
Thus, the triumph of progressivism on the margins, in the departments that are far from the centralism of Bogotá, has allowed the Andean country today to have its first leftist president.
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