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(CNN Spanish) - Claudia Nayibe López Hernández is the daughter of a teacher and a humble man, grew up in several poor-class neighborhoods in Bogotá, is the oldest of six siblings, studied thanks to educational credits and scholarships, and after a successful career As a researcher and journalist. And now she was elected as the first mayor of the capital of Colombia.
Claudia López (1970) is a lesbian, has a master's degree in Public Administration and Urban Policy at Columbia University in New York at the University of New York, who studied thanks to a scholarship, and recently obtained her PhD in Political Science at the University from Northwestern. She has also led the fight against corruption in Colombia for years and became the first woman to be elected mayor of Bogotá on Sunday, the second most important popular election position in Colombia after the Presidency.
- Claudia López is the first woman elected mayor of Bogotá in her history
Today is the day of girls, young people, women, freehand families like yours and mine!
Of those who are a majority and today we will make history because we chose what unites us!
We will win! Thanks Bogotá! # ClaudiaNuestraAlcaldesa🌻pic.twitter.com / JB7dSJZ5xZ
- Claudia López 👍 (@ClaudiaLopez) October 27, 2019
Although some women had already ruled Bogotá by appointment, López managed to get more than 1.1 million Bogota citizens to choose a woman at the polls this Sunday. In their list of promises are improving security in the capital of the country, improving the mobility of the city by completing the first line of the Metro, the impulse to free quality education and citizen culture.
The beginning
López's political history began at his 18 years, at the end of the 1980s, a bloody era where drug violence had subjected the country.
“In 1990 I was going to vote for the first time and they killed my three candidates: Luis Carlos Galán, Carlos Pizarro and Bernardo Jaramillo,” López said in an interview in which he said that it was so that he joined the movement of the Seventh ballot, a student initiative that sought to promote the National Constituent Assembly that resulted in the 1991 Constitution.
When we promoted 7th paper, it seemed impossible to achieve Constitution91, like this year disarming the Farc. We will also defeat corruption! pic.twitter.com/V9FzNtam5K
- Claudia López 👍 (@ClaudiaLopez) July 4, 2017
Although politics ran through his blood, when he was young he won a scholarship to study medicine in Poland, but a world event changed his course.
“I won the scholarship to Poland. I had everything. I was two weeks away from leaving, the Berlin Wall fell, the Polish Government fell, ”he told Semana Magazine in 2018.
His dream of going to study medicine was postponed, perhaps forever. But it took a new direction: studying Finance, Government and International Relations at a university in Bogotá, where it accessed thanks to a loan from the Colombian Institute of Educational Credit and Technical Studies Abroad (ICETEX), a very recurring option among young people who want to access to higher education, but they have no way to finance their studies.
Years later, Lopez went to study English in the United States. There he did a master's degree in Public Administration and Urban Policy from Columbia University in New York.
Much of his life has been dedicated to being a researcher and that was how in 2004, upon his arrival in Colombia, he saw a scandalous scene in Colombian politics: some congressmen applauding three paramilitary chiefs - Salvatore Mancuso, Ramón Isaza and aka Ernesto Báez - in full Congress, as reported by the local press. The scene prompted her to investigate how those parliamentarians who applauded and uncovered the scandal of the Parapolitics, the paramilitary links with politicians in Congress who sought to “refound the homeland,” according to their website.
Lopez wrote the book "And they re-founded the Homeland" in 2010, about the relations between politicians and paramilitaries, drug traffickers, guerrillas and criminal gangs.
- Claudia López: What this agreement proposes has nothing to do with socialism
Lopez, "the screamer"
In recent years Lopez has had a moving political career. In 2014, he first launched a position of popular election and came to the Senate with more than 81,000 votes, the highest vote of his collective, the Green Alliance Party.
Some say that it is "incisive", "irreverent", "daring", and others, its most bitter contradictors, have branded it "populist, guerrilla, crazy", but she defends herself by saying that she will continue to fight corruption.
“I have been a director of community action, I have been a researcher, I have been a journalist. I have handled billions of pesos, and all they have to say is that I am screaming? What a joy !, right? ”, He said earlier this month in an interview with Caracol Televisión.
"That is the great flaw they found me!" He says. "I don't steal, I rule well, I lead, I produce results, but I scream," he adds laughing.
For López, the “caricaturization” that they have made of her has to do with the fact that she is a woman and is in a society in which women prefer them “submissive and quiet”, but she insists that they cannot silence her against corruption .
In 2018, today the elected mayor and her partner launched an anti-corruption consultation that sought to tighten the laws against the corrupt, which exceeded 11.6 million votes, but did not reach the threshold to be converted into law. In 2018, she was a vice presidential candidate with Sergio Fajardo, but they also failed to win. They obtained 23.74% of the votes.
A year later, in 2019, after a long campaign, López managed to beat three other political adversaries who could not overcome his large vote: more than 35% of the votes in the country's capital.
Celebrating his long-awaited victory, López left an image for the story: a kiss with his partner, Senator Angélica Lozano, a scene that bothered the most conservative sectors of the country, but evidenced a changing reality in the most important city of Colombia.
This was the celebration of Claudia López with Angélica Lozano after winning the mayor's office https://t.co/HplrdHvw4P pic.twitter.com/FNGHQNeKdq
- CABLENOTICIAS (@CABLENOTICIAS) October 28, 2019
Claudia López will govern Bogotá between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2023.