Álvaro Uribe, the political shadow of Colombia

The night he became governor of Antioquia, Álvaro Uribe Vélez punched an old friend who at the time was a political rival.

It was October 30, 1994, the election was close and the winner was going to be defined by a few votes.

Amid the tension of the scrutiny, Fabio Valencia Cossio, a veteran conservative leader who was promoting the opposition candidate, arrived at the Medellín Registrar's Office and said he feared fraud.

Soon after, Uribe crossed the room and dodged the controls.

"He ran over the police general and without a word he threw a blow at me," recalls Valencia Cossio, who knew him from university, where they had both studied law.

That night, Uribe took a turn in his career and became the highest authority in the department of Antioquia, the second most populated and wealthiest territory in Colombia.

Years later, Valencia Cossio received a call from his old fellow student: Uribe was already president, he asked him to regain his friendship and offered him a position in his government.

And he accepted.

Beyond his volcanic temperament, the episode condensed the essence that has forged Uribe's image: that of a man of extremes, overwhelming, with no inclination for doubt or nuances.

That is how radical are the feelings it awakens in Colombian society ("It's the best thing that happened to the country" / "It's the worst thing that happened to the country").

That is how binary is the nature of their political ties, where only loyalty or betrayal fit.

That is how absolute are the achievements attributed to him by his unconditional, starting with the current president, Iván Duque, who won the 2018 elections thanks to him.

That is how opaque are the shadows that have been enveloping his figure for decades and that in August caused an unprecedented event in the country.

The Supreme Court issued a preventive house arrest measure against him for a case of manipulation and alleged bribery of witnesses.

Behind this investigation is one of the most serious accusations that has persecuted him for years: his alleged links with paramilitary groups.

Last week, a guarantee judge ordered his release while the process continues.

Uribe was the main opponent of the peace process and the agreements with the FARC, today demobilized.

He viscerally clashed with his successor, then-President Juan Manuel Santos, who had been his minister.

He resisted leaving the front line of the political battle after finishing his two presidential terms (2002-2010) and, until August, when he resigned, he was a senator.

In 2018 he was the most voted candidate in the legislative elections.

Today he faces justice, but at 68 years old he retains a good part of his power and has not stopped stirring public opinion from social networks, nor guiding the current government in the name of defending his "honorableness."

Those who consider him little less than a savior of Colombia always evoke his heavy hand against the guerrillas.

His security policy, however, has put him under scrutiny for serious human rights violations.

His government left behind thousands of extrajudicial killings - known as "false positives" - crimes carried out by the military against civilians with the intention of presenting them later as combatants from the enemy camp.

To carry out this profile, EL PAÍS contacted the former president's closest circle, with allies and adversaries, with victims and with protagonists of Colombian politics in recent decades.

Both Uribe and his successor, Santos, like Duque, chose not to speak.

Most of the stories tend to coincide on an idea that serves to shed light on his personality, his obsessions and his career, now at the head of the Government party, the Democratic Center: the construction of the authority figure.

And the eagerness to bend anyone who dares to question her.

Building a President

Before Uribe won the 2002 elections, no Colombian president in a century had been from a party other than the Liberal or Conservative.

For the millennium elections, both political forces were suffering from overwhelming wear and tear.

Uribe was well known in his department (in addition to being the governor of Antioquia, he had been a senator, councilor and mayor of Medellín), but when he ran as an independent candidate, for Bogotá and the rest of the country he was not just an

: he was a complete stranger .

At the end of 2000, less than 4% of Colombians contemplated voting for him.

"Nobody looked at him, neither to spit on him nor to insult him," says Ricardo Galán, who was his campaign's Communications Director.

She remembers when she took Uribe to campaign in a Bogotá shopping center in 2001: "The guy didn't exist."

Galán, who would later become press secretary in the Presidency, was one of the people Uribe sought to transform his image as a regional politician into a national one.

"We needed a photo, a name, and canned television," he tells EL PAÍS.

They first got one of the best political publicists in the capital, Carlos Duque, who had become famous years before for the powerful red poster he made for the candidate Luis Carlos Galán, who was assassinated in 1990. “I don't like glasses that he uses Uribe, "the publicist said at the time," he seems like a dentist from an Antioqueño town. ”Duque

a bit of a

by asking him to change his glasses for ones with Armani frames, bought in one of the more affluent areas of Bogotá. , reluctantly. The publicist produced a pair of iconic photos in which Uribe gazes at the horizon at the same time that he puts his left hand on top of his heart. "Firm hand, big heart," read the logo on the new campaign poster, a one of the most emblematic images of the former president to date, and a phrase that Uribe repeated in his campaign events.

But the poster was only the first step in a bigger equation.

National television constantly ignored Uribe's campaign: they were not interested in an interview or a profile of a candidate who was at the bottom of the polls.

