Petro, the former guerrilla who wants to twist the tradition of power in Colombia

An army of bodyguards watches over the crowd chanting his name. The former guerrilla Gustavo Petro, favorite in the polls to win the presidency in Colombia, is confident that this time not even the “ghost of political assassination“Will drive away the rise of the left”progressive”.

61 years old, medium height and thick glasses, Petro defies the long tradition of liberal and conservative governments after abandoning the armed struggle and signing peace in 1990.

A kilometric speaker and very active on social networks, he denounces on stage inequality and poverty, environmental damage and the cyclical violence of more than half a century.

After a speech in Jamundí, Petro spoke to AFP in the neighboring city of Cali (southwest).

The former mayor of Bogotá aspires to be elected in the first round of the presidential elections on May 29. If he succeeds, he will mark a milestone in a country historically dominated by the right.

Escorted by a dozen armored vehicles, motorcycle police, an ambulance and snipers, the candidate considers himself a survivor of “a long tradition of political assassination” that only in the 20th century ended with five presidential candidates.

Petro distances itself from the governments of Venezuela and Nicaragua and aligns itself with the “progressivism” by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in Brazil, and by the newly elected Gabriel Boric in Chile.

However, he assures that he will resume relations with Caracas -broken since 2019- and will open the border for “fill the void that mafia groups occupy today”.

The former M-19 guerrilla returns to the ring after losing the 2018 ballot with the current president, Iván Duque.

Here are some parts of the interview:

Why is your candidacy breaking?

The Colombian oligarchy is about to be defeated, which is basically a political and economic elite that has excluded the majority of the country.

Hunger, through a disastrous economic policy, has spread in Colombia. Poverty percentages have increased, the economy remains rickety. And all that atmosphere of disillusionment, disenchantment, with a very authoritarian project, almost fascist, of Uribism (force in power) is what has generated the conditions for political change.

Are you afraid they will kill you?

It does not stop appearing like a flash, when I mix in the crowd, when I am on a platform and there is a full square, that someone could shoot anywhere but I try to avoid thinking about it. No security scheme can guarantee that the candidate will not be eliminated. In Colombia there is a long tradition of political assassination. So the possibility is there. I hope it doesn’t happen. We aspire to win in the first round but both the ghost of fraud and the ghost of death are with us.

What would be your position against Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba?

A new progressivism is appearing in Latin America that has to do with a fundamental difference and that is not basing economies on the extraction of non-renewable raw materials that harm humanity and that are no longer sustainable for an economic process. And further strengthen the development processes on the basis of knowledge and production.

That axis can be perfectly configured with Lula, with Boric who is already positioned, and hopefully with my name. I think it would mark out the social struggles and Latin American progressivism in a different way than what Daniel Ortega and (Nicolás) Maduro have done, who basically continue to establish a leftist rhetorical idea based on oil extraction; on the basis of having a banana republic that imprisons any type of opponent.

What would be your policy towards the United States?

There are common subjects to deal with. One of those is the solution to the climate crisis. There is a common policy that has to do with the Amazon forest, which is one of the great absorbers of CO2, which has to do with new technological forms in agriculture and industry. We have to see how in a common way in America we achieve a leap towards a decarbonized economy, free of oil.

What would be your first decisions as president?

The signing of (oil) exploration contracts in Colombia would cease because we want to start the energy transition, the mobility transition and the decarbonization processes of the economy.

Hunger here is bringing higher levels of insecurity and I think it is convenient to establish an immediate, urgent program to fight hunger and to be able to rebalance society with its great agricultural and food-producing potential.

and drug trafficking

Glyphosate has been a great failure in Colombia. In addition to poisoning our lands and our waters, the cost of fumigating one hectare with glyphosate is higher than the cost of giving the peasant fertile land. These policies are more effective with an apparatus of prevention, of attention to the consumer by the State.

A peaceful policy of dismantling drug trafficking could also be established concomitantly based on collective submissions to justice that would imply legal benefits in exchange for non-repetition. This policy is obviously made on the basis that cocaine is illegal and I believe that in the world it will continue to be so during my administration.