By
The Associated Press
Piedad Córdoba, the controversial left-wing Colombian congresswoman who became famous for her close friendship with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and for her apparent closeness to the guerrilla groups with which she achieved the release of at least 20 kidnapped people, died this Saturday, reported the President Gustavo Petro.
She was 68 years old
.
“As a congressman I met her and as a senator she died.
A true liberal has died,” Petro wrote on the social network X (formerly Twitter).
Córdoba was born on January 25, 1955 in Medellín, Colombia's second city, 250 kilometers northwest of the capital Bogotá.
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According to Caracol news, the senator
suffered a heart attack
after which she was found in her apartment in Medellín.
In a statement, the Conquistadores clinic, where she was taken by family members, confirmed that Senator Córdoba arrived at 12:50 p.m., local time.
In the emergency area, she was evaluated by medical personnel who found her “without vital signs,” after which “cardiopulmonary resuscitation maneuvers were performed without response,” the document added.
Former senator Piedad Córdoba talks with members of the FARC, in San Isidro, Colombia, on May 30, 2012. Fernando Vergara / AP
After declaring her dead, Córdoba's body was made available to forensic medicine, stated the statement signed by the medical director of that health center, Martín Mora.
The vice president, Francia Márquez, joined the messages of condolences for the death of Córdoba, whom she described in X as the woman “who opened the doors of Colombian politics to women of African descent.”
The mayor of Medellín, Federico Gutiérrez, also expressed his solidarity with the senator's family.
The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, close to Córdoba, regretted her departure on the same network, and assured that she was one of the “bravest women he has ever met.”
Maduro accompanied his message with a photo with the senator.
The senator with the turbans
Known throughout Colombia for her colorful turbans that evoke her African heritage, Córdoba stood out as a stalwart of the left in one of the most conservative countries in Latin America and paid a high price for her vociferous defense of some of the country's most disenfranchised. .
Like in March 2007, in Mexico City, when she asked “the progressive governments of Latin America” to break diplomatic relations with Colombia because, according to her, the Government of former President Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010) had been elected by the mafia. of drug trafficking and paramilitarism.
Congresswoman Piedad Córdoba, center, participates in a march in favor of the Venezuelan Government on the 10th anniversary of President Hugo Chávez, in Caracas, Venezuela, on March 5, 2023. Matias Delacroix / AP
On another occasion, in Cali, capital of the department of Valle del Cauca and 300 kilometers west of Bogotá, he told a group of students that the armed struggle was justified in the country, a statement that went against leaders of the left. Latin American like the Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who years ago had discarded the means of force to achieve power.
With those comments, of course, his name could not go unnoticed by his detractors.
But her followers admired and respected her and even justified her false starts, such as rumors about her apparent ideological closeness to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
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“That's not true, those are lies,” the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, told The Associated Press in October 2009.
According to the Argentine pacifist, what Córdoba was doing was “trying to free the hostages (held by the guerrillas) and trying to bring peace to Colombia.”
Córdoba aroused fervor among the kidnapped, the former kidnapped, and their families.
They all saw her as a savior.
And they were right because she achieved something that for many seemed unthinkable: that politicians, police and soldiers who had been kidnapped by the FARC for more than six years returned to their homes in several handover operations starting in January 2008.
The trajectory of Córdoba
Córdoba was the eldest of the 12 children that the educators Zabulón Córdoba and Lía Ruiz had.
They settled in Santa Lucía, a lower-middle class neighborhood in Medellín.
It was the time when it was said that the most poorly paid workers in the country were teachers and police officers.
With that little salary income, the Córdoba-Ruiz couple took on the task of raising their dozen children.
Córdoba studied high school at a public school known as CEFA or Centro Formativo de Antioquia.
There she began to forge herself and show the fiery spirit that would characterize her in the future.
“From a young age she was already a leader,” Amanda Arboleda, her friend from her youth, recalled in a telephone conversation.
“She was the one who talked the most, the one who put up the most fights, she never swallowed whole,” Arboleda added.
After finishing her law degree at the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, Córdoba began her political career in the popular neighborhoods of Medellín, always with the Liberal Party.
Around that same time she married Luis Castro, with whom she had four children: three men and one woman.