So Galán and Uribe decided to look for other microphones: local radios and channels.

"Why those means?

They gave us the following benefits: they were free ”, recalls Galán.

“If I took Uribe to the Jamundí, Valle channel, the director would be eternally grateful because a presidential candidate came to a channel that people say is a pirate.

And if I have a channel for which I have no programming, I repeat that pod 200 times.

And we did so, town by town ”.

Uribe has a prodigious memory when it comes to remembering historical events in every corner of the country - something that all those who have worked with him underline - and it was noticeable on local radio and television.

In small towns Uribe could engage in eternal conversations with listeners about key historical moments that happened in their streets: a murder, a natural calamity, a robbery.

"In every corner of the road, he had an anecdote to tell," recalls Galán.

"And he cared five if a meeting was attended by five people or 5,000."

By what local means?

They gave us the following benefits: they were free

Ricardo Galán, Communications Director for Uribe's presidential campaign

While most of the presidential candidates spent time trying to give oxygen to the dying peace talks that the government of Andrés Pastrana had started with the FARC in 1998, Uribe was walking through the regions of the country with a speech of "strong hand" against the guerrilla that little by little was gaining in popularity.

"With the lack of leadership attributed to the Government, with the rampant insecurity, with the kidnapping fired and with the escalation of the war reaching the cities, Colombians want a man with pants," wrote the

magazine then

, when it began to note that Uribe was "in fashion."

Following the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, Uribe's popularity, which was down 17%, soared.

After months in which most of the national media ignored the strong-arm candidate, the most important radio and television networks began to ask him for an interview.

Uribe's image in the polls began to climb.

Towards the end of 2001, 23% of Colombians considered Uribe as their candidate, the second in the polls.

In March 2002, he had already obtained 60% of the intention to vote: enough to win the elections in the first round.

At the end of May, Álvaro Uribe won in the first round.

"The entire nation cries out for rest and security," said Uribe in his inauguration speech in August 2002. "I will affectionately support the Armed Forces of the Nation and encourage millions of citizens to attend them."

The guerrillas understood that, with Uribe's victory, war was declared.

On the day of his inauguration, the FARC launched several projectiles towards the presidential palace and the Congress building where Uribe was speaking.

They killed more than a dozen people.

In his eight years as president, Uribe achieved enormous popularity thanks to a communications strategy similar to his campaign.

He dedicated hours of interviews to local radio stations or national channels, promoting his democratic security policy that strengthened the military in terms of budget and image ("Heroes in Colombia do exist," read the slogan of the Armed Forces).

He visited the directors of the most influential media, most of whom aligned themselves with the president's successful war speech.

Uribe created a party in his image, La U, which managed to defeat in the 2006 legislative elections the majorities that conservatives and liberals had had for decades.

And he held almost three hundred communal councils in towns and cities: meetings with citizens every weekend, in which he gave speeches and promised to address people's day-to-day complaints (a face-to-face version of what Chávez did in his famous program

).

In one of his most remembered communal councils, Uribe revealed his telephone number so that any citizen could call him (in the face of the barrage of calls, he later apologized for not being able to answer everyone).

With his constant voice in the media and communal councils, Uribe managed to become not only a popular politician, but a popular, almost religious product.

The 'furibistas', as their loyal followers are called, changed the expression 'more papist than the pope' to 'more uribista than Uribe', and the most catholics invented new prayers to take care of him (“do, Lord, let him defeat the violent with a firm hand and a big heart. Lord, make each day of his life fill our country with glory ”).

The current Uribe senator Paloma Valencia decorated her house with a painting that replaces the face of the Sacred Heart of Jesus with that of Uribe.

The most famous expressions of the Uribe government ("work, work and work" to speak of discipline; "that taste is for the family" to discourage sexuality outside of marriage; or "I'll hit you in the face, fag", to threaten enemies) went from being conjunctural anecdotes to everyday idioms in the conversations of the country.

The traditional bipartisanship that Uribe broke with his arrival to the presidency was transformed into a new polarization, deeper and more passionate, around his figure: uribismo and anti-uribismo.

Since he became president in 2002, Uribe managed to form an image of himself as a protective father with the media and his activity on social networks, and millions of Colombians believed him.

But that representation was not born with his arrival to the presidency, but was built from the origins of his public life.

In the name of the Father

The life of the former president is atypical on the map of power in Colombian history in recent decades, characterized by being hyper-central and urban.

Uribe did not have close ties with the elites of Bogotá, therefore he did not have political capital, contacts or a springboard to project him towards the Casa de Nariño.

This does not mean that he did not enjoy other benefits or that he did not have a privileged training.

He simply did not belong to the traditional oligarchy in the capital.

He was born in Medellín on July 4, 1952, but his childhood was spent in the fields of the southwest of Antioquia, where his family had farms.

