The left-wing candidate is running for the presidency of Colombia for the third time and, on this occasion, he is the favorite to win according to all the polls. His life has been linked to politics since his youth, first with militancy in the extinct M-19 guerrilla and later because of his work in Congress for decades. Petro heads a coalition that seeks to break with the conservative majorities that have traditionally dominated the Andean country.
All eyes are on him. Opting for the Presidency is not a new experience for Gustavo Petro, but this time he starts as the favorite. A circumstance that is not accidental, and even less considering the conservative tradition of Colombia. A nation in which the left has never governed and which is now on the verge of being able to make a historic turn.
And Peter knows it. That is why he baptized his coalition as the ‘Historic Pact’ and forged a series of alliances with different political actors in Colombian society. Some emerging and historically forgotten by an extremely centralist country, but others pigeonholed in the political establishment for years. The heterogeneity of Gustavo Petro’s formation is surprising, but he has the objective of reaching the Presidency by adding forces that are willing to change.
The figure of Petro is probably one of the most recognized in Colombian politics. His work in Congress over the last few decades has made him a benchmark for the left thanks to his investigations into paramilitarism and its links to politics, although he is also highly rejected by his opponents, who consider him a threat.
The origins of a young man who breathed militancy
Gustavo Petro was born 62 years ago in Ciénaga de Oro, a small town in the Colombian Caribbean far from any center of power. Petro always alludes to his origins, although most of his life has been spent near Bogotá. When he was just a few months old, his family moved to Zipaquirá, a cold city where life is very different from that of the Caribbean.
It is said that the young Gustavo Petro became politically aware from his earliest years. The annual trips he made with his family to his hometown helped him understand two very different worldviews, the Andean and the Caribbean. Petro has always felt more comfortable representing himself as part of the latter, the one far from the elite that has dominated Colombia for decades. That elite that he has reneged on so many times.
The leftist candidate comes from the middle class of the country and had the opportunity to access higher education during his youth. But, although he did not go through hardships during his life, he was well aware that, around him, there were millions of Colombians who did. His political activism began in this way, as a fight against the inequalities that plague a deeply classist nation. Something that led him directly into politics. First as an independent councilor in Zipaquirá, later as a clandestine part of the former M-19 guerrilla.
The militancy in this guerrilla during his youth is one of the things that his opponents criticize the most. The M-19 was a guerrilla that is known in Colombia for acts such as the taking of the Palace of Justice in 1985, although the character it had during most of its existence was different from that of other armed groups such as the FARC. The M-19 had a fundamentally urban and student development rather than a military one, and in it Gustavo Petro was never part of armed actions. His strong point was always oratory and political speeches. Something that would begin to explode with the demobilization of the guerrillas.
The peace that led him to politics
Petro adhered to the peace agreements between the M-19 and the Government in 1990. This signing would mark the beginning of his long political career at the national level. In 1991, he was elected representative of the Chamber for Alianza M-19, a movement formed by former members of the extinct guerrilla and militants of leftist parties.
His political stage took him away from hiding, but never from the fear of being assassinated for his ideology. The left in Colombia was persecuted for years by paramilitary groups and state forces. Petro saw his life in danger on numerous occasions and witnessed the murder of several people from his closest environment. After his first contact with national politics he was not re-elected in 1994, although he was able to return as a House Representative in 1998 through the Vía Alterna Movement.
This new stage was the one that began to make the name of Gustavo Petro resonate in the corridors of the Colombian Congress. His facility for oratory in the media, together with the accusations against different corruption, made people begin to recognize the young politician. Among the first cases that he was able to investigate is the improper use of the Rural Development Budget, although what brought him to fame were his denunciations against the links between Colombian politics and paramilitarism.
The end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s saw how these armed groups experienced their greatest boom, in some cases with the approval of state power. Gustavo Petro was able to demonstrate as a representative and later as a senator the relations that many regional and national politicians had with paramilitarism, especially during the government of Álvaro Uribe Vélez. In fact, he came to defend that the former president supported these armed groups and that he had allowed murders even on land owned by him.
