Far-left socialist candidate Gustavo Petro, a former member of the M19 Marxist guerrilla, won the first round of Colombia’s presidential election on Sunday.
Petro, who ran against incumbent President Iván Duque in 2018 and lost, was long considered the frontrunner in the 2022 election. Authorities announced that he had received slightly more than 40 percent of the vote as of Sunday night, winning the election. As Petro did not secure over 50 percent of the vote, he would have to head to a runoff election against the second-place candidate, scheduled for June 19.
The surprise race for the second spot in the runoff resulted in the unexpected victory of 77-year-old “outsider” construction professional and former mayor of Bucaramanga Rodolfo Hernández, who began a sudden surge in the polls last week that appeared to indicate it would not be enough for him to defeat center-right establishment candidate Federico “Fico” Gutiérrez. Gutiérrez’s anemic campaign – particularly in contrast to Hernández’s bombastic anti-establishment and anti-corruption rhetoric — failed to galvanize enough voters, however, and Hernández sailed into the runoff election with 28 percent of the vote. Gutiérrez received about 24 percent of the vote.
A supporter of Historical Pact coalition presidential candidate Gustavo Petro, holds a flag with the image of Petro before a closing campaign rally in Zipaquira, Colombia, Sunday, May 22, 2022. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)
Colombia’s modern political history has been that of a conservative nation, failing to elect far-left presidents while fighting decades of terrorism at the hands of some of the world’s deadliest Marxist terrorist organizations, among them the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the National Liberation Army (ELN), and smaller groups like M19. The profile of the right-wing coalition led by former conservative President Álvaro Uribe suffered some cracks when his successor and former Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos implemented an unpopular peace deal with the FARC in 2016, prompting a surge in violence and drug crime. By the end of Santos’ term, Duque, a Santos administration alum, won the election running against the ideas of his former boss — and against the unpopular Petro.
A woman walks near propaganda of Colombian presidential candidate for the Equipo Colombia coalition, Federico Gutierrez, in Cali, Colombia, on May 24, 2022. (RAUL ARBOLEDA/AFP via Getty Images)
Duque went on to become the least popular president in Colombian history at the height of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, opening the door to both Petro and anyone running against the establishment’s conservative choice — in this case, Hernández.
A Petro win would be the first time in modern history the far-left take over the Colombian presidency.
Petro used his victory speech on Sunday to declare the powerful conservative coalition that Duque, Gutiérrez, Santos, and Uribe all have ties to “defeated” and eradicated from Colombia.
“A period has ended. An era has ended. It ended, poorly in the middle of cheating, but it ended,” Petro claimed, apparently accusing the Gutiérrez campaign of illicit behavior. He did not elaborate. Instead, he continued his remarks by calling his own position “a change forward, constructive, a change that will allow us to have a new and much more prosperous era with much more wellbeing.”
“Today we define what kind of change we want: suicide or advancement,” he proclaimed.
Petro then went on to attack Hernández.
“You don’t fight corruption posting on Tiktok, despite some very respectable people thinking so,” Petro said. “You fight corruption risking your life because we are facing a corrupt regime. We have risked our lives to struggle against corruption.”
Petro risked his life as a young man by joining M19, a guerrilla responsible for a string of terrorist attacks in the 1970s and 1980s including attacks on villages with bombs and grenades, mass abductions, the seizure of the Dominican embassy, and the theft of the sword of Simón Bolívar, the founder of Colombia and several other South American states.
Petro has openly celebrated his membership in the terrorist group, though he has claimed to be only an “insurgent” and not involved in violent activity. In an interview with Reuters in 2018, Petro admitted to joining the group after being radicalized by the removal of socialist leader Salvador Allende from power in neighboring Chile in 1973.
“Inspired as a child by political biographies, Petro reportedly raised the ire of his Catholic teachers by reading books by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,” Reuters reported at the time. “Although never a combatant, Petro’s years in the now-defunct M19 rebel group — which stormed the Supreme Court in 1985, leading to the deaths of more than 100 people — have created fodder for critics.”
“Twenty-first century politics is between the politics of life and the politics of death,” Petro told Reuters. “I represent the politics of life.”
In his own book, Petro said he was “enchanted” by the M19 manifesto and claimed that the group was “completely different from the ELN, FARC, the Communist Party, or the diverse array of university leftist groups, who embraced dialogue with Soviet, Cuban, or Chinese models.” He referred to M19 as “nationalist” and described his role in the group as “reading M19 documents, discussing, and beginning to plan simply, practical activities like painting a logo, leaving some M19 materials clandestinely in some bathroom, some classroom, some corner of the city.”
Petro has previously described himself as a “clandestine militant” of the M19 guerrilla.
Petro meddled in the 2020 American presidential election, stating that he would “vote for Biden without the least bit of doubt” and claiming the campaign of President Donald Trump was “full of distinguished Uribe supporters.”
Unlike Petro, who spent much of his speech on Hernández, the surprise challenger did not change his rhetoric against the “establishment” and “the same people who have led us to this painful situation we are in.”
“Today, what has won is the firm will of citizens to end corruption as a system of government. Today, the country of politicking and corruption lost,” Hernández said.
Also unlike Petro (or Gutiérrez), Hernández does not fit neatly into any political ideology. He is not a conservative or right-wing choice and his promises largely center around eradicating corruption on all parts of the political spectrum. His most similar policy proposals to Petro involve Venezuela. Petro has openly praised the disastrous socialist regime in Venezuela and its patron communist regime in Cuba, calling Hugo Chávez “a great Latin American leader.” Hernández, in turn, has promised to reestablish diplomatic relations with Venezuela on his first day in office.
Hernández has stated that diplomatic relations with Venezuela, ended as a result of consistent threats from the regime of socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro to attack Colombia, are necessary because too many Colombian citizens travel across the border and need the support of the government.
“Consular relations have to be activated on the very day [I am elected] because the people paying the consequences of these political battles are the 3 million Colombians who live in Venezuela,” Hernández said this weekend, adding that those on the other side of the border use “180 roads” to get into Colombia illegally anyway.
“That [closing the Colombia-Venezuela border] is like trying to tie up a cat with sausages, it’s useless,” he added.