Between the Margarita, the Loreto and the Prairie he spent his first years, in which he “went to school in

[his horse]”, according to Paola Holguín and Camila Escamilla in the book

.

Holguín, who worked with Uribe since 2002 and today is a senator for the Democratic Center, tells EL PAÍS that although her strict character comes from her father, it is from her mother, Laura Vélez, from whom she inherited a taste for politics.

"The mother was a liberal activist and promoted the 1957 plebiscite for which women went to vote for the first time," she recalls.

Uribe Vélez himself has also said that one of his most important memories is going hand in hand with his mother to vote.

She also has a taste for declaiming poetry by Rubén Darío, León de Greiff and, above all, Jorge Robledo Ortiz, a Colombian poet and journalist who made an ode to Antioquia traditions and exalted the small country, something that still marks the speeches of the former president.

It was she, according to Holguín, who gave him a collection of records with the speeches of the liberal caudillo Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, whose murder in April 1948 unleashed El Bogotazo, a bloody revolt that marked the history of Colombia and the future of political violence.

Uribe then grew up between the iron discipline of a father who forced him to work on the farm during the day and whose orders did not admit of discussion, and a mother who made him declaim poetry at night.

He grew up in a religious family with four brothers.

His parents separated in 1964. “That would have shaped his memory and discipline which is overwhelming.

He remembers entire sentences, figures, poems, ”says Holguín, who wrote the speeches during his two presidential terms.

In 1970, Uribe enrolled in Law at the University of Antioquia, a public institution that was an epicenter of the entire social revolution in Latin America at that time.

And he jumped on the scene by opposing a student strike that, according to Fabio Valencia Cossio - a former colleague and opponent, later an ally and friend - "would waste time".

Despite being a liberal, he associated with young conservatives, created the Movement for Academic Normality and managed to stop the strike in what is believed to be his first fight against the left.

Valencia Cossio, like other former officials of their governments, remember his almost martial demand for work, which is very similar to the one that his father imposed on Uribe.

“One night, after a debate in the Senate that ended at one in the morning, he called me at 4.30 on the falcon, the direct phone number with him, and said: 'Minister, have you already read the editorial of

? '

And I: 'No, president'.

'Well, I'll call you later.'

I knew that this meant in 15 minutes, and it did, ”says the politician, who was his Interior Minister.

Or the anecdotes of how he learned to speak English, a language he had to train at age 46, when he went to take courses at Oxford, before running for president: “He used to tell me that when he was very tired or was going to stay Asleep, I put my feet in a bucket of ice and continued studying, ”says Holguín.

That severity is one of the best known traits of the former president.

Since 1986, he began practicing Yoga Nidra and Chi Kung - a technique of Chinese tradition that involves physical exercise and breathing - and, therefore, during the strenuous work days he used to stop for 10 minutes to lie on the floor and meditate.

However, their homeopathic valerian drops are even better known with which they try to calm their outbursts of anger.

Only these customs and his passion for horses manage to relax Uribe.

"When he has a problem, the best thing is to talk to him about horses first and that way his temper improves," said his brother Santiago.

When he was very tired or was going to fall asleep, he would put his feet in an ice bucket and continue studying

Paola Holguín, former advisor

If the figure of his mother was decisive in forging some of the skills that he has used most in his career — his prodigious memory, his oratorical skills — his father's has been central to building his image as a politician.

From him he inherited his irascible temperament, an obsession with hard work, a passion for horses and a fondness for buying and selling land (which has made him the owner of thousands of hectares throughout Colombia).

But perhaps nothing has been as final as the circumstances of his death, which became a foundational event in Uribe's mythology: the murder of his father, Alberto Uribe Sierra, when he tried to resist an alleged kidnapping attempt at the hands of the guerrilla, promoted its warmongering discourse and legitimized its intransigent position.

In June 1983, Uribe's father traveled in his private helicopter to visit one of the 20 farms he owned, baptized as Guacharacas: a territory of more than 1,300 hectares located less than three hours from Medellín, in the northeast Antioqueño.

His children Santiago and María Isabel accompanied him.

Shortly after landing, according to Santiago Uribe's account, they were attacked by guerrillas from the 36th front of the FARC.

His father, who had given the cry of alert, “took out his pistol, a Walter, from his belt and began firing towards the front.

They answered him from there and the shooting broke out, ”recalls the former president's younger brother, who in that confrontation was shot in the back and survived by jumping into a river.

The news of the time tells that Álvaro Uribe, who was then 30 years old and in Medellín, rented a helicopter to get to the hacienda but could not land due to bad weather;

that his father's body was carried in a hammock through the mountains;

and that the board of directors of Pablo Escobar's front foundation, called Medellín sin Tugurios, published an obituary lamenting his death.

