The elected president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, and the elected vice president, Francia Márquez, in Bogotá, on June 23, 2022. Luisa González (Reuters)
Colombia will have, this Sunday, for the first time in 200 years of independent life, a clearly leftist president, former guerrilla Gustavo Petro.
The protocol ceremony will be held in the emblematic Plaza de Bolívar, with the presence of 10 heads of state.
From early in the morning, thousands of people fill the main squares in the center of Bogotá.
The event, the first arrival of a president elected by the left, is expected to attract more than 100,000 people, unlike previous presidential inaugurations that were only attended by politicians and personalities.
"The entire population is invited to the event in the capital," reads the official statement of the event.
There will be no red carpet and the congratulations to the new president will not be called kissing hands, as before, but a presidential greeting, a sample of the symbolism that is planned.
Hours before taking office, Petro appointed two new ministers: Néstor Osuna will be the head of Justice and Catalina Velasco will be in charge of Housing.
The two new members of the Cabinet follow the pattern of the team that has formed the new president of Colombia, who has mainly opted for experience before the renewal, especially in the most decisive portfolios of his government.
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Gustavo Petro, the moment of truth
The concern about dying violently has accompanied Gustavo Petro for almost his entire life.
He slept for a while with a gun under his bed.
He has armored jackets made to measure at a tailor in Bogotá.
When he started flirting with revolutionary groups he wore a hat and fake mustache.
The times that he was arrested by the army with subversive propaganda he thought that his time had come and he wrote farewell letters.
On this crystal clear April morning, Petro watches the Super King Air 300 in the distance, resting on the runway like a sleeping bird.
The security team checks the aircraft's engines and underbody for explosives.
Then he enters the cabin with a German shepherd who sniffs the dashboard in case someone has tampered with it.
At the end, the leader of the group, a military man as square as the armchair in a living room,
he stands on the ladder and gives a thumbs up: all ok.
Then Petro gets in and settles into the seat with a distracted air.
As the engines start he checks out Twitter in an unglamorous old Samsung.
Reread the profile here.
Lucia Franco18:41
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Our comrade Camila Osorio is in the Plaza de Bolívar waiting for Gustavo Petro's possession.
Osorio interviews Aidé Nieto who tells him the story of a flag built on May 12 by a group of textile artists from the city of Jamundí, Valle del Cauca.
Aidé Nieto López, adopted daughter of Jamundí, is a woman who carries the Colombian flag in her hands, which was burned in the Jamundí town hall, but which was rebuilt during the national strike thanks to a group of citizens as a representation of each and every one of the Colombians.
Lucia Franco18:25
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Francia Márquez, the spokesperson for 'the nobody' who became vice president
Francia Márquez, who will assume the vice-presidency of Colombia tomorrow, was on the stage of the Kirchner Cultural Center in Buenos Aires on July 30, in one of the acts of her Latin American tour, while the voice of the Uruguayan poet Eduardo Galeano sounded on a loudspeaker .
With his rhythmic voice, she read his poem The Nobodies: “The nobodies, the children of no one, the owners of nothing.
/ The nobodies: the nobodies, the nobodies, the Hare running, life dying, screwed up, screwed up”.
The first Afro vice president of Colombia did not reveal her expression.
She is a strong, unassailable woman.
She barely managed a smile and asked for applause for the poem.
It could be said of her that she has transformed that poem into a political program.
Her arrival in power represents, in effect, the landing of the so-called nobodies.
Now, her challenge is to materialize those hopes in the first leftist government of Colombia, which Gustavo Petro will preside over.
Márquez was born 40 years ago in Yolombó, a village in Suárez, a municipality in Cauca, in southwestern Colombia.
He has known fear.
The one of not having what to feed his two children, whose parents disappeared;
that of death threats in a country that kills environmental activists like no other.
She was an artisanal miner, she fought against illegal miners who were destroying a river on her land and putting her countrymen at risk of displacement.
Read the full report here.
Lucia Franco18:06
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“The others” come to power
This society for decades has turned its back on itself, denying truths to live among lies, holding with its narrative a containment mesh to avoid falling into the void, making its progress a kind of miracle that overlaps illegality, to impunity, to corruption, to violence, to the economy of war, to inequality.
The moment for reflection and boredom arrived and materialized in a popular election that this Sunday brings Gustavo Petro Urrego to power.
One affirmation is widely heard by Colombians: the country will be in different hands.
But what is it to be different?
From the hand of Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez, people from unknown geographies do not arrive, or with strange customs with whom they do not share a language, or a flag.
Those who arrive are Colombians who have had fewer opportunities, who have seen their rights violated, who have had few microphones turned on so that their version of life counts.
