 Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome back again to Latin American Directions. My name is Nicola Susman, and we're back with new shows after a short pause. Today, we have our guest Santiago Vargas Niños, Santiago is an international lawyer, and is very interested and keen about Colombian politics or Latin American politics overall. And we're going to unpack the results of last Sunday's election in Colombia. The unforeseen wing of a left candidate. And yeah, we're going to see what this implies for Colombia. Santiago, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to Latin American Directions. Thank you very much, Nicolás. It's a pleasure to be with you, and hello to all of your viewers. Thank you. So Santiago, maybe let's provide a bit of context to the audience. What happened in Colombia in this election? Who's Gustavo Petro? Who's Transia Marquez? Let's just set the ground to see what we will be discussing tonight. Of course. So we have presidential and congressional elections every four years. The last one was in 2018, which elected a majority right wing congress and a right wing president in Iván Duque Marquez. His government was characterized by an opposition to the implementation of the 2016 peace agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC rebel group, a surprising levels of corruption and carrying favor to political clientels and an unfortunate increase in violence, inequality, and poverty as a result of the emergence of new organized armed groups and also the coronavirus pandemic that struck Colombia very hard, leaving an estimate 140,000 Colombian citizens dead and basically raising 10 years of fight against poverty and inequality. On the other hand, you have a very prominent leader of the left, Gustavo Petro Urrego. He used to be a militant of the M19 rebel group, which was pretty well known for the spectacular actions in the 1980s and early 90s. For instance, this was a guerrilla group that stole the sword of Simon Bolivar, the liberator of vast swaths of Latin America from Spanish imperial rule or the unfortunate takeover of the Palace of Justice in Bogota in 1985, which ultimately led to the murder of basically the entirety of the Colombian Supreme Court of Justice, as well as several visitors and service providers at the hands of the Colombian military, mostly. He demobilized in 1990 as part of the M19's decision to return to peaceful ways, and he has been a prominent leader who has occupied several roles as the congressman, mayor of Bogota, and leader of the opposition to Ivan Dukin. His candidate for the vice presidency is Francia Marquez-Mina, an Afro-Columbian woman from the Cauca region in the Pacific Basin. She has been well known for her activism in defense of the environment. So for instance, in 2016, she won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Award for her work against illegal mining in La Toma Municipality in Cauca. She conducted an independent campaign for the, let's call them the primaries of this election under the banner of a communal Afro-Columbian movement called Soy Por Que Somos. I am because we are. And she obtained 800,000 votes, which were even higher than the tally of votes of the center coalition primaries and the far-right coalition primaries. So she became basically a banner holder for a number of different social and environmental causes. And Gustavo Petro finally decided to make her his ally for this election, which they just won with 11 million votes, a bit over 11 million votes, which is the higher voting that any left-wing party has ever received in the history of Colombia and facing a rather particular competitor in Rodolfo Hernandez, who wasn't only a right-wing politician, but also had a sort of Trumpian persona. He was a very successful developer in Bucaramanga, sitting in the northeast of Colombia, close to the border with Venezuela. He entered politics as mayor of that city on a platform of anti-corruption and transparency. But over the years, he was suspended repeatedly by disciplinary authorities because of his character, basically. He entered into fights with council members, with the press. He was constantly using slurs, xenophobic, and misogynistic offenses and unpleasant words against his critics. And he has been accused of corruption in a scandal that is widely regarded as vitologic. And it involves the contracting of sanitary support for the city of Bucaramanga for a period of 10 years, which amounted to around half a billion pesos. And he was allegedly trying to favor the negotiation on his son's behalf. So he was definitely not the most savory of candidates, but the anti-Petro movement in Colombia was so strong that he still garnered the support of over 10 million Colombian voters. Right, that's a very good context on Diego for the audience. And then all my question for you would be that. Why now Colombia is known to be a traditionally right-wing country? This is the first time in history that we have a left-wing president. And to be honest, from my personal perspective, I never thought I would see that. It's very surprising. We have a very traditional country, or at least that's where our elections showed historically. No one in the left had achieved to win and even some left-wing ideological candidates that had left-leaning policies during the 20th century achieved to win somehow through traditional right-wing parties. So this is the first openly left-wing and very left-wing candidate that won the presidency. So my question is, why now? What's different from the last 200 years? Yeah, well, first of all, I would definitely like to stress what you just said in our Republican history. We've been governed mainly by right-wing politicians divided into the two traditional liberal and conservative parties. Even though there were a certain number of, let's say reformist governments in the mid-19th, sorry, in the middle of the 20th century. So yeah, mid-1900s, such as López Pumarejo or Geras Westrepo or even López Miquelsen who were in a certain