"The tragedy of Guacharacas marked a turning point in my personal and professional life whose influence is perhaps immeasurable," says Uribe in his book

an autobiography published in 2012.

A past full of future

Álvaro Uribe Vélez is a recurring name for at least four generations of Colombians.

The natives of Medellín have been listening to him since the eighties, when he debuted as director of Civil Aeronautics at a time when drug lords sent their shipments abroad with ease.

The last two people to hold that position had been assassinated for closing clandestine tracks and in political circles it was believed that Uribe would face the same fate, but he lasted in the position longer than many expected and he left there without a scratch.

That earned him suspicions and accusations from his adversaries.

Two years later, in 1982, he was appointed mayor of Medellín, although he only remained in office for a little over four months.

His opponents say that the government of Belisario Betancourt demanded his resignation because of his possible ties to drug traffickers.

There was never a clear explanation for his departure.

According to sources who know his political biography exhaustively, Uribe decided not to accept a position that was not by popular election again and since then he has been an electoral machine.

He was a Medellín councilor between 1984 and 1986 and then he was in the Senate until 1994, years in which the drug war was experienced with special intensity in Antioquia.

These were the worst years of cartel terrorism, bombs and police murders reigned in the streets of the city while politicians tried to negotiate a delivery of the capo Pablo Escobar.

These attempts even led to a meeting between Senator Álvaro Uribe, the capo's wife - María Victoria Henao - and Antioquia's attorney, Iván Velásquez, who years later became the star investigator of the links between politicians and paramilitaries. , and one of the people most hated by the former president.

“We went up to the eighth floor and was opened by Doña Hermilda, Escobar's mother (…) Then, they ushered us into the living room.

I sat on the same sofa with Uribe, Álvaro Villegas (a conservative senator) next to us, and Escobar's wife took over from us ”, Velasquez said in the book

, by Martha Soto.

The efforts to get the boss to surrender were unsuccessful.

Their stories crossed again at the end of 1997, when Velásquez was prosecutor of Medellín and Uribe governor of Antioquia, and the region was already plagued by paramilitaries, led by the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC).

Velásquez led an investigation - known as the Padilla Parking Lot - into the finances of the Metro Block, a front of the self-defense groups that, according to judicial testimony in the case that the Supreme Court is investigating today, was created on the Guacharacas farm, which belonged to the family. of Uribe.

The rise of violence and paramilitarism in Antioquia has been related to the impulse that Uribe gave, when he was governor of the department, to the Convivir: a figure created to give a legal framework to associations that offered paid private security to a community , and that in fact it allowed the owners of the farms to have private armies to defend their properties and confront the guerrillas.

One of the most memorable events of the Uribe government was the murder of Jesús María Valle, a friend of Iván Velásquez.

Valle, a lawyer and human rights activist in an area of ​​northern Antioquia, had warned Uribe several times, in official letters and personally, that paramilitary groups that had arisen from the Convivir were murdering citizens they arbitrarily accused of being allies. of the guerrilla.

On February 6, 1998, Valle officially denounced an alliance between the military, paramilitaries, and Álvaro Uribe in the massacre of the El Aro town, where 15 people were killed, their houses burned, and their family members displaced.

The next day, two hitmen assassinated the activist in his office.

To this day, human rights defenders demand a thorough investigation of Uribe's responsibility in the massacre and the murder of Valle.

Later, as an auxiliary magistrate of the Supreme Court of Justice, Iván Velásquez investigated the parapolitical call and received testimonies from paramilitary leaders who denounced their relations with politicians.

Sixty congressmen, many from the Uribista political formation —among them Mario Uribe, cousin of the then president—, were convicted.

From that moment, the ex-president publicly confronted the jurist and accused him of seeking witnesses against him.

The obsession to control his environment and his adversaries, and to establish his version of events, is one of the features that have defined Uribe's political performance since its inception.

Velásquez, as it turned out later, was the victim of illegal espionage and setups by the Administrative Department of Security (DAS).

During Uribe's second term, the secret police starred in what became known as

scandal

: a plot of illegal wiretapping against magistrates, journalists and opponents.

Velásquez had to go into exile to protect his family and recently won a lawsuit in which he proved that he was a victim of the state.

“The charm of Uribe is that he took advantage of a real uncertainty of the early 2000s, he managed to benefit and appropriate, for example, the safety of the highways, which in reality was an activity of the paramilitaries.

To this we must add great media and advertising management, ”says Velásquez.

Clara López, who in her youth was a friend of the former president and later an opponent, also believes that the key to Uribe's rise is that, amid the violence, he managed to convince many Colombians that what was in danger was private property and not so much life.

“It is a precursor of the Colombian and world extreme right that was cornered.

No one had dared to be far-right so openly, that was no longer part of the institutionality.