Lucia Franco18:03
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The mayor of Bogotá welcomes Petro and Márquez to the Government.
The mayor of Bogotá, Claudia López, welcomes the elected president, Gustavo Petro, and the vice president, Francia Márquez.
“With great enthusiasm and emotion we begin a new story.
That of having for the first time in the Presidency a government that is part of and elected by the popular majorities and made by the hand of rural and urban Colombia, ”he has said on social networks.
Lucia Franco17:57
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Photo gallery: The party in the Colombian streets
This is how Colombia celebrates the investiture of the left-wing president, Gustavo Petro.
See the full photo gallery here.
Lucia Franco17:49
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The carnival of 'the nobodys': the streets are flooded with parties before the arrival of Gustavo Petro
They called it the party of change, or the party of life, or the party that Gustavo Petro called.
For a country that takes rumba very seriously, this party is different.
The inauguration of the new president of Colombia this Sunday is not only attended by leaders from around the world –such as King Felipe VI;
the Chilean president, Gabriel Boric or the Argentinian Alberto Fernández– but Petro summoned thousands of citizens and artists to take over the country's squares.
The president-elect, a leftist leader who demonstrated his power to summon hundreds to his political events in the campaign, starts with a symbolic party to demonstrate what he repeated in the campaign: his is the government to expand democratic representation, for the excluded , for those who usually do not let in the party.
One of the first to arrive at the party was Dayra Benavides, a leader of the Blacks and Whites Carnival that is celebrated every year in the south west of the capital.
"For us, carnival is the meaning of our life," she says.
“We are disciples of dance, disciples of the carnival, we work all year to go out on one day, and this day for us is historic because Bogotá has not had a carnival for a long time.
Carnival is union, it does not divide but unites, it does not talk about wars, but about our stories, carnivals are a catharsis.
Bogotá needs this, we are going to exorcise many resentments through dance”.
Read the full chronicle here.
Lucia Franco17:43
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Yolanda Díaz congratulates Petro for reaching the presidency of Colombia
The Second Vice President of the Government of Spain and Minister of Labor and Social Economy, Yolanda Díaz, congratulated the president-elect, Gustavo Petro, on Sunday.
In addition, she has wished him all the luck and success at this historic moment for the Colombian people.
"Gustavo Petro, Francia Márquez and the whole of the new Government represent the hope of a better country, with more rights, peace and dignity," Díaz has written on social networks.
Diaz is part of the Communist Party and now in the Petro government the Minister of Housing will be Catalina Velasco, who is a member of the Colombian Communist Party.
Velasco is close to Petro.
Velasco was in his campaign;
she was his vice president of public services for the Bogotá Energy Company when, as mayor, she bet on companies in the District to directly provide public services;
and she is the wife of Eduardo Noriega, Petro's trusted person who was also in his campaign and was his general secretary in the Bogota mayor's office.
Lucia Franco17:39
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Senator Gustavo Bolívar congratulates Petro on a "utopian" victory
Senator Gustavo Bolívar speaks of this August 7 as "the day that a man defeated a utopia and the Colombian people united to defeat a collective fear."
The senator congratulates Petro for the victory they achieved together and reaffirms his support for the new government: "From the heart and not from the pocket."
On the other hand, there have been additional restrictions in the organization of the event, such as the non-entry of the sculpture of Peace.
This had been requested to lead the event parade and military honors.
Despite these restrictions, the organizers affirm that they have complied with all the requirements requested during the assembly of the event.
Lucia Franco17:20
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The goodbye of Duque, the arrival of a Colombia that never understood
In his last speech as president of Colombia before Congress, less than 20 days before closing his term, Iván Duque (Bogotá, 1976) said that his government fulfilled its purpose of “positively transforming Colombia” despite the fact that it faced “the greatest challenge that any Colombian President has ever faced.”
“Nothing stopped us from transforming the country,” he said.
He sounded triumphant.
Minutes later, when he said that he had supported the implementation of the Peace Agreement, dozens of congressmen yelled “liar!” at him.
That, in a Capitol accustomed to ignoring the speakers, but not to booing a president, was so unusual that the president of the Senate took the floor from the president of the Republic to ask for silence and admonish his colleagues.
Four years earlier, on August 7, 2018, nobody interrupted Duque's inauguration speech, who called for the union to seek agreements.
“I do not recognize enemies.
I have no political contenders,” said the youngest president in more than half a century.
He was a politician without much wear and tear, who had been recognized by his colleagues from various parties as a thoughtful and studious senator, who had campaigned as the moderate face of a Uribe movement that seemed to renew itself.
Read the full article here.
