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By Diana Dur\u00e1n<\/p>\n
For more than two centuries, Colombia was considered a conservative stalwart in Latin America. Even as leftist governments came and went across the region, a centre-right political establishment remained in control \u2013 a continuity that cemented the country\u2019s role as a key US ally. On Sunday night, everything changed. <\/p>\n
Gustavo Petro, a senator and former guerrilla, was elected the country\u2019s first leftist president, galvanising millions of poor, young, struggling Colombians desperate for someone different. His victory, unthinkable just a generation ago, was the most stunning example yet of how the pandemic has transformed the politics of Latin America.<\/p>\n
The pandemic hit the economies of this region harder than almost anywhere else in the world, kicking 12 million people out of the middle class in a single year. Across the continent, voters have punished those in power for failing to lift them out of their misery. And the winner has been Latin America\u2019s left, a diverse movement of leaders that could now take a leading role in the hemisphere.<\/p>\n
\u201cElection after election, the right tries to scare people into thinking the communist monster is coming,\u201d said Alberto Vergara, a political scientist at the University of the Pacific in Peru.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd election after election, it has lost.\u201d It happened in Peru, where voters, last year, elected Marxist schoolteacher Pedro Castillo. It happened in Chile, the free-market model of the region, where 36-year-old former student activist Gabriel Boric brought the left back to power. And now it has happened in Colombia, a country where the left has long been associated with guerrilla movements over decades of bloody internal conflict.<\/p>\n
Leftist candidates who dared to run for office in the past were often assassinated. This time around, the conservative establishment\u2019s chosen candidate failed to even make it to the second round.<\/p>\n
All eyes are now on Brazil, the largest country in Latin America, where former president Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva leads polls to unseat President Jair Bolsonaro in October. A Lula victory would mean all of the largest countries in the region, including Mexico and Argentina, are led by leftist presidents.<\/p>\n
From Bogot\u00e1 to Santiago, many voters are no longer buying the argument that a swing to the left will mean a government run by the likes of Hugo Ch\u00e1vez or Fidel Castro. And that\u2019s partly because today\u2019s leftist leaders look and sound very different from those of the past, at least in the case of Petro and Boric.<\/p>\n
Instead of building an oil-rich economy \u2013 the basis of neighbouring Venezuela\u2019s ruinous socialist revolution \u2013 they\u2019re looking to build a unified front against climate change.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ve tried to distance themselves from the machismo of previous leftist eras, winning power by promising to protect the rights of women, LGBTQ people and Afroindigenous communities. And they\u2019re backed by a young, politically engaged electorate that took to the streets in massive numbers in recent years to protest inequality.<\/p>\n
Their success also reflects a social transformation in a predominantly Catholic region, where feminist movements have spurred Colombia, Argentina and Mexico to decriminalise abortion. Some countries are following Colombia\u2019s lead in advancing euthanasia rights, and Chile last year recognised same-sex marriage.<\/p>\n
Petro said earlier this year that he envisioned a progressive alliance with Chile and Brazil. If Lula wins and Petro succeeds, this coalition could be a powerful force in the hemisphere \u2013 and could leave the US on the sidelines.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis may be just one of those times where Latin America is taking the lead,\u201d said Bernard Aronson, who served as the top US diplomat for Latin America under presidents George HW Bush and Bill Clinton.<\/p>\n
Aronson, who was also a special envoy to Colombia\u2019s peace process, described Petro\u2019s win as \u201ca kind of earthquake in Colombia\u201d. On Sunday night, Petro called for a \u201cdialogue in the Americas without exclusions, with all of the diversity that is America,\u201d a clear reference to the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles earlier this month. <\/p>\n
Mexican president Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador skipped the summit after President Joe Biden declined to invite three authoritarian countries \u2013 Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. While Boric attended, he also criticised Biden, saying the US was missing opportunities to advance its democratic goals for Latin America by refusing to engage with its adversaries.<\/p>\n
In a sign of how widely accepted that view has become in the region, both Petro and his rival in the final round of the Colombian election, construction magnate Rodolfo Hern\u00e1ndez, supported normalising relations with Venezuela, a country long invoked by the right as a cautionary tale about the dangers of left-wing governance.<\/p>\n