After him, Trump and Bolsonaro have emerged, who openly defend ideas that are contrary to the democratic spirit, ”points out the veteran leader, who shared liberal ideals with Uribe decades ago.

The penultimate enemy

Although Álvaro Uribe has been criminally denounced on numerous occasions, the proceedings against him had never been successful until, paradoxically, he ended up in the sights of the Supreme Court for a cause that he himself initiated: a complaint that he filed six years ago against the senator of the Polo Democrático Iván Cepeda, who had exposed Uribe's alleged links with the paramilitaries in Congress, turned around and led to an investigation against the former president and his lawyers on suspicion of witness tampering.

On August 4, when the Court ordered his preventive detention for the alleged crimes of bribery and procedural fraud, there were those who pointed out on the networks that his power was so great that only a process initiated by Uribe was capable of bringing Uribe before the Justice.

Cepeda, who has a long history of legal confrontations with the former president - and has nine sentences in his favor - also believes that the international context was key to the rise of Uribe, who came to power after the 9/11 attacks. , which favored the birth of the doctrine of war against terrorism.

“In this way, an absolutely authoritarian and warmongering doctrine is deepened that ignores international human rights law and humanitarian law, the separation of powers, the role of justice.

All this comes in handy and is what allows his thesis of democratic security to be successful in Colombia and elsewhere, ”says the congressman, who has exhaustively investigated his adversary.

His analysis coincides with that of the former Director of Communications for Uribe, Ricardo Galán: “That day he became president because that day the world said: you don't negotiate with terrorists.

And the only one who said that in Colombia was Álvaro Uribe ”.

The international counter-terrorism boom was added to the failed peace process that the government of Andrés Pastrana tried to carry out (1998-2002), the upsurge in violence and the highly degraded practices of the FARC guerrillas, as well as “a national boredom of very mediocre political leaders, very ineffective, "says Cepeda, who acknowledges that" if something Uribe has is his hard work, his effectiveness.

That mixed with a populist charisma ”.

The senator recalls that Uribe himself, in the book

narrates that he has been described as a Bruce Waine, a South American Batman.

That is to say: a privileged child who vows to avenge the death of his father, murdered by bandits.

“That is the mythology that Uribe has in mind.

He believes that he is a superhero and that he faces evil.

But obviously his story is not that, it is full of very sordid characters, "he says.

And he recalls, for example, that the former president himself has recognized that his family was a friend of the Ochoa brothers, one of the clans that gave rise to the Medellín cartel.

In preparation for the first of his debates to expose Uribe's alleged ties to paramilitarism, in 2012, Cepeda even traveled to the Guacharacas ranch where, according to the testimony of former paramilitary Juan Guillermo Monsalve, a self-defense group was formed.

It was then that Uribe, obsessed with his image and his legacy, wanted to take Cepeda to court.

The former president arrived at the Senate in 2014 and Cepeda took advantage of his coincidence in Congress to cite a new debate, this time in a commission, for which he had to overcome a long chain of obstacles: he failed to convince the senators to make his presentation in plenary and, when allowed to do so in a committee, they demanded that he not mention Uribe's name during the debate.

Cepeda ignored the ban, but the former president earned the nickname "the unnameable."

In the compound, Uribe threatened to denounce the senator from the Democratic Pole before the Supreme Court.

He did so.

He accused him of orchestrating a plot with false witnesses to involve him with paramilitaries.

And that was the genesis of the current process for bribery and procedural fraud against him.

In 2018, the court acquitted Cepeda and asked to investigate Uribe on suspicion that he and his lawyers were the ones who manipulated the witnesses, former paramilitaries in Colombian prisons, into recanting and pointing out Cepeda.

While preparing that second debate on Uribe's political life and his relationships with drug trafficking and paramilitarism, Cepeda says that he did an exhaustive search and that in the end he felt that he needed to consult a psychiatrist about Uribe's personality.

When he did, he found elements of "megalomania, psychopaths and schizoids," he says.

“I see all this, Uribe posing as a victim, as a humble man, from the countryside, but at the same time he cannot help showing himself as what he is deep down: a man who likes caudillismo, who does not admit dissent, who does not admit the argumentative confrontation, accustomed to the monologue.

I see a supremely spiteful and vengeful man, who likes to humiliate his adversaries, does not have the will to admit his mistakes and who lies pathologically ”.

The Mothers of Soacha, the collective that groups together a group of victims of the so-called "false positives," have also sued Uribe, a term that has been questioned because it was not about mistakes made in combat against the guerrillas, but about the execution of at least 2,248 civilians, according to the count of the Prosecutor's Office.

In 2008, the sons or brothers of the women of Soacha were recruited with false job promises and assassinated by the military who later passed them off as guerrillas killed in combat to obtain permits and incentives in exchange.