Lucia Franco17:12
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The vision of businessmen before Petro: caution in the face of reforms and an unfavorable context
In his victory speech last June, President-elect Gustavo Petro assured that his government will "develop capitalism in Colombia, not because we worship it, but because we first have to overcome pre-modernity."
But his electoral victory represented the triumph of the nobodies, those who have had little—the landless peasants or those unemployed due to the pandemic.
His was not the victory of big capital.
For this reason, among those who nervously await the reforms of the change are many businessmen, business owners who anxiously await what the government of the left-wing president who promised to revolutionize the economic sector will be like.
Some, like ranchers, are still fearful of a rural reform.
Others, like those in technology or small businesses, are cautiously optimistic about tax reform or promises of modernization.
What brings them together, however, is the uncertainty that still exists before the next four years in the midst of a very unfavorable international situation: high inflation, a possible recession, and the rising price of the dollar or of fuels.
Read the full chronicle here.
Lucia Franco17:04
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These are the heads of state that will attend the possession of Gustavo Petro
The event will be attended by the presidents of Argentina, Alberto Fernández;
Chile, Gabriel Boric;
Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso;
Bolivia, Luis Arce;
Paraguay, Mario Abdo Benitez;
Costa Rica, Rodrigo Chaves;
Dominican Republic, Luis Abinader;
Panama, Laurentino Cortizo;
and Honduras, Xiomara Castro.
Another head of state who will attend is King Felipe VI of Spain.
Other delegations will be led by relevant figures, such as the first lady of Mexico, Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller.
El Salvador will be represented by the vice president, Félix Ulloa;
Portugal, Cuba and Serbia for their foreign ministers;
other 10 countries by resident ambassadors in Colombia.
The delegations from the United Kingdom, Japan and South Korea will be led by parliamentary delegates and 13 representatives of international organizations such as CAF, CAN, SEGIB, CEPAL and CAN will be at the event.
Lucia Franco16:41
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The welcome to Petro in the Plaza de Bolívar
Norby and Tania, two survivors of the genocide against the left-wing Patriotic Union party, march firmly towards the central square of Bogotá, Plaza de Bolívar, with messages to their murdered comrades.
“We will never forget them,” says one.
A su lado marcha una mujer afrocolombiana de la guajira con dos aretes en forma de África, como los que usa Francia Márquez.
A la plaza de Bolívar marchan con ellas cientos de personas más, de todas las orillas del país, esperando ver a Gustavo Petro y Francia Márquez.
El centro de Bogotá está cerrado para los autos y varios policías intentan controlar la organización, mientras la plaza está casi llena cuatro horas antes de la posesión del Congreso. Petro convocó a 100.000 personas y, parece, todos los invitados llegarán.
Informa Camila Osorio.
Lucía Franco16:09
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Tres mujeres de izquierda y un pragmático estratega se unen al nuevo gabinete
Un día antes de posesionarse, al presidente electo de Colombia, Gustavo Petro, aún le faltaban diez ministerios más por anunciar. Pero poco después del medio día, el sábado, ha dado los nombres de cuatro ministros que lo acompañarán en su nuevo gabinete en las carteras de Interior, Minas y Energía, Trabajo y Deporte. Hay tres nombres que vienen desde la militancia de la izquierda —y las tres son mujeres, por lo que Petro avanza en su promesa de tener un gabinete paritario—, pero también hay un importante estratega más asociado al santismo y que fue clave para Petro en la campaña electoral.
Lea el artículo completo aquí.
Lucía Franco15:46
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La espada de Bolívar no hará parte de la posesión de Petro
El presidente saliente, Iván Duque, no autorizó el uso de la espada de Bolívar para la posesión de Gustavo Petro. Según Duque, esto no se puede hacer por motivos de seguridad y falta de pólizas.
La espada fue robada por la guerrilla del M-19 y entregada después de firmar el acuerdo de paz el 9 de marzo de 1990 en Caloto, Cauca. Era considerada como un objeto indispensable para la posesión a la presidencia de Gustavo Petro.
Según Noticias Caracol, los motivos de Duque serían de seguridad. A pesar de que el equipo de Petro pagó un seguro y pidió unos permisos especiales en el palacio presidencial, la solicitud fue denegada.
Lucía Franco15:40
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Maria Fernanda Cabal: "La paz total solo existe en el imaginario de quienes asesinan a sus adversarios"
La senadora Maria Fernanda Cabal, del partido Centro Democrático, una de las líderes de la oposición, habló este domingo con la W Radio sobre los desafíos que tendrá que asumir la presidencia de Gustavo Petro, un líder que a su juicio no está a la altura de la mano dura que exige acabar con problemas como el narcotráfico.