way, let's say, influenced by growing social demand coming from the worker unions, women's movements, et cetera. They weren't really left-wing politicians as such. Whereas Gustavo Petro certainly embodies a left-wing ideology, which I would perhaps position around the social democracy that is reminiscent of the welfare state in Europe after the Second World War, but which definitely seems to be like a breakaway with a very conservative, militaristic, religious, and landowner path of Colombia. And I think this has been many, many decades in the making. So for instance, we had the experience with the Unión Patriótica or Patriotic Union political movement in the 1980s, which was formed after a peace accord was signed between the government of president, Belisario Tancurcuartas and the FARC rebel group, which ultimately demobilized in 2016. And unfortunately, the Unión Patriótica faced the systematic campaign of extermination that led to roughly 6,000 assassinations and deportations of its membership and its political leaders. Amongst them, I suppose, we could highlight very briefly the cases of the U.S. and U.S. who was a judge, a very well-respected leader of the Judiciary's Union, and a rather democratic, open, and transparent candidate who ran for the office of the president in 1986 but was unfortunately gone down on his way back to Bogota in 1987. Then we had the case of Bernardo Jaramillo Osa who was again a very well-respected human rights lawyer who ran for the presidency in 1990 for the Unión Patriótica political movement and was assassinated at the airport in Bogota. And then we had also Luis Carlos Galán Cermiento who was certainly not a member of the Unión Patriótica political movement, but who was also left leaning and very conscientious about the situation of the majority of the Colombian electorate and was unfortunately murdered in 1990 as well by the Medellín cartel. This left a sense of grievance in large swathes of the Colombian electorate. They were looking for ways to participate in a political system that had been traditionally closed to them by an urban elite composed of the few industries that exist in Colombia, landowners who possess over 50% of the agricultural land in Colombia and the clients of political leaders in both Bogota and several regions. And I believe that when the peace agreement was signed in 2016, this hope for a political openness in more democratic society was palpable and the difficulties in the implementation of that peace agreement as a result of a red wind government that has also had recourse to armed violence without any sense of proportion that has, you know, not paid attention to the social needs of the majority of the population and that handled the 2021 national strike very poorly led to a sense of of urgency. We needed a change. We needed to break away with the elites that had been governed as for most of our Republican history and Petro and Francia Marques basically learned how to encompass those needs into their political agenda and how to provide a voice for the voiceless like Francia Marques constantly says with reference to a poem by Galliano, Los Nadias, the no ones, the nobodies, they embody them and I think that's what ultimately led to their election. In fact, if you look at an electoral map of Colombia, the majority of the votes for Petro and Francia Marques came from the far away regions in the borders of the country whereas the center of the country mostly voted for Rodolfo Hernandez. So you could definitely say that it's a response to this sense of urgency for a change. Right. Right. I think that's a very, very good diagnosis in addition to an unmatched participation in the election, right? So people who never voted before regions that never voted before participated. So actually people who never voted in the election, they had to add it to this and it's a very... Well, the very demonstration of what you say, the claim of the least favored of the marginalized to be put in the government, right? Also because a tipping point was all right with the pandemic, with inflation, with, well, everything that's going on in the world undoubtedly. Correct. It comes easily in most conversations in this situation, right? And it's like, why is this or not a situation of Colombia turning into Venezuela and how Petro and Francia are different or similar from other left-wing leaders in the region? Of course, this pops up immediately and it was a recurring theme during the presidential campaign. What I would say is that as opposed to Hugo Chavez, who was an officer of the Venezuelan army who had already tried to overthrow the government by use of force, Gustavo Petro never partook in armed actions of the M19 rebel group. He was basically a promoter of their ideology in the Sipakiram municipality on the outskirts of Bogota. He was handing out leaflets and building a popular neighborhood. The problem was that he was doing so with a firearm on his waist. So in 1985, he was actually arrested by the military police. He was subjected to what nowadays would constitute a trial that is flagrantly in violation of human rights standard as it was conducted by a military judge. He was imprisoned for roughly a year and a half in which he denounces to have been tortured and humiliated. But after that experience when he demobilized as part of the M19's transition towards a political party, he made a strong commitment to democratic rule. He participated in the drafting of the 1991 Colombian constitution. He always had recourse to fair elections in order to gain his power. He was very secured politically by former ombudsman Alejandro Doniz Maldonado. Even though he was unlawfully deprived of his seat as mayor of Bogota, he never called for anything other than recourse to lawful means of conflict resolution. So he appealed to Colombian courts and to the inter-American system of human rights in order to be reinstated. And even though he is constantly compared with a dictator and made fun of for his chances, his political