Rodolfo Hernández, Colombia as a company

Rodolfo Hernández is seeking the presidency of Colombia as he did when he became mayor of Bucaramanga: as if he were selling a real estate project.

He is a man with cement in his head, described by Rubby Morales Sierra, a woman who worked with him and later denounced him for workplace harassment.

She relentlessly affirms it, with that harsh tone used by people who, like Hernández, were born in Santander, in the northeast of the country.

It is something that his friends repeat, in other ways.

Hernández, 77, is a pragmatist, "a doer," someone who thinks of works, of tiles and bricks.

Rodrigo Fernández met Rodolfo Hernández at the end of the seventies, they coincided in the Santandereana Society of Engineers.

When he remembers that time he is not surprised to now see his colleague as one of the two candidates to reach the Presidency.

If he did so well in his profession and is a construction tycoon, how could he not do well with his goal of making his presidential name.

It is that Hernández, says his friend, calculates everything as if it were a work that he wants to sell.

He sets a goal, plans, convinces, sells, executes and delivers results.

In his goal of being the next president, he is halfway there and he lacks the most important thing: convincing.

That will only be known on June 19, when the elections are held, but for now, his colleague believes, it is going well.

“In public, he does the same as in construction:

plans projects and sells them to the market.

He knows how to do it on time and with the expected costs.

And that, applied to public administration, works”, says Fernández.

The evidence is in the streets of Piedecuesta, where he was born on March 26, 1945, and in the more than 18,000 houses that bear his brand in Santander.

“This is the first one he built, that was the prototype, which he later modified,” Antonio Ortiz says proudly, pointing to some low houses on a street renamed Pasaje Gómez and listing the neighborhoods named after Argentine cities.

Palermo, Buenos Aires, Bariloche, Junín, La Rioja are scattered throughout the city that Hernández has been amassing with his particular style.

At his age and after making a fortune as a builder, he decided to run for president.

Not even his mother can explain why.

"My mom says I'm crazy," he himself said in an interview about Cecilia Suárez, to whom they attribute the impulsive and angry character of the candidate who promotes the fight against corruption, has said he admires Hitler (although he later claimed that it was a slip) , has said that women must remain in the house and that once he takes possession, he will decree a state of internal commotion.

Cecilia Hernández Suárez, mother of Rodolfo Hernández, in the living room of her house.

Carlos Buitrago

There is no one in Piedecuesta who does not know the story of "Mrs. Cecilia", as everyone tells her, when she ran after her husband with a revolver in her hand, she still has one in her drawer, nor does she have an anecdote with HG, her signature builder.

But few talk about him before he became the billionaire businessman he is today.

His fortune is 100 million dollars.

Two of his companies are in Florida, where he is usually also.

Until recently he had five properties there.

Hernández is the son of a woman who owns a sugar mill and the town tailor.

He studied civil engineering in Bogotá and his history as a builder begins in the 70s in the corner of the air, in the middle of the main park of Piedecuesta, and there is also the evidence that he thinks of Colombia as a huge real estate project yet to be built.

One that needs to be knocked down because it has been erected on “the robbery of the corrupt”, as he often says.

A 60-square-meter white prefabricated house, similar to a

, is the entrance to Hernández's proposal for the country's poorest (“Work with the poor and you will become rich”, is a phrase attributed to him).

The space is a modest construction, visited by people as if they were future buyers.

Inside, a man hands over three papers and explains: “House, my fortune is this house that Rodolfo proposes for people to stay in the countryside.

Ópera is where there will be a center for health and cultural services, and Ciudad Justicia, (a 5,000-square-meter farm) where he plans to transfer the prisoners.”

Fifteen minutes away, in an opulent area surrounded by trees, is the candidate's vacation home.

A huge sculpture of a dog and a mural with the face of a woman adorn the facade of the property that is guarded by the Police.

Since Hernández said, without presenting evidence, that his life is at risk and that he would be “stabbed”, a group of agents were assigned to take care of the property.

Inside is the kitchen from where he gave a speech when he got his pass to the second round.

Rodolfo Hernández likes the virtual before becoming fashionable with the pandemic.

His former employees agree that, in order to avoid any expense, unnecessary for him, such as travel or per diem, he asked his workers to do everything online.

Police guard the estate of presidential candidate Rodolfo Hernandez, in Piedecuesta, Colombia, on June 10, 2022.NATHALIA ANGARITA

Along with one of his brothers, he founded the political movement Liga de Gobernantes Anticorrupción, whose symbols and principles do not resemble the style that Hernández has shown the country.

The number π (Pi) and the slogan "Logic, Ethics and Aesthetics" are present in all the candidate's advertising.

The brain behind the campaign was his brother and philosopher Gabriel Hernández.

With this ideology, Rodolfo conquered the mayor's office of Bucaramanga in 2015. But a few months later, his brother Gabriel distanced himself from him and even today it is a mystery what the reason was.

"Six years ago I made the decision to remain completely and utterly anonymous in order to have

under control and thus advance my philosophical analysis," he replied by email to the request for an interview.

Journalist Rubby Morales participated in that campaign, says she wrote the government plan and now regrets it.

“Rodolfo is like Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

One person in the campaign and another in the administration.

A fickle and erratic man, ”says the woman whose voice has become known in Colombia, after leaking an audio in which the then mayor yells at her and threatens to fire her.