Uribe even said that, if they were killed, "they would not be picking coffee."

He lost a lawsuit and had to retract his statements, in one of several confrontations with Mothers of the False Positives of Soacha and Bogotá (MAFAPO).

In August, when Uribe's house arrest was announced, they celebrated the move and said it was "the best day" of their lives.

“I feel him as a hypocritical person, who wanted to show an excellent state, that we were ending the guerrillas.

Finally we were blindfolded to the reality that was really uncovered ", says Jacqueline Castillo, one of the Mothers of Soacha.

The uncompromising

Before running for president for the first time, after his tenure as governor of Antioquia (between 1994 and 1998), Uribe went to Oxford for a year to take courses.

There

, Jaime Bermúdez, who was doing his doctorate in Political Science and Public Opinion

, interviewed him for the Colombian magazine

and later became his Chancellor.

"I was impressed by the claim to authority as a democratic concept," recalls the politician.

"Because in Latin America and Colombia speaking of authority has always been viewed with some suspicion," he adds.

And his style of command ended up representing what the most right-wing sectors had always sought: to avoid dialogue, approaches and humanitarian agreements with the insurgent groups.

"People no longer wanted to talk about peace," says Clara Rojas, a former campaign assistant for Íngrid Betancourt, one of the candidates for the 2002 elections who was trying to save the dialogue between the guerrillas and the government of Andrés Pastrana. "Then Uribe emerges as a young figure, with great force, as very dynamic, in part because of that people's disenchantment. ”Rojas has thought a lot about the kidnapping issue in the political context of Colombia and in Uribe's speech, not only because it was director of the País Libre foundation (which represents the families of the kidnapped), but because she and Betancourt were kidnapped by the FARC in February 2002, when Álvaro Uribe was just shooting himself in the polls.

The guerrillas, most of whom had kidnapped soldiers or other members of the public force before 2001, suffered a considerable blow to their public image by kidnapping well-known civilians such as Betancourt and Rojas.

She learned that the young man had won the presidency in May 2003, when some guerrillas shared a radio to listen to the most important news of the moment: the Uribe government had ordered an operation from the military to rescue Guillermo Gaviria, then governor. of Antioch.

The guerrillas killed him before he could be released.

"At that time, we did not give a peso for our lives," says Rojas. "We were aware that the military operations were Uribe's strategy. But the first one was disastrous, the governor's. Later, we already know that they are coming for us. , and the next ones will be us ”.

In his eight years of presidency, the country was politically divided over the best way to achieve the release of the hostages.

Uribism defended the military rescues, despite the fact that the guerrillas threatened to assassinate the hostages before the operation was successful.

Some relatives of the kidnapped, on the other hand, defended a humanitarian solution.

"But Uribe did not echo that," says Rojas.

The tension that this inflexibility generated with some social sectors and with the relatives of the kidnapped emerged on many occasions, but there is an emblematic episode: the long walk of more than a thousand kilometers that Professor Gustavo Moncayo, father of the kidnapped NCO Pablo, did in August 2007. Emilio Moncayo, for the release of his son.

Professor Moncayo, gray-haired and with chains around his neck, came to the Plaza de Bolívar in Bogotá, the political heart of Colombia, and settled there to demand a humanitarian agreement.

Uribe visited him in his hut.

Both chatted for four hours in the same square, in a scene that was televised live.

"Perseverance in security is the way of peace," the president decided that morning.

Finally, in March 2010, with just a few months to go before Uribe left power and after 12 years of captivity in the hands of the FARC, Pablo Emilio Moncayo was released thanks to a humanitarian effort by the left-wing senator Piedad Córdoba.

Rojas spent six years in the jungle, until it was possible to agree to a negotiation between the government of Hugo Chávez and other actors such as Piedad Córdoba and the FARC for his release.

When she arrived in Caracas, after taking a shower, she received a call for the first time from that powerful president that she had heard on the radio.

"The first thing he asks me is: 'Clara, in the jungle, what should they think of me?"

He was referring to the FARC: he wanted to know what his enemies thought.

A short question that reflects Uribe's constant monitoring of the opinion of the people, even that of his most bitter enemies.

"In general, the opinion that existed in the FARC is that he was an extreme right, not to say that he was a fascist," says Carlos Lozada, a guerrilla commander at the time.

Lozada, who is now the country's senator thanks to the 2016 peace accords, explains Uribe's popularity with what some human rights NGOs called "the authoritarian spell."

"He is undoubtedly a great communicator, one cannot ignore that way he has of connecting with public opinion in such a plain and direct way," acknowledges Lozada.

But he adds that "the idea was sold to the people that he was salvation, and for him the violation of human rights or international humanitarian law was tolerated."

Paradoxically, both descriptions fit those traits that the region's right wing has attributed to a former neighbor and ideological enemy: Hugo Chávez.

