With ex-guerrilla Gustavo Petro, Colombia is getting its first left-wing president. It could usher in the next chapter of a political renaissance in Latin America. But the continent is caught between extremes.
A former guerrilla fighter moves into the presidential palace. It is a historic change of direction – a leftist has never won the presidential elections in otherwise conservative Colombia. Gustavo Petro, former mayor of the capital Bogotá, won 50.5 percent of the votes by a hair’s breadth over his multi-million dollar, right-wing rival Rodolfo Hernández. After the candidacies in 2010 and 2018, it was Petro’s third attempt.
At his side, Vice-President-elect Francia Márquez, an Afro-Colombian human rights activist and environmentalist, will take over as head of state. She fought illegal gold prospecting in the Cauca region, which was particularly hard hit by the violence, and had to fear for her life several times.
For some, the victory of 62-year-old Petro means hope. They see him as a fighter against widespread corruption and massive social inequality in South America’s second most populous country. The others, especially those who have held the reins in their hands so far, fear the socialist upheaval and catastrophic consequences for the economy. Petro’s success could be the next wave of a rising pink tidebe washed across a deeply divided continent.
Gustavo Petro: the president who once hoarded illegal weapons
Long before Petro became a force to be reckoned with on the political scene, he made his name as a member of the city’s M-19 guerrilla force, according to The New York Times. The association was formed in 1970 in response to the allegedly rigged presidential elections. “The M-19 was established by force of arms to build a democracy,” Petro said in an interview with the US newspaper. However, the group was far less important than the Marxist FARC, which operated from the depths of the Colombian jungle.
In her early days, she tried to build up a kind of “Robin Hood image” by stealing groceries. However, M-19 caught real attention when she stole the sword of independence fighter Simón Bolívar from a museum in 1974 – a symbolic act of rebellion. Things turned bloody in 1985 when the group, which until then had been considered moderate, exchanged gunfire with the police and the military during the siege of the Colombian courthouse. 94 people died in the fighting. Five years later, after a peace agreement, the guerrilla movement finally turned into a regular party. It was only as such that she actually succeeded in exerting political influence.
And Gustavo Petro? He joined the M-19 at the age of 17 and spent around ten years in their ranks. During this time, Sandra Borda, a professor of political science at the University of the Andes in Bogotá, told the New York Times that he hoarded stolen weapons for her. That’s exactly why he was behind bars when the bloody battles broke out in 1985. According to his own statements, he was tortured by the authorities in prison. Political scientist Borda is certain that what will soon be the most powerful man in the country was never one of the rebels’ decision-makers.
Petro sees himself as ‘part of a politics of life’
“Today is a day of joy for the people,” Petro wrote on Twitter after the polls closed on Sunday. It was “a victory for God and for the people”. In his election campaign, which focused primarily on social media, especially Tiktok, Petro succeeded in winning over the younger generation in particular. According to the Spanish daily “El País”, they see a real leader in the 62-year-old. The hope that he can unite the country, which has been eaten up by drug trafficking, corruption and acts of political violence, is immense.
Petro’s ambitions are apparently in no way inferior: he wants to fight rampant social inequality, offer free university education, push through pension reforms, put an end to corruption, promote tourism, slow down the exploitation of raw materials and tax companies more heavily. According to the BBC, the ex-guerrilla has also made it his mission to fully implement the shaky peace with the FARC, which was concluded in 2016 after more than 50 years of bloody fighting. After all, despite his paramilitary past, he himself was never a violent man. “I have never shot anyone, ever. Maybe I would have been devoured by the violence,” Petro recently said, according to “El País”.
He doesn’t see himself as part of a left-wing ideological current, and “no longer divides politics into left and right, as was the case in the 20th century,” Petro told the newspaper a few months ago. Instead, there are two major areas: “the politics of life and the politics of death.” Rather, Petro counts on a “politics of life”.
The pink tide
Whichever corner or non-corner Petro may be in, he could be a symptom or at least a harbinger of a renaissance in left-wing politics.
At the beginning of the millennium, Latin America had experienced a “pink tide” (the color of parties to the left of the political center), with left-wing candidates coming to power in many states. In the mid-2010s, however, the success waned again, and conservative forces recaptured key states such as Brazil, Argentina and Chile.
Petro’s victory in Colombia, writes the US news website World Politics Review, reinforces the impression of a gradual revival of power on the left. Whether in Argentina in 2019, in Bolivia in 2020, in Peru in 2021 or more recently in Chile and Honduras: in recent years leftists have won elections across the continent. But right-wing populist rulers like Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil continue to act as a rock against the surf of the left.
However, left and right have one thing in common here: as a rule, they promise a lot and deliver little. The favorite topic of both situations: the fight against corruption. Venezuela, as the last remnant of the glory days of South American socialism, cuts a particularly bad figure. The political and economic situation escalated under Nicolas Maduro. The country is suffering from extreme supply shortages and hyperinflation, millions have already fled. Maduro’s US-backed counterpart, Juan Guaidó, has not managed to unite the country and lead it out of the crisis even after four years.
Hope for bilateral relations: same spirit, different priorities
Should Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva succeed Bolsonaro in the fall in Brazil, the five most powerful Latin American heads of government (those of Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia and Chile) would basically share the same ideological waters. According to an article in the US magazine Americas Quarterly, this could be an opportunity for constructive bilateral relations. Above all, the economically precarious consequences of the corona pandemic should make it difficult for the supposedly like-minded people to find enough time for joint foreign policy highlights. Whether soon under Lula in Brazil or now under Petro in Colombia, left-wing governments will focus much of their attention on domestic politics. Because there is enough to do.
Another mood killer among left-wing heads of state, according to Americas Quarterly, is the ever-declining trade among themselves. Be it between Argentina and Brazil or between Chile and Uruguay – interregional exports have suffered massively in recent years. The common denominator: China. Because many Latin Americans no longer see their economic future in trading with each other, but in doing business with the Far East.
For the time being, things will remain the same: the continent is divided, destroyed by the drug trade, eaten away by corruption and suffering from ongoing power struggles. There are no real solutions on either the left or the right – rather, one camp benefits from the failure of the other. Latin America is “more polarized than it has been since the military dictatorships and civil wars of the 1970s and 1980s,” the magazine “Internationale Politik und Gesellschaft” (IPG) described the situation last year. The political center doesn’t stand a chance, it’s being crushed between the extremes, and the Christian and Social Democrats, who are perceived as shapeless, are simply being lost in the media. They are only important as “kingmakers” in the parliaments.
Young voters in particular are politically disoriented, which in turn makes them susceptible to left-wing and right-wing autocrats. In the end, it is primarily democracy that suffers. According to a survey, one in four Latin Americans thinks autocracy is the better form of government, IPG reported. The reason: They tend to trust autocrats like Bolsonaro to be able to really do something against corruption. Now it’s up to candidates like Gustavo Petro to convince them otherwise.
Sources: “New York Times“; BBC; “El País“; “World Politics Review“; “International politics and society“; “Americas Quarterly“; dpa