"I wipe my ass with the Law," Hernández is heard saying.

The engineer, as he likes to be called, has been questioned for distributing "check letters" among the poorest people in the city and promising them that if he reached the Mayor's Office he would build 20,000 houses.

His commitment was to benefit low-income people with a housing option and to do it with good designs because, as he likes to say, "the poor deserve the best", but it was not like that.

And as it happened with a project from years ago, also for the "poor", as he repeats so often, he did not exactly fulfill what he promised.

Although the beneficiaries did have the facilities to buy them because Hernández's own construction company, HG, lent them the money to acquire them, what they were given was finished on the outside, but inside in black work, without a floor and with exposed bricks.

The journalist, Ruby Morales in Bucaramanga, on June 9, 2022.NATHALIA ANGARITA

The fight against corruption, his mantra

With that vision of business and adjustment, he acted in the Mayor's Office that most of his former officials qualify as good.

"He cleaned up the finances and left surplus money in the bank," recalls Ciro Gamboa.

That is his main card to reach the presidency and that is why he repeats the mantra of "do not steal, do not lie and do not betray".

Although that bet has a huge mole.

While raising the anti-corruption case, Hernández is accused of alleged participation in the illegal award of a contract.

But this case, which is carried out by the Prosecutor's Office, is only a small fraction of a larger scandal called Vitalogic, which involves his son in the collection of a millionaire commission.

A local journalist, who prefers not to give his name, assures that with him "Bucaramanga has had the most disastrous mayor's office so far."

The relationship with the press is tense.

Although he likes to appear in the media, he prefers to speak only to those who applaud him.

“His management was null, exclusively approved by journalists who handled the image of an old front man,” says the communicator, who summarizes his government in the capital of Santander as a string of media scandals, viral situations, profanity and populism, immersed in scenes that only sought to arouse emotions.

The audios that have been known in the final stage of the contest in which he seeks to reach the Casa de Nariño agree with the journalist.

Hernández has appeared more in the pages of the newspapers because of his episodes of anger than because of his work in the Bucaramanga headquarters.

An audio leaked to the media is the photo of his temperament.

Hernández tells a subordinate that he receive a document within a project, although the norm requires others.

“The norm can say what it wants.

The law doesn't matter,” shouts the candidate.

Supporters of presidential candidate Rodolfo Hernandez campaign voluntarily in Bucaramanga.NATHALIA ANGARITA

With some humor, local journalists say that when they got an interview with him they preferred not to sit so close, suddenly he would have a fit and they would end up flying pens over their heads.

Without the same grace, Jhon Claro, the councilman who received the famous slap from the mayor, recounts the episode.

They had met to talk about a local issue, but when Claro had the audacity to mention the mess his son got him into, and that he has him at the door of a trial that begins on July 21, Rodolfo lost his temper. , exploded in anger and hit him, in a scene that was recorded because Hernández himself brought cameras.

Another journalist explains that there are three reasons for the success that has Hernández at the gates of the presidency.

He says what people want to hear, he promises things that he knows he can't keep, but that convinces people, and he has excellent social media skills.

He is similar to what has been seen since he launched his presidential candidacy: he has said that he is going to end corruption, that Colombians who do not know the sea will do so under his government and he is the king of TikTok.

The creation of a product

Rodolfo Hernández is convinced that he will be president and that he will achieve it with 15 million votes.

His campaign headquarters is called Casa Nariño, the same name as the presidential palace in Colombia.

In that colonial house located in Bucaramanga, they sell it as a product.

His supporters come to look for hats, t-shirts and many other advertising items.

But they have to pay.

Voters take out of their pocket for participating in that brand that is Rodolfo Hernández.

"Rodolfo Hernández is a very good product and we sell it," said Luisa Fernanda Olejua Pico, the press officer.

"He has managed to win the sympathy of his countrymen," says Isabel Ortiz, who did not know much about him until she received the invitation to be his advisor on gender issues in the mayor's office.

"He doesn't think to speak," says she, who had to meet the mayor's blunders.

“If there is something negative to point out about Rodolfo, it is his language, that he gets excited quickly and that he speaks without thinking.

Sometimes I had to tell him: Mr. Mayor, you can't talk like that about women, about sex workers.

Years have passed and those kinds of comments come out again, ”acknowledges Ortiz, who clarifies that he never had an altercation or received an insult.

At the campaign headquarters of presidential candidate Rodolfo Hernández, political advertising is sold to supporters who buy it to distribute in the streets and support the candidate, Bucaramanga. NATHALIA ANGARITA

Of the intimate life of Rodolfo Hernández it is known what he has wanted to tell.

He has been married to Socorro Suárez for decades, has four children.

Two of them adopted at the beginning of the marriage when they did not know if they could be parents.

The most mysterious chapter is related precisely to Juliana, the only woman, who according to her father's versions was kidnapped in 2004 by the guerrillas.

Hernández has said it was the FARC, then blamed the ELN.

In recent days she has assured that she was murdered, although her body has never been found.

It is a topic to which he sometimes responds with tears and others with laughter, as in the interview he gave this week in Miami to journalist Jaime Bayly.

Rodolfo Hernández took office as a product, as the candidate who came to fill a void in the political market, and bring together in his voice the tiredness of Colombians with the traditional ruling class of which Hernández presents himself as an

, but his career It shows him more as a builder with the desire to make Colombia his business project.

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