In June of 2022, a slight majority of Colombian voters elected Gustavo Petro as president. To say that they ignored numerous warning signs would be an understatement.
Petro began his public life in the late 1970’s as a member of the M‑19, the bloodthirsty urban guerrilla group that—among its many acts of terrorism— stormed the Ministry of Justice in November of 1985, held its magistrates and hundreds of employees as hostages, and ultimately caused the violent death of 111 people.
In 1994, a mere two years after the M‑19’s final official amnesty, which coincided broadly with the introduction of a new constitution in 1991, Petro—then a congressman—invited Hugo Chávez to Bogota, where he hosted him for over a week. At the time, Chávez himself had been recently amnestied, having been sentenced for leading a failed and bloody coup attempt in Caracas in 1992.
Reflecting on his time with Chávez in the Colombian capital, Petro said: “We found an ideological understanding in the fight against corruption and in the Bolivarian discourse.”
Chávez became president of Venezuela in 1999. By 2003, Petro was boasting to a Colombian magazine, which described him as “one of Chávez’s closest advisors on the new model being implemented in Venezuela,” about the country’s change of tack. “We are in a transitional stage,” Petro said, “from a neoliberal model to one that I would call ‘neo‐populism.’”
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