His investigations against politicians from the Atlantic coast landed some of them in jail and his direct confrontation with former President Uribe raised his popularity to the point of being the third elected senator with the highest number of votes in the entire country in 2006, during his militancy in the Polo Democrático party.
Presidential campaigns and mayoralty of Bogotá
This wave of support made Gustavo Petro run for the Presidency for the first time in 2010. His expectations were very high after his recognized work in Congress against a part of what he considered the political establishment, however, he failed in the He tried. Petro obtained an irrelevant fourth place in the first round of the elections, a position that distanced him from being able to dispute power with Uribismo.
The result was greatly influenced by internal divisions in his own party and the lack of support for his candidacy. But Petro managed to recompose himself denouncing corruption in members of his own organization. This act sank the Polo Democrático, but raised it as an implacable figure in the face of corruption for an important part of the electorate. This is how, through a completely new formation, Bogotá Humana, he decided to run for mayor of the country’s capital in 2011 and surprisingly he succeeded.
His time at the head of the mayor’s office, the second most important position in the country, was extraordinarily controversial. His rivals accuse him of not completing most of the projects and his defenders assure that they did not let him govern. During his time, he was even dismissed by the Attorney General’s Office when he tried to change the garbage collection scheme. A case that the then mayor took to international justice, where he finally won and was reinstated in his position.
His power in Bogotá was evident thanks to the support he received during those years, something that made him run for the Presidency under the Human Colombia project. Petro launched this candidacy as the undisputed leader of the Colombian left and received broad support from an electorate increasingly divided between uribismo and anti-uribismo. In this dichotomy, Petro represented the clear struggle against the power established since 2002 by former President Álvaro Uribe and, later, by his party, the Democratic Center.
In the 2018 elections Gustavo Petro achieved the feat of going to the second round against the Democratic Center candidate Iván Duque. The political contest finally opted for the rightist option, but laid a solid base that consecrated Petro as the alternative to the ruling party. A situation favored by the controversial management of the Duque Executive, which has encouraged the desire for change in an important part of the electorate.
An alternative that is not without controversy
Gustavo Petro’s profile is one of the most polarized on the political scene in Colombia, along with that of former President Álvaro Uribe. The love expressed by an important part of his followers in the face of what they believe is a hope for change, contrasts with the hatred distilled by a sector of voters who consider him “extremist” and a “danger” for Colombia. Most of the criticism comes from sectors opposed to his figure and political tendency, although there have also been controversies from sectors on the left.
Some of his opponents see in his political project something to fear. Comparisons with Venezuela are constant from the ideological sector of the right. The fear of what happened in the neighboring country is evident in Colombia and this argument was the main throwing weapon launched from the conservative sector in 2018. A thesis that for its supporters is a right-wing mantra to appeal to fear in Colombian society, but that it worked and made the candidacy of Iván Duque the most voted.
But the truth is that its current project of the Historical Pact is a very transversal option in the ideological arc, with members that go from the left to the center-right. From the “nobodies”, forgotten by the Colombian state for decades, to figures rooted in the country’s political establishment. An issue that has also raised controversy among sectors of the left.
For months, it has been seen how politicians who had previously opted to represent right-wing parties, have changed their support towards Petro. Although perhaps the most controversial support is that of the evangelical pastor Alfredo Saade, a person who on previous occasions had defended conservative parties and had aligned himself with positions contrary to abortion, euthanasia or equal marriage.
Petro’s other great controversy is around his position regarding feminism. Some sectors that were part of the Historical Pact criticized the positions of the leftist candidate when it came to including a feminist agenda in her program or giving more prominence to women in the closed lists. Although the vice-presidential candidacy of Francia Márquez, with whom she has had more than one dispute previously, has smoothed out the rough edges previously launched.
Controversies aside, what seems clear is that Gustavo Petro and his project face the final stretch of what seems to be the last chance for the leftist candidate. At 62 years old, he faces his third presidential race with a favorable social context that calls for changes, in a country fed up with the establishment of the last 20 years, poverty, insecurity and the weakening of the Peace Agreements. It remains to be seen if his commitment and political trajectory will finally give him the key to the presidency of one of the most conservative countries in Latin America.
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