In his acceptance speech, Petro said his foreign policy would put Colombia at the forefront of the global fight against climate change. He said the time had come to sit down with the US and talk about its emissions of greenhouses gases, which are being absorbed by \u201cone of the largest sponges\u201d, Latin America\u2019s Amazon rainforest. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf they are emitting there and we\u2019re absorbing here, why don\u2019t we dialogue?\u201d Petro said to a packed arena in Bogot\u00e1. \u201cWhy don\u2019t we find another way to understand each other?\u201d With the US preoccupied with Ukraine, Iran and North Korea, it could see its influence continue to decline in Latin America, said Cynthia Arnson, a distinguished fellow and former director of the Washington, DC-based Wilson Centre\u2019s Latin American Programme.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe US is just less and less a part of the conversation,\u201d Arnson said. The US has long seen relations with the region through a lens of competition with Russia and China, said Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they have this Cold War 2.0 view of competition of the great powers in the region,\u201d Isacson said, \u201cthey just lost a grip on their keystone.\u201d The US has sent billions of dollars in aid to Colombia over the years, much of that to combat transnational crime and drug trafficking.<\/p>\n
Some worry a Petro presidency could strain that long-running partnership. Petro argues that counter-narcotics policies over the past several decades have been a failure and that aerial eradication of coca has done nothing to reduce the flow of cocaine to the US. He has vowed to focus instead on crop substitution.<\/p>\n
He has also suggested changing the extradition treaty and foreign trade agreement between the two countries. But in his acceptance speech, Petro made no comments suggesting he would take a hostile approach toward the US, and experts doubt he will.<\/p>\n
The US has a history of successful relationships with some leftist presidents in South America, such as Uruguay\u2019s Jos\u00e9 Mujica and Brazil\u2019s Lula, Aronson said. But \u201cvery few countries in the world have enjoyed the enduring bipartisan relationship Colombia has built with the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n
If Petro is wise, he added, \u201che\u2019ll try to preserve that.\u201d US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was quick to congratulate Petro on Sunday night, while Brian Nichols, sub-secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, said in a radio interview on Monday that the Biden administration has \u201cmany points of agreement with the leftist government that is coming in Colombia,\u201d including a shared commitment to tackling climate change.<\/p>\n
Petro\u2019s critics fear that his ambitious plans, including his redistributive policies and his proposal to ban new oil exploration, could ruin Colombia\u2019s economy. Others worry about his willingness to work around democratic institutions to push through his agenda; he has proposed an economic state of emergency to combat hunger.<\/p>\n
Like many populist presidents before him, Petro\u2019s greatest challenge will be following through on his promises to the poor \u2013 especially with a divided legislature. Nearly half of Colombians are experiencing some type of poverty and struggle to find enough to eat.<\/p>\n
Among them is 22-year-old student Erika Andrea Nu\u00f1ez, who can barely afford her tuition for child-care classes. While she lives with her partner and 2-year-old daughter in a working-class neighbourhood of Bogot\u00e1, she often stays with her parents to cut costs on food.<\/p>\n
She doesn\u2019t consider herself a Petro supporter, but she chose to vote for him because of \u201cwhat he claims he\u2019ll do for young people,\u201d especially his proposal for free universal higher education. \u201cI don\u2019t know if he\u2019ll really do it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it\u2019s the one thing that made me give him the chance. I have hope that he\u2019ll at least do something different.\u201d<\/p>\n
* Dur\u00e1n, news assistant for The Washington Post\u2019s Colombia Bureau<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Diana Dur\u00e1n For more than two centuries, Colombia was considered a conservative stalwart in Latin America. Even as leftist governments came and went across the region, a centre-right political establishment remained in control \u2013 a continuity that cemented the country\u2019s role as a key US ally. On Sunday night, everything changed. Gustavo Petro, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":108209,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[1293,4636,12504,1447,12108,258],"class_list":["post-108208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-politics","tag-america","tag-embraces","tag-latin","tag-left","tag-seat","tag-takes"],"yoast_head":"\n