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BOGOTA, Colombia – For more than two centuries, Colombia was considered an unconditional conservative in Latin America. Although left-wing governments came and went in the region, a center-right political establishment maintained control, a continuation that consolidated the country’s role as a key ally of the United States.
Sunday night everything changed.
Gustavo Petro, a senator and former guerrilla, was elected the country’s first left-wing president, galvanizing millions of poor, young Colombians and desperate fighters for someone different.
His victory, unthinkable just a generation ago, was the most striking example to date of how the pandemic has transformed Latin American politics. The pandemic affected the economies of this region more severely than almost anywhere else in the world. expelling 12 million middle-class people in a single year. Across the continent, voters have punished those in power for not raising them out of his misery. And the winner has been the Latin American left, a diverse movement of leaders that could now play a leading role in the hemisphere.
Gustavo Petro, a former rebel who pledged to transform an unequal society, was elected Colombia’s first left-wing president on June 19. (Video: Reuters)
“Election after election, the right is trying to scare people into thinking that the communist monster is coming,” said Alberto Vergara, a political scientist at the University of the Pacific in Peru. “And election after election, he has lost.”
It happened in Peru, where voters chose the Marxist master Pedro Castillo last year. He moved to Chile, the region’s free market model, where former student activist Gabriel Boric, 36, brought the left back to power.
And now it has moved to Colombia, a country where the left has long been associated with guerrilla movements for decades of bloody internal conflict. Left-wing candidates who dared run for office in the past were often killed. This time, the candidate chosen by the Conservative establishment did not even reach the second round after his message about the dangers of a Petro presidency fell flat.
Gustavo Petro, a former guerrilla, will be the first left-wing president in Colombia
All eyes are now on Brazil, the largest country in Latin America, where former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is leading the polls to oust President Jair Bolsonaro in October. A victory for Lula would mean all the largest countries in the region, including Mexico and Argentina, are led by left-wing presidents. From Bogota to Santiago, many voters no longer accept the argument that a turn to the left will mean a government led by Hugo Chávez or Fidel Castro.
And that’s partly because current left-wing leaders look and sound very different from the past, at least in the case of Peter and Boric. Instead of building an oil-rich economy, the basis of the ruinous socialist revolution of neighboring Venezuela, they seek to build a unified front against climate change. They have tried to get away from it masculinity from earlier leftist eras, gaining power promising to protect the rights of women, LGBTQ people, and Afro-indigenous communities. And they are backed by a young, politically committed electorate that has taken to the streets in large numbers in recent years to protest inequality.
Her success also reflects a social transformation in a predominantly Catholic region, where feminist movements have spurred Colombia, Argentina, and Mexico to decriminalize abortion. Some countries follow Colombia’s example in advancing euthanasia rights, and Chile last year recognized same-sex marriage.
Petro said in an interview with The Washington Post earlier this year that he envisions a progressive alliance with Chile and Brazil. If Lula wins and Petro succeeds, this coalition could be a powerful force in the hemisphere, and could leave the United States on the sidelines.
“This may be just one of those times when Latin America is taking the lead,” said Bernard Aronson, who served as America’s top diplomat for Latin America under Presidents George HW Bush and Bill Clinton. Aronson, who was also sent as a special envoy to the Colombian peace process, described Petro’s victory as “a kind of earthquake in Colombia”.
On Sunday night, Petro called for a “dialogue in the Americas without exclusions … with all the diversity that is America,” a clear reference to the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles earlier this month. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador skipped the summit after President Biden refused to invite three authoritarian countries: Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. While Boric attended, he also criticized Biden, telling The Post that the United States is losing opportunities to advance its democratic goals for Latin America by refusing to compromise with its opponents.
In a show of how this vision has been accepted in the region, both Petro and his rival in the last round of the Colombian elections, the construction magnate Rodolfo Hernández, supported the normalization of relations with Venezuela, a country long invoked by the right as a warning. story about the dangers of left-wing government.
Former guerrilla presidential candidate for Colombia expects new Latin American left
In his acceptance speech, Petro said his foreign policy would put Colombia at the forefront of the global fight against climate change. He said it was time to meet with the United States and talk about its greenhouse gas emissions, which are being absorbed by “one of the largest sponges,” the Amazon rainforest in Latin America.
“If they broadcast there and we absorb it here, why don’t we talk?” said Petro to a crowded field in Bogota. “Why can’t we find another way to understand each other?”
With the United States concerned about Ukraine, Iran and North Korea, it could see its influence continue to wane in Latin America, said Cynthia J. Arnson, a distinguished partner and former director of the DC-based Wilson Center Latin America Program.
“The United States is less and less part of the conversation,” Arnson said.
The United States has long seen relations with the region through a lens of competition with Russia and China, said Adam Isacson of the Washington Office for Latin America.
“If they have this Cold War 2.0 view of the competition from the region’s great powers,” Isacson said, “they have just lost control of their key.”
The United States has sent billions of dollars in aid to Colombia over the years, much of it to fight transnational crime and drug trafficking. Some worry that a Petro presidency could strain this long-running partnership.
Petro argues that anti-narcotics policies have been a failure in recent decades and that air eradication of coca has done nothing to reduce the flow of cocaine into the United States. He has promised to focus on crop replacement. He also suggested changing the extradition treaty and the foreign trade agreement between the two countries.
But in his acceptance speech, Petro made no comment suggesting that he would take a hostile approach to the United States, and experts doubt he would.
The United States has a history of successful relations with some left-wing presidents in South America, such as Uruguayan José Mujica and Brazilian Lula, Aronson said. But “very few countries in the world have enjoyed the enduring bipartisan relationship that Colombia has built with the United States.” If Petro is wise, he added “he will try to preserve it.”
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken quickly congratulated Petro on Sunday night, while Brian Nichols, undersecretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs, said Monday in a radio interview that The Biden administration has “many points in agreement with the left-wing government coming to Colombia”, including a shared commitment to tackling climate change.
Petro critics fear that its ambitious plans, including its redistributive policies and its proposal to ban new oil exploration, could ruin Colombia’s economy. Others are concerned about their willingness to work around democratic institutions to drive their agenda; has proposed a state of economic emergency to fight hunger.
Like many populist presidents before him, Petro’s biggest challenge will be to deliver on his promises to the poor, especially with a divided legislature. Almost half of Colombians suffer from some form of poverty and struggle to find enough to eat.
Among them is 22-year-old student Erika Andrea Nuñez, who can barely afford her tuition for daycare classes. While living with his partner and 2-year-old daughter in a working-class neighborhood of Bogota, he often stays with his parents to reduce food costs.
He does not consider himself a supporter of Petro, but has chosen to vote for him for “what he says he will do for young people,” especially for his proposal for a free universal higher education.
“I don’t know if he really will,” he said. “But he’s the only one who made me give him a chance. … I hope he at least does something different.”
Diana Durán contributes to this report.