Gustavo Petro – From Rebel to President of Colombia

Colombia's presidential election saw Gustavo Petro beat his opponent Rodolfo Hernandez by nearly 50% in Sunday’s runoff on June 19, 2022.

The results are historic for Colombia in many ways. President-elect Gustavo Petro has begun his political career in an anti-state armed militia and is the first left-wing president to come to power in the history of a country with strong ties to the United States.

Not to mention another episode in a series of political victories for the left in recent years, following the rise of left-wing presidents in Chile (2022), Honduras (2021), and Peru (2021).

Some 20 million people had voted across the country, and some 39 million voters were invited to vote on Sunday at 12,500 polling stations to choose between candidates opposed to the existing system.

Some 320,000 police and military personnel worked to maintain the security of the elections, which were conducted under the supervision of several international observers.

In recent days, the very converging outcome hypothesis has raised concerns and fears of possible abuses, as well as accusations of forgery.

The latest polls, published a week ago, revealed very close results among the finalists.

In the morning, outgoing Conservative President Ivan Duque voted near the presidential residence, marking the official start of the elections.

Petro, 62, led the first round of elections on May 29th with 40% of the vote, while Hernández, 77, won 28%, with 55%.

 

 

 

Early Life

In 1960, Petro was born in Ciénaga de Oro, Córdoba Department, to a farming family. He has Italian ancestry. In memory of his paternal and maternal grandparents, he was baptized Gustavo Francisco.

Petro, who was brought up in the Catholic faith, has said that liberation theology has given him a vision of God. In the 1970s, Petro's family made the decision to move to Zipaquirá, a more affluent interior town in Colombia, just north of Bogotá, in search of a better future.

Petro started the student journal Carta al Pueblo while a student at Colegio de Hermanos de La Salle (Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools).

Gustavo Petro entered political activity from an unusual gate, at the age of 17 he joined the Militia of the April 19 Movement, which took up arms against the state.

He accused the authority of falsifying the April 19, 1970, elections, which presidential candidate Gustavo Rojas lost.

Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, a military general who ruled the country after a military coup between 1953 and 1957, returned and ran for president after founding the National People's Front party to run for president in 1970 in front of Conservative candidate Misael Pastrana Borrero.

 

 

 

Development of Action

The movement, in which President Gustavo Petro was active, embraced nationalist ideology and believed that its struggle was aimed at democratization in Colombia; during the 1970s and 1980s, it was considered the second largest armed movement in the country after the left-wing FARC movement.

Gustavo Petro continued to organize the April 19 movement for 10 years, and was arrested by Colombian authorities, and spent a year in prison, where he said he had been tortured during this period.

Since 1991, the Movement has therefore participated in parliamentary elections after talks and negotiations with the Colombian Government, and officially entered the Colombian Parliament in the same year, suspending its armed activity (except for some of its small groups and subsequently defecting from it) and limited to political activity only.

Perhaps the most important armed operation associated with the "April 19" movement was the break-in of the Palace of Justice, which houses the headquarters of the Supreme Court.

35 militants from the movement in 1985 detained Supreme Court judges, lawyers, and other workers of the building, and demanded that President Belisario Betancur be brought to trial in exchange for the release of the hostages.

After the failure of negotiations between the Government and the abductees, the military intervened to end the kidnapping, but the building was burned down and more than 100 people, including 11 Supreme Court judges, were killed during the events; He is involved in that armed currency by virtue of the fact that he was in prison at that time.

 

Future Agenda

The new Colombian President studied economics, received a master's degree from the Pontifical Xavierian University in Colombia, then continued his studies in economics and human rights in Belgium, then Spain.

In 2002, Gustavo Petro won the parliamentary elections to become a member of the Colombian parliament for a small party of the April 19 dissident group, and later ran in the Senate elections and won membership in 2006.

During his parliamentary term, he strongly criticized a group of faces close to the Colombian Government for their links to armed groups, which caused him to receive death threats.

He also ran for president in 2010 but came in fourth with 9% of the vote, then ran for governor of the capital, Bugata, in 2012 and won the post, but in 2018 he ran again for president, reaching the second round, but lost to his rival, former President Ivan Duque.

Promoting green energy over fossil fuels and reducing economic inequality were among Petro's campaign platforms.

Ending Colombia's fossil fuel development will help him focus on combating climate change and lowering the greenhouse gas emissions that are its main cause.

In addition, he promised to increase taxes on the top 4,000 Colombian earners and declared that neoliberalism would ultimately "destroy the country."

Additionally, Petro stated that he would be open to having Colombian president Ivan Duque tried for using excessive force against protestors in 2021.

In addition, he pledged to create the ministry of equality. Petro chose Afro-Colombian environmental and human rights activist and Goldman Environmental Prize winner Francia Márquez to be his running mate after winning Goldman Environmental Prize.