Marelen Castillo, vice-presidential formula of Rodolfo Hernández.COLPRENSA
Rodolfo Hernández is the name of the moment in the days before the first round of the presidential elections this Sunday.
Despite the fact that he was third in the last polls published before the ban on electoral polls, his rise has marked the dynamics of the final stretch, and that momentum threatens the presence of Federico Gutiérrez in a possible second round in which Gustavo Petro seems to have his quota assured.
In a striking paradox, Hernández's formula, the academic and researcher Marelen Castillo (Cali, 53 years old), is by far the least known among the candidates for the Vice Presidency.
An engineer with a short political career, Rodolfo, as everyone knows him, does not claim to be on the right or the left, but has emerged as a populist phenomenon to be taken seriously – to the point that some observers liken him to Donald Trump.
The former mayor of Bucaramanga, who made his fortune as a construction businessman, has taken advantage of his social media strategy, and in some of the videos he appears lifting weights to show that he is like an oak despite his 77 years.
He is, however, the oldest applicant, so the profile of the second on board of him becomes important.
In a campaign where female candidacies with real options have been scarce, Hernández always proposed to choose a woman.
Castillo is a very Catholic teacher who was practically unknown in the Colombian public debate.
She is a biologist and chemist from the Santiago de Cali University, and an industrial engineer from the Autonomous University of the West, she became rector in charge of the Lumen Gentium Catholic University Foundation.
With a distance learning master's degree from Tec de Monterrey, she moved to Bogotá in 2008, and later pursued a doctorate in education from Nova Southeastern University in Florida, United States.
In the Colombian capital, she made a career with the Minuto de Dios University Corporation, Uniminuto, founded by the remembered father Rafael García Herreros, where she worked as academic vice-rector when Rodolfo Hernández (without knowing her) asked her to accompany his candidacy.
Since then, Ella Castillo has not attracted major attention, since the polls only began to capture the rise of the former mayor of Bucaramanga in the last two weeks.
Castillo is also an Afro-descendant candidate, something unusual in Colombia.
But in a campaign that has seen the novelty of several vice-presidential candidates of African descent from the Pacific region, she has been overshadowed by some of her competitors, much better known and with more political experience.
Among them, the great electoral phenomenon that Francia Márquez has become, the environmental activist who accompanies the leftist Petro, the leader of all the polls, or by Luis Gilberto Murillo, the former Minister of the Environment who is the
number two
candidate of the center Serge Fajardo.
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The academic, who joined the campaign at a time of confusion, when
the engineer
was competing for attention with the consultations of the three large blocks from which he decided to stay out, was not his first option.
Hernández appointed her in March, after the failed announcement of an opposing profile, that of Paola Ochoa, a controversial economic journalist with conservative positions.
The well-known communicator, used to provoking noisy media controversies, resigned from the proposal a few days later, citing family reasons.
Castillo herself has said that she did not know Hernández.
A colleague from UniMinuto called her to tell her that they were looking for the formula for
the engineer
, who supports her aspiration in a vehement speech against corruption, or "to put an end to robbery," as she likes to express it.
“And I: 'ah, the old man from Bucaramanga'.
I know he has done.
There they told me that I could be and that, without being political, it is what he wants.
There I presented my resume, "she said in an interview with
Caracol Radio
.
"I wanted to contribute to education," she has said on several occasions.
“The perfect strangers are more”, she has defended.
Diana Saray Giraldo, who was director of
Vanguardia
, the Bucaramanga newspaper, and has closely followed Hernández's career, confirms that "Rodolfo, before her, offered the Vice Presidency to many women in the country."
"He was clear that he wanted a woman, preferably black, who was not much older than 50 years," says the journalist, who is now part of the
Caracol Radio
table .
In her opinion, Castillo's appointment occurred in the face of the refusal of other figures of greater national scope, and has not had a greater impact, "unlike Francia Márquez, who has moved votes from Petro."
At the time, analyst and consultant Andrés Segura agrees, "the image left by the former mayor is that it was an appointment to meet a requirement," especially when considering that the first woman elected declined the invitation a few days after the announcement.
“Castillo is an academic with an interesting resume in university management and teaching, but without a presence in the national political debate, and in these weeks that situation has not changed, the axis of the campaign has focused on the engineer Hernández ”, he points.
Although Marelen Castillo has had a secondary role, it is foreseeable that in the event of a runoff with Rodolfo Hernández that will put her under the spotlight.
"It can be anticipated that the opposing campaign will try to frame the conversation about Hernández's abilities to govern, which range from his limited knowledge of various issues in the country, to his advanced age and a team with no political experience," says Segura. .
"In that case, they will be able to take advantage of Castillo's profile to attack him," she predicts.
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