In a history-making election, Gustavo Petro, former member of M19, the oldest and largest guerrilla group has been elected President of Colombia, Latin America’s third most populous country. The election of Francia Marquez, a single mother, former housekeeper and human rights activist as Vice President is nothing short of a political earthquake for Colombia. She is only the second black female Vice-President in Latin America. Costa Rica’s Epsy Campbell is Latin America’s first AfroLatina vice president. Colombia had so far bucked the trend of the so-called “Pink Tide” sweeping a large number of Latin American countries or what former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez aptly described as “twenty-first century socialism.”

Colombia could very well have been the first country to elect a leftist president way back in 1948 as Jorge Gaitan, a charismatic leader of the Liberal Party and movement leader was leading the presidential race, but he was assassinated. Gaitan had steered Colombia towards socialism. But his assassination changed the course of history of the South American nation and of the Latin American and Caribbean region. In his book Living to Tell the Tale, Garcia Marquez has written about Gaitan’s murder at length. Marquez happened to be having lunch only blocks away at the time of the murder.

Advertisement

The political assassination not only cut short Gaitan’s political journey, it prevented Gaitan from meeting young Fidel Castro who had an appointment with him later that day. Castro was to discuss his planned youth conference in Bogota with him. Gaitan’s murder led to what came to be known as “Bogotazo” (shake up of Bogota). Bogotazo marked the violent beginning of a long and brutal period in the country’s history known as “La Violencia,” a largely rural conflict between supporters of the Conservative and Liberal parties. The guerrilla war ravaged Colombia for six decades.

It made nearly 20 per cent of people a direct victim of war. Calling its ideology “Socialism Colombian Style,” the M19 emerged from deep-rooted social dynamics and projected a nationalist, Bolivarian, anti-imperialist and anti-oligarchic model. The results of the 19 June presidential run-off could have gone either way as the narrow margin of Petro’s victory over populist real estate magnet-turned politician Rodolfo Hernandez suggests. Petro was in fact expecting sections of undecided voters to vote against him. Hence, he meticulously mobilised his hardcore supporters to go to polling stations in large numbers in a do-or-die situation. And that strategy worked.

The voter turnout rose significantly across the board. Francia Marquez’s candidacy also helped to galvanise the Afro-Colombians and other marginalised sections of people. Petro’s victory suggests that the familiar tactics of left-bashing, fear mongering and demonisation of the left no more works. Colombians had enough of such politics. As an analyst rightly says, the election of Petro marks “the rejection of politics as usual.” The Petro-Marquez team proved formidable. Colombia has the second-largest population of African descent in Latin America. If Petro has long experience of politics having served as a member of the congress from 2006 to 2010 and again from 2018 to 2022 and as a mayor of Bogota from 2012 to 2015, besides fighting the presidential elections thrice, Marquez is an inspirational leader.

A former domestic worker she rose to a position where she appeared on the BBC’s list of the 100 most influential women in the world. She also won the Goldman Prize, considered the equivalent to the Nobel Prize for environment. Marquez’s three slogans-cum-movements, “vivir sabroso” (live tasty), “soy porque somos” (I am because we are) and “Hasta que la dignidad se vuelva” (Till the dignity is back) galvanised women and marginalised people in her support. Marquez is someone who raises her voice to stop the destruction of rivers, forests, and moors. She is the one “who dreams that one day human beings will change the economic model of death, to make way for building a model that guarantees life.” Petro’s challenges are no less formidable.

His diagnosis of the crisis and the challenges facing Colombia can’t be faulted. Being an economist, he is right when he says the drug trade flourished because urban industry disappeared. However, rebuilding agriculture and industry is no easy task. What steps Petro takes to hit Colombia’s criminal organisations where it hurts remains to be seen. In today’s time of fiercely competitive politics, winning over like-minded politicians and ideological opponents is next to impossible. But he will have a tough time delivering on his promises as he does not have a majority in Congress, which is key to carrying out reforms. Petro’s election marks a tidal shift for Colombia.

The left resurgence is likely to continue in Latin America. Former President of Brazil Luis Inacio Lula Da Silva is widely projected to wrest power in the forthcoming election. Latin America’s left turn is far from uniform. The left’s resurgence has no single cause. The new left is very different from the traditional left. Neither the rhetoric of Venezuela’s Nicolas Madero and Chile’s Gabriel Boric nor the worldviews of Bolivia’s Luis Arce and Mexico’s Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Peru’s Pedro Castillo and Honduras’ Xiomara Castro are similar. In the earlier phase of the Left’s ascendence, the institutionalised left parties in Brazil, Chile and Uruguay maintained the relatively orthodox macroeconomic policies and liberal democratic constitutions they had inherited from non-leftist predecessors.

It was Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, a populist outsider who practiced plebiscitary politics to rewrite the constitutional rules of the game, who Ecuador’s Rafael Correa and Bolivia’s Hugo Morales followed. The left coalitions of various hues in Latin America have also been the beneficiaries of what political scientist Sydney Tarrow calls “cycle of contention.” Tarrow’s concept of the “power of perceived threat” and threat of loss explains the winning trends for left coalitions and movements, not so much ideology. Of course, there are also situations where the left has been on the victory march without any immediate threat.

The Latin American left is adept at institutional innovation. It has successfully created new repertoires of programmes and agendas. The new political actors have worked meticulously to create new possibilities and win new political battles. French economist Thomas Picketty says that the world needs “a socialism that is decentralised, federal and democratic, ecological, multiracial and feminist.” The new left in Latin America comes closer to such an approximation. Its popular appeal coincides with the deepening of democracy and the consolidation of an array of indigenous movements. With egalitarianism as its calling card, the left is seen as a radical extension of democracy and as a credible political alternative.