views, the even appearance that he presents himself with, he has always had recourse to dialogue and to an ever-growing, let's say, moderate and the dialogical approach to politics. So I really don't think that his sympathies for Chávez, which are undeniable, will in any way mean that Colombia is about to turn into another Venezuela. And in fact, I think it's quite unfair to try and, you know, change the politics in the continent. The left is definitely more than just Hugo Chávez. You can see how diverse the Latin American left is when you look at the government of Gabriel Boric in Chile, when you look at Alberto Fernández in Argentina, when you look at Gustavo Petra in Colombia, they all have very different agendas and views that only coincide in, you know, seeking to build a more equitable society for their voters. And in the case of Petra, I think that one of the things that provides the most guarantees regarding, you know, the stability of the country is that people he has surrounded himself with recently. You have Alejandro Gaviria, former presidential candidate for the Center Coalition. You have Maui Lara, a very well-known journalist who also was a Senate candidate from the Center Coalition. You have a number of, you know, bureaucrats, technocrats, people who have, you know, skin in the game and who really want to make this a successful democratic government and not some sort of undemocratic regime change as we saw in Venezuela over 20 years ago. Right. Right. I think that's very good from what we've discussed in this show, the authoritarian democratic spectrum, right, which we think is the right one to analyze Latin American, even global politics, not the ledger right anymore. Also, I would just like to briefly get your thoughts on also the economic fears that people have regarding the first left-sided country, government in our country. What do you say to these people who are afraid of losing not only their riches, but also of phasing, unforeseen inflation, tax charge that is higher than they ever seen and maybe not see the benefits. What would you say to these people? Well, first of all, that they shouldn't believe the propaganda about Pedro, you know, being about to take over their private property. If anything, his program is very capitalistic in nature because what he wants to do is to increase the number of private landowners in the country by utilizing territories that currently belong to the nation, to the state, either because they were, you know, never in private hands ever since the Colombia became independent or because they used to belong to drug traffickers or other types of criminals and, you know, they relinquished their right to those lands during legal process. So no, you know, a socialist or communist would ever promote such a policy which clearly marks Pedro as a capitalist. Also, of course, he has a very ambitious social plan which would definitely require tax reform in order to, you know, finance the social expense that he has in mind. But in that regard, I would say that this isn't a monologue, even though he has some ideas which I personally think are quite, you know, worth looking at closely. So for instance, getting rid of unjustified exemptions on corporate gains, taxing wealth, the wealthiest individuals of society which are a handful of Colombians less than 1% of Colombians in a way that is progressive and not, you know, entirely arbitrary and also creating taxes to promote productivity rather than you know, the grabbing of land for no purpose other than, you know, maintaining your wealth. Those policies will have to be discussed within his own administration. We are hearing that maybe Augusto Ocampo, Alejandro Gawiria, Ivan Rudolf Holmes may become his secretary of the Treasury to make, you know, make it comprehensible for people abroad. These are people who are very technical and who will not risk Colombia losing their wealth. They will not be able to give gradation for credit or, you know, facing growing inflation. But also this will have to be discussed in Congress because any tax reform requires the approval of both the chamber, the House of Representatives and the Senate. So there is plenty of time for democratic policies to be taken into account. And I think that this is a very important part of the Maryland crisis. Right. Right. Well, Santiago, we think this has been very enlightening and you have set with great clarity the context and the main concerns and issues regarding, regarding Petro's election. In just one minute. Any lesson and final reflection, you would like to leave to the audience, not only Colombian audience, but I would like to leave to the audience. Of course, that I was very pleased with the readout from the call between President Biden and President Oleg Petro, because it shows that our strategic interests continue to align. We will work together implementing the peace agreement, trying to curb climate change and promoting, you know, climate change in the region. So Colombia continues to be a key strategic partner of the U.S. I don't think Petro will threaten that at all. And what I would expect from Washington is their ongoing bipartisan support as we've received thus far. That's very interesting and also very relieving for our viewers in the U.S. Colombia from what we see will remain a key strategic partner to the U.S. Santiago, thank you very much for your reflections. We hope to continue analyzing this situation. Hopefully we'll have a series with different people from different parts of the Colombian spectrum considering how unforeseen. I just want to leave the audience with this. It is the first time in 200 years of Republican existence that we have a left candidate and there's a left wing president back there unless a region surprises us with something more pressing in the following weeks, which very much would happen. It's likely to happen. We'll see you in two weeks to continue discussing this. This was Latin American Directions. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.