Her great boss in those early days of politics was the former minister William Jaramillo, now deceased, and who, for example, made her his private secretary when he served as mayor of Medellín between 1984 and 1986.
She was a councilor of Medellín and deputy of the Assembly of the department of Antioquia.
Between 1992 and 1994 she served as a representative to the House and from 1994 to 2010 she always had a seat in the Senate.
Since his arrival in Bogotá as a congressman, he began to make noise.
She was always against majorities and, according to her, in favor of minorities.
Since then she began to make contacts, almost publicly, with guerrilla groups.
Perhaps this closeness to the rebels was the reason for his kidnapping, in mid-1999 and for 14 days, by order of the most important paramilitary leader in Colombia at the time, Carlos Castaño, murdered in 2004 by his lieutenants.
The media recorded at that time that she was never intimidated by Castaño and that, on the contrary, she always appeared haughty and defiant before him.
The policy was released after efforts by senior liberal leaders.
It was Córdoba who, after her release, cited a phrase that Castaño had told her and that anticipated what would later become one of the country's biggest scandals: the relations of the political world with paramilitarism.
According to Córdoba, the top leader of these armed gangs had told him that he was tired of being treated like a prostitute whom many visit at night and give gifts, but who during the day no one knows.
By the end of 2006, there were already dozens of congressmen, governors and mayors who were being investigated by the courts for these ties with the paramilitaries.
After his kidnapping, Córdoba left with his children for a while in Canada.
She only returned to campaign in search of renewing her seat as senator in the 2002 legislative elections, which she narrowly achieved.
In Congress, she was one of the most powerful defenders of the then liberal president Ernesto Samper (1994-1998), accused of having financed his electoral campaign with money from the Cali drug cartel, which he always denied, while in the country paramilitarism and guerrillas expanded.
In the end, Samper was acquitted and one of his squires was Córdoba, who always maintained a close alliance with the president.
On August 7, 2002, Álvaro Uribe took office as president of Colombia and from that moment Córdoba became the head of the opposition.
During the eight years that Uribe remained in power, he did not stop describing him as illegitimate and, above all, pointing out that he was close and related to paramilitary groups.
Furthermore, while Uribe has been in favor of fighting the rebels through military means, Córdoba said that with the guerrillas the solution should be through dialogue.
Despite their conflicting ideological positions, in August 2007 Uribe authorized Córdoba to approach the FARC and try to obtain the release of a large group of politicians and members of the public force who were kidnapped by that guerrilla.
Despite many ups and downs, in January and February 2008 Córdoba and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, his friend, managed to get the FARC to hand over six politicians who had been kidnapped by that illegal group for between six and seven years.
Then Córdoba's actions with the FARC and his closeness to Chávez began to be frowned upon in Colombia by conservative and Uribista sectors.
In fact, in 2008 Córdoba was on board a plane that covered the Bogotá-Caracas route and several of her passengers were about to attack her by beating her, calling her a “stateless person.”
At the same time, the Supreme Court of Justice began a previous investigation into his apparent links with the FARC, based on hundreds of emails that he exchanged with Raúl Reyes, the FARC guerrilla leader killed on March 1, 2008 in Ecuadorian territory.
But Córdoba, who was a woman of a thousand battles, continued without looking back with her work to achieve the release of the other kidnapped people, now without the help of Chávez.
Between January 2008 and February 2011, the FARC handed over 20 more kidnapped people, including politicians, soldiers and police.
The capture of his brother
Córdoba was “a tireless woman, a builder of peace in Colombia,” commented Iván Cepeda, a congressman and human rights activist who for about four years became one of her main supporters in a movement founded by her, “Colombianos y Colombianas for the peace".
In 2022 she was once again elected senator on the list of Petro's political movement, the first left-wing president in the history of the country.
In the last years of his life, Córdoba dealt with the capture and extradition of his brother Álvaro Fredy to the United States on federal charges related to narcotics.
A few days before his death, he pleaded guilty.
The congresswoman's brother accepted that he was part of an operation in which he offered to introduce informants from the United States to dissident guerrillas who could help introduce large quantities of cocaine into New York.
Despite the process his brother faced, Córdoba always defended his innocence and also his.