Despite being in the antipodes, Uribe allowed Chávez's mediation during his government as part of the efforts to free the hostages, but the Venezuelan president's collaboration was abruptly interrupted when, according to the Bogotá version, Chávez spoke directly with Colombian military.

On many occasions, Colombia accused the Government of Venezuela of supporting the FARC and the ELN in the country.

Uribe and Chávez had several clashes in presidential meetings.

They even staged a heated altercation at a summit held in Mexico in February 2010. According to those present, Uribe demanded Chávez for the embargo that his country had imposed on Colombian products and the discussion grew louder.

The Venezuelan tried to retreat, but Uribe intercepted him with a shout: "Be a man, stay here and let's talk head-on!" He said.

Chávez literally sent him to hell.

For some analysts, however, both politicians have been two faces of the same type of leadership.

A political animal

Although his political springboard was the Liberal Party, Uribe radically changed his direction over time.

During his two terms, he applied neoliberal recipes to the economy and encouraged foreign investment, but he did not fulfill his promises to reduce poverty and unemployment.

"The defense of the homeland" has always been one of his arguments to justify his policies, both in terms of economy and security.

“For him, everything was work and homeland.

He was not seduced by the Bogota elite, he was never seen in cocktails and he managed to show himself closer to the people than to the politicians ”, acknowledges Senator Roy Barreras, who remembers him as a man who has wanted to show himself as an ascetic, who He said without shame that he had not gone to the movies for more than 20 years and that he did not know who Michael Jackson was.

"This is the first time since 1986 that I eat outdoors in a restaurant," Uribe told journalist Brian Winter and Iván Duque in 2010, on the patio of a hamburger joint in Washington, after they convinced him to leave the hotel where you were staying for a walk around the city.

The then president of Colombia was in the US capital at an invitation from Georgetown University, Duque was an advisor to his government at the UN and Winter had been called to collaborate in the drafting of

, the president's memoirs.

The anecdote of the restaurant is told by Winter in an article in the

magazine

in which he recounts the closeness between Uribe and Duque, who would end up being the youngest president and the one with the most votes in the recent history of the country.

But that was still almost a decade away.

That year, Uribe was about to hand over the command of his government to another close politician, who had been Minister of National Defense during his second term: Juan Manuel Santos.

The impulse that Santos gave to the negotiations with the FARC to achieve the disarmament of the oldest guerrilla in America was, symbolically, what the literature calls "killing the father."

But it also seemed to revive Uribe, especially thanks to the campaign he led for the no in the plebiscite carried out by the government over the agreements with the FARC, which have now been in force for four years.

After a furious campaign, amplified by chains of lies and the dissemination of false news, Uribe obtained the triumph of no, which led to modifications of the agreement in Havana.

He is a “political animal”, as Alejandra Barrios from the Electoral Observation Mission (MOE) describes him.

The victory of the did not suppose a new impulse for the uribismo, which in 2018 chose Iván Duque as its presidential candidate despite his very short career.

He was a low-profile senator, who no one saw the mood to arrive at the Casa de Nariño until Uribe appointed him as his candidate.

According to the MOE, at least 80% of Duque's campaign was determined by the Uribe factor.

"One of the central problems of current Colombian politics is what to do with Uribe," said the Colombian political scientist Francisco Gutiérrez in 2018, "because a leader who, when he participates, represents half the vote, with a cohesive political force of more 20%, 30% of the citizens, can destabilize any different option ”.

With a view to the next presidential elections, in 2022, a name does not appear for now that can bear the blessing of Uribe, whose popularity fell after Duque's election.

At the end of 2019 it barely reached 26% compared to the 75% it had when he was president.

His resignation as senator due to the arrest warrant against him has left in suspense for the moment what will be the path of Uribismo in the race to the House of Nariño.

On the development of the judicial process and while the former president resists renouncing the front line, his legacy largely depends, one full of division and discord, but also the future of Colombia's political balances.

For now, at 68 years old, he seems to be clear about what his own path will be: the second week of October, just a few days after a judge of guarantees ordered his release - although he will continue to be investigated by the courts - the former president He appeared to again ask for the repeal of the peace court in Colombia, a transitional justice system that emerged from the peace negotiations with the FARC.

It may not be clear what the fate of Uribe will be, but Uribe's fate seems only one: the fight.

Chronology

July 4, 1952

Álvaro Uribe Vélez was born in Medellín, son of the rancher and landowner Alberto Uribe Sierra and Laura Vélez Uribe.

He spends his childhood on his family's farms in the southwest of the department of Antioquia.

1970-1977

He studied Law and Political Science at the University of Antioquia.

1980-1982

At the age of 28, he was appointed director of the Civil Aeronautics.

