Gustavo Petro
The 62-year-old Gustavo Petro had been a non-combatant member of the M-19 rebel group, for which he was briefly jailed and allegedly tortured. The group became notorious for taking the country’s top judges hostage in a confrontation that killed almost 100 people in 1985.
He has sought to dispel accusations that his government will favour former rebels and that he will institute policies that have caused a social and economic crisis in neighbouring Venezuela. He has pledged low-cost loans for small businesses and redistribution of pensions to ensure casual workers receive a minimum payment.
The former congressman has also said he wants to increase taxes on owners of large tracts of unproductive land and start weaning Colombia off income from oil and coal, which he has described as poisons comparable to cocaine. In that vein, he has said he wants to shift Colombia’s relationship with the United States away from anti-narcotics policies and towards the fight against climate change.
Former guerrilla and later diplomat, Gustavo Petro was born in Cienaga de Oro, Córdoba, Colombia, in 1960. He was formed in Catholicism through the Liberation Theology. As a teenager Gustavo Petro joined the guerilla organisation M-19, which had its stronghold in the city of Zipaquirá. Not for nothing many call him “Petrosky”. In 1981, aged of 21, Petro served as a spokesman for the city of Zipaquirá and later, between 1984 and 1986, was an independent councillor for the city.
During his 10 years with the guerrillas, Petro contributed to the construction of a neighborhood in Zipaquirá, where he lived for two years with the poorest of families. With them he built homes and led the installation of public services through communal construction in what was known as the Bolivar 83 district.
Owing to the growing strength of the popular movement in Zipaquirá, led by the young Petro, his persecution was inevitable – despite M-19 by then being a legal party. In October 1985 the neighbourhood was the victim of brutal military repression. Petro was arrested under a siege decree that took away his freedom and human rights enshrined under the Constitution of 1886. Petro was in custody for almost two years on the say-so of a Republican general.
For many, Petro remains simply an ex-guerrilla. “Although he has stated that he never killed anyone and that he did not exercise violence, a sector of the population still takes its toll on him for his past,” he told TN Colombian political analyst Paola Montilla.
He is a graduate in economics from the Externado University of Colombia. He specialised in public administration at the School of Public Administration ESAP and gained an MA in economics at Javeriana University. He later studied Environment and Population Development at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium, and afterwards was awarded a PhD in New Trends in Business Administration by Salamanca University, Spain.
From 1990 to 1991 Gustavo Petro was adviser to the provincial government of Cundinamarca and later in that decade served as a diplomatic attaché at the Colombian Embassy in Belgium. Petro has been successful in several legislative elections - including the office of senator, on behalf of the Alternative Democratic Pole (ADP), in 2006. In 2009 he resigned his seat to run for the presidency of Colombia in the 2010 elections as candidate for the ADP. After achieving a credible fourth place in the elections, Petro left the party and on 30 October 2011 was elected Mayor of Bogota on behalf of the Progressive Movement for a three-year term, starting 1 January 2012.
The election of former guerrilla Gustavo Petro as Bogotá mayor has raised hopes among Colombians that 50 years of civil war might be coming to an end. Petro, who assumed his new post on 1 January 2012, fought as a young man with the now defunct leftist M-19 rebel movement and later, as Colombian senator, became the most outspoken opponent of right-wing president Alvaro Uribe. Gustavo Petro’s hefty plurality in the Bogotá mayoral race represented a stunning victory for Colombia's democratic process and a severe setback for US Latin American policies promoted by presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama.
The victory of Gustavo Petro in Colombia’s presidential election continued a leftward swing in Latin America – and was quickly praised by left-wing leaders across the region and the world. The former rebel won 50.4 percent of the votes on Sunday, narrowly defeating populist business magnate Rodolfo Hernandez in the runoff election. Among his campaign promises, Petro pledged to address profound social and economic inequality in traditionally conservative Colombia, where successive governments have focused primarily on addressing insecurity and violence linked to the country’s nearly six-decade-long armed conflict.
Argentina’s President Alberto Fernandez, who took office in 2019 after running on a left-leaning platform, tweeted that Petro’s victory “validates democracy and ensures the path towards an integrated Latin America in this time when we demand maximum solidarity amongst brother peoples”. The feeling of the fraternity was echoed by several other leaders in the region. Argentina, Peru, Chile, Mexico, Bolivia and Honduras have all moved to the left in their last elections, although some observers have argued the shift is rooted more in populism than ideology. Peru’s Pedro Castillo, a rural school teacher and trade unionist who took office in 2021 and has been dogged by a legislature dominated by the right-wing opposition, said he looked forward to working with an ally.
Chile President Gabriel Boric, who was elected earlier this year to replace conservative Sebastian Pinera, called Petro’s win a “joy for Latin America”. “We will work together for the unity of our continent in the challenges of a world changing rapidly,” he tweeted. Meanwhile, Bolivia’s Luis Arce, a member of the Movement of Socialists party who took office in 2020, said “Latin American integration is strengthened”.
For his part, Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Petro’s success could herald a healing period in the country. He referenced the 10-year Colombian civil war that broke out following the assassination of left-wing presidential candidate Jorge Eliecer Gaitan in 1948.
The conflict was a precursor to the six-decade-long conflict between the government and left-wing rebel groups, most notably the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) which signed a peace deal with Bogota in 2016. “Today’s triumph can be the end of this curse and the awakening for this brotherly and dignified people,” said Lopez Obrador.
Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, who had fraught relations with outgoing Colombian President Ivan Duque over the latter’s support of Venezuelan opposition figure Juan Guaido and his accusations that the Venezuelan military was collaborating with Colombian rebel groups, welcomed Petro’s victory. “The will of the Colombian people has been heard, it went out to defend the path to democracy and peace,” said Maduro.
The praise extended across the Atlantic Ocean, with the United Kingdom’s Labour Party legislator and former opposition leader, Jeremy Corbyn, tweeting in Spanish: “Congratulations Mr. President, socialist!”.
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