Cabal expresó sus preocupaciones ante el presidente electo. “Mientras se tenga coca financiada por la Primera Línea y se le eche la culpa a otras situaciones que no tienen que ver, no habrá ninguna paz".
Tampoco ve con buenos ojos ningún intento adicional de negociación: “Tenemos un juego macabro del pobrecito, con la excusa de la deuda histórica". La senadora se mostró también en contra del acuerdo de paz: "La paz total solo existe en el imaginario de quienes asesinan a sus adversarios".
Lucía Franco15:23
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"Hoy estoy de carnaval, hoy no estoy de posesión"
Entre los que empiezan a llegar al centro de Bogotá hay varios desplazados por la guerra, como Víctor Jiménez, un hombre de 50 años que salió del departamento de Tolima después de que su hermano fue asesinado por pertenecer a un partido de izquierda.
Víctor camina por la celebración con un enorme cartón con las figuras de Gustavo Petro y Francia Márquez.
“Soy uno de los nadies” dice Víctor Jiménez. “Hoy estoy de carnaval, hoy no estoy de posesión presidencial, hoy empieza la potencia mundial de la vida a crecer y a construirse desde abajo con los negros, los bancos, los indios, las putas y los maricas. Vamos a vivir sabroso. Estoy reivindicando hoy a mi hermano, él resucitó hoy con el carnaval de la vida en el pueblo colombiano”
Informa Camila Osorio.
Lucía Franco15:20
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El ministro de Justicia será Néstor Osuna
Abogado de la Universidad Externado de Colombia, experto en derecho constitucional y derecho público, no viene de la izquierda aunque tiene una mirada liberal progresista, y tradicionalmente ha tenido el apoyo de ese partido.
Es conocedor del sector justicia, pues fue magistrado de la Sala Disciplinaria del Consejo Superior de la Judicatura, ternado por Juan Manuel Santos entre 2013.
Tras salir de la Judicatura, en 2017 el presidente Juan Manuel Santos lo volvió a ternar para la Corte Constitucional. Ha sido consultor de varias entidades.
Lucía Franco15:07
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La ministra de vivienda será Catalina Velasco
La economista y especialista en políticas públicas, Catalina Velasco, será la nueva ministra de Vivienda.
Velasco tiene trayectoria en el asunto de su cartera y en la izquierda, por lo que su nombramiento es un guiño a la vez a la experiencia y a la izquierda.
Entre otras, fue subsecretaria y luego secretaria de Planeación de Bogotá, con el primer alcalde elegido por la izquierda, Lucho Garzón, y de Hábitat del segundo, Samuel Moreno.
Ademas, participó en el megaproyecto urbanístico llamado Ciudad Usme para personas de bajos recursos en la ciudad de Bogotá.
Fue vicepresidenta de servicios públicos de la Empresa de Energía de Bogotá durante la alcaldía de Gustavo Petro (2014).
Lucía Franco14:58
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María Elvira Samper: “A Petro hay que darle un compás de espera”
María Elvira Samper, veterana periodista colombiana, acaba de lanzar el libro Extradición, que revisa los 40 años de guerra contra las drogas que han marcado ese período. Samper recibe a EL PAÍS en su casa a días de que se inicie el primer gobierno netamente de izquierda en 200 años de vida independiente del país sudamericano.
Pregunta. La posesión de Gustavo Petro es un hito histórico ¿Por qué cree que finalmente ganó un candidato de izquierda?
Respuesta. Petro no hubiera sido elegido presidente si no hubiera habido acuerdo con las Farc, porque la izquierda en Colombia era asociada con la izquierda armada. Su victoria también fue posible por el fracaso del Gobierno Duque de sintonizarse con la opinión.
En cambio, Petro viene hablando de lo ambiental desde hace mucho tiempo e interpretó lo que estaba sucediendo en movimientos como los del paro o el movimiento estudiantil, con un montón de situaciones que venían de atrás. Creo que su activo es haber logrado crear empatía con sectores de población tradicionalmente marginados y frente a los cuales hay una gran deuda. Ahora, es de izquierda moderada.
P. ¿Cómo ve el Gobierno de Iván Duque?
R. Intentó gobernar sin mermelada [cuotas burocráticas a otros partidos] pero no se puede, eso es utópico. Tiene que haber acuerdos políticos, se necesita unión. Luego terminó dando puestos, pero no hizo acuerdos, su idea de hacer una conversación nacional terminó en nada.
We hoped that he would have been moderate, as he presented himself in the campaign and in his inaugural speech, but he became radicalized and focused on his party's agenda, although within his party he had opponents such as Senator María Fernanda Cabal and others. of the toughest wing, like Rafael Nieto.
Read the full interview here
Lucia Franco14:44
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