1982

President Belisario Betancur appoints him mayor of Medellín –before local rulers were elected by popular vote–, but he resigns after just five months in office.

June 14, 1983

His father, Alberto Uribe Sierra, is assassinated in an attempted kidnapping on the Guacharacas farm.

1986-1993

After two years as a Medellín councilor, he arrived in Congress for the first time, as a member of the Liberal Party, and remained a senator in the next election.

October 30, 1994

He is elected governor of Antioquia in a tight election for the 1995-1997 period.

1998

Study at the University of Oxford.

May 26, 2002

As an independent candidate, he wins in the first round of the presidential elections with 53% of the votes.

August 7, 2002

While taking office as president, the FARC attack public buildings with mortars in the center of Bogotá and kill 17 people.

July 15, 2003

His government begins peace negotiations with paramilitary groups in Santa Fe de Ralito.

January 4, 2005

The Colombian Government announces in Cúcuta the capture of Rodrigo Granda.

Later, it became known that the FARC leader was captured days before in Venezuela and transferred to Colombia, in what President Hugo Chávez considered a violation of sovereignty that raised the tension between the two neighbors.

May 28, 2006

After promoting a reform of the Constitution in Congress to allow reelection, prohibited until then, he is elected for a second term with 62% of the votes.

February 4, 2008

Massive marches are organized in more than a hundred cities in Colombia and the world to repudiate the actions of the FARC at one of the highest points of popularity of President Uribe.

March 1, 2008

He orders Operation Fénix, a military attack on a guerrilla camp in Ecuadorian territory that killed Raúl Reyes, considered the

of the FARC.

The incursion causes a prolonged diplomatic crisis with the government of Rafael Correa.

May 12, 2008

He unexpectedly extradites to the United States 14 heads of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), demobilized as part of the negotiation with paramilitary groups.

July 2, 2008

He orders Operation Jaque, which allowed the release of 15 FARC hostages, including 11 military personnel and some of the highest-profile hostages, such as former Colombian-French presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three US contractors.

February 21, 2011

His cousin Mario Uribe Escobar is convicted of conspiracy to commit a crime within the framework of parapolitics - ties between politicians and paramilitary groups - a scandal that involved several congressmen from the Uribe coalition since 2006.

April 11, 2012

Representative Iván Cepeda conducts a debate on political control over paramilitarism in Antioquia that involves Uribe.

The former president denounces Cepeda before the Supreme Court for presenting false testimonies.

January 20, 2013

Marta Lucía Ramírez, Óscar Iván Zuluaga, Juan Carlos Vélez, Carlos Holmes Trujillo, Francisco Santos and Rafael Guarín meet in Bogotá with former President Álvaro Uribe Vélez to announce the creation of the Democratic Center party.

March 9, 2014

In the legislative elections, he is elected senator by the Democratic Center.

He takes office on July 20.

September 17, 2014

Iván Cepeda, now a senator, is organizing a second debate on the former president's relations with drug trafficking and paramilitarism.

Álvaro Uribe leaves the premises and crosses the Plaza de Bolívar to expand the lawsuit against Cepeda in the Supreme Court.

October 2, 2016

With 50.2% of the votes, no, with Uribe as standard-bearer, prevails in the plebiscite on the peace agreement with the FARC.

November 24, 2016

After a renegotiation between the Government and the FARC to include changes proposed by the promoters of the no, a new peace agreement is signed at the Colón theater in Bogotá.

Uribe refuses to support him.

December 16, 2016

Pope Francis meets in the Vatican with President Juan Manuel Santos and former President Uribe to seek a consensus on the peace agreement, but they do not reach an agreement to reduce political polarization.

February 16, 2018

The Supreme Court files Uribe's complaint against Senator Iván Cepeda, and decides instead to investigate the former president for alleged witness tampering.

March 11, 2018

With more than 800,000 votes, Uribe becomes the most voted senator in the history of Colombia.

With 19 senators and 32 representatives, the Democratic Center becomes the largest bench in Congress.

June 17, 2018

Iván Duque, Uribe's political godson, is elected president in the second round with more than ten million votes.

October 8, 2019

He goes to give an investigation to the Supreme Court and is formally linked to the process for the crimes of bribery and procedural fraud.

August 4, 2020

The Chamber of Investigation of the Supreme Court orders the house arrest of senator and former president Álvaro Uribe.

August 18, 2020

Álvaro Uribe Vélez resigns his seat in the Senate of the Republic.

October 10, 2020

A judge of guarantees grants Uribe freedom, who continues to be investigated for alleged tampering with witnesses.

• Credits

• Coordination and format: Alberto Quero, Brenda Valverde, Francesco Manetto and Eliezer Budasoff

• Video editing: Montserrat Lemus

• Art direction: Fernando Hernández

• Design: Ana Fernández

• Layout: Nelly Natalí