From Quibdó to Caracas: a tour of the cities that marked the life of Piedad Córdoba

The figure of Piedad Córdoba aroused all kinds of political passions in Colombia.

The combative legislator, an ardent defender of peace and minorities, also lived at the center of controversy for her relations with the extinct FARC guerrilla, when she still took up arms, and for the warm welcome that the Chavista Government gave her. from neighboring Venezuela.

Her funeral honors include Medellín, Quibdó and Bogotá, the three cities that defined her political career along with Caracas.

Medellin

Piedad Córdoba was born on January 25, 1955 in the Manrique Oriental neighborhood of Medellín and died on January 20, 2024, at the age of 68, victim of a heart attack, in the same city.

The daughter of two school teachers, Zabulón Córdoba and Lía Ruiz, she spent most of her childhood and youth in the capital of Antioquia.

She studied Law at the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana de Medellín, where she specialized in Organizational and Family Law.

“Life became impossible for me at the university: black, revolutionary, with an afro hairstyle and a miniskirt in an absolutely confessional institution,” she told

El Espectador

in a 2016 interview.

Piedad Córdoba in Washington (USA), in 2007.Jose Luis Magana (AP)

While studying, Córdoba began his political career in the slums of Medellín.

To help his parents pay for his studies, he set up a salsa tavern with his brothers called Mi Viejo San Juan.

There he received the first of many threats against his life.

One day the bar woke up destroyed by the explosion of a firecracker.

At the beginning of the 1980s, he met former senator and Liberal Party politician William Jaramillo, who in 1986 was appointed mayor of Medellín.

Córdoba, niece of another liberal congressman, was, first, deputy municipal controller of the city and, later, Jaramillo's private secretary.

In her first days as a leader, she stood out for her commitment to the three causes that would mark her political life: the rights of women and the LGBTQ community, the end of the armed conflict and the construction of peace, and the recognition of black people.

He was mayor and councilor of Medellín for the Liberal Party between 1988 and 1990 and representative to the chamber for Antioquia between 1992 and 1994. The journalist and literary critic Pedro Adrián Zuluaga recalled on his social networks the work of Córdoba during those years in a Catholic Medellín and ultra-conservative: “Piedad Córdoba was the first Colombian politician to champion the rights of LGBTI people as a cause.

I remember her hand to hand in the bars of Medellín.

“No one had to explain to him the effects of stigma, racialization and discrimination.”

Piedad Córdoba speaks with the hostage Juan Galicia, police officer, upon being released by the FARC, in 2009. Jorge Enrique Botero (AP)

In 1994, William Jaramillo left the Senate and Córdoba inherited his seat until 1998. A year later, on May 21, 1999, she was kidnapped by paramilitary chief Carlos Castaño while she was in the waiting room of a dental office in the El neighborhood. Town of Medellín.

She lasted 16 days in captivity.

Some time after her release, she decided to go into exile in Canada to preserve her life and that of her children.

Quibdo

The coffin arrived in Quibdó on Sunday.

The capital of Chocó was the first of the three stops for the funeral honors of Piedad Córdoba.

Her family connection with that jungle department with a majority of African descent was deep.

Her second cousin, Nubia Carolina Córdoba, became, with her support, the first female governor of Chocó in last October's elections.

Her uncle, Diego Luis Córdoba, was an important Chocoan congressman who promoted the creation of the department in 1947. The turban that Piedad turned into a symbol of her political activity was also a vindication of those roots.

People pay tribute to Piedad Córdoba, this Monday in Congress. NATHALIA ANGARITA

“An iron woman left who had to be forged in the fire of discrimination and inequality to give a voice to women and minorities in the exercise of politics,” the governor dismissed her in one of several messages to exalt her figure and his legacy.

“Piedad Esneda Córdoba Ruiz, whom Chocó was proud to call her own, is gone,” her relative added.

Piedad's commitment to Chocó was endorsed in a letter he sent to President Gustavo Petro a few days after his death.

The letter, dated January 14, was a call to work for the poorest department in the country, with a long list of projects to harmonize with the new governor's program.

Among others, special economic zones to promote exports, recover the Atrato River, affected by mining and deforestation, or expand educational coverage.

Bogota

Piedad Córdoba moved to the country's capital for the first time in 1992, when she arrived at the Congress of the Republic as a representative to the Chamber.

The last years of her life were spent in a building in the center, near the District Planetarium and in front of the Colpatria Tower.

It was common to see the white vans of her bodyguard parked on Carrera Septima and Calle 26. Her life in Bogotá was marked by her work in the legislature.

In her first years in Congress she stood out for her debates in defense of human rights and, especially, for seeking a peaceful solution to the armed conflict in Colombia.

Córdoba defended the peace agreements with the guerrillas, with whom she established relations to seek the release of the kidnapped, first from the ELN and later from the FARC.

On the Visible Congress page, her career as a senator of the Liberal Party is briefly summarized: “She was part of the seventh commission of the Senate, which deals with labor and social protection issues.

She was a delegate to the Latin American Parliament.

She also belonged to the third commission on Economic Affairs, the fifth on Mines and Energy, and the second on Foreign Relations.

She was also a member and president of the human rights commission of the Senate and the Peace Commission.”

Francia Márquez with Córdoba's daughter, Gloria Castro, during the funeral chapel on January 22. NATHALIA ANGARITA

As a congressman, Córdoba promoted projects to benefit the democratic participation of community mothers and women heads of households, defended the rights of the LGBTQ community and spoke out against domestic violence and corruption.

In addition, she was a speaker and led the law that created seats for people of African descent.

After hearing the news of her death, Vice President Francia Márquez declared: “Piedad was a woman who opened the doors of Colombian politics to women of African descent and who fought tirelessly for peace and social justice in our country.

“I wouldn’t be vice president without the path she took.”

Córdoba was a senator of the Republic for four consecutive periods, from 1994 until her dismissal in 2010 by order of the then attorney general, Alejandro Ordóñez, who accused her of being a political ally of the FARC and disqualified her from holding public office for 18 years.

However, in 2016 the Council of State annulled that decision, finding that there was no evidence of her alleged relationship with the guerrilla.

In 2022, Córdoba returned to the Senate elected by the list of the Historical Pact, the movement of President Gustavo Petro.

In that last stage as a legislator, she was a staunch defender of the Government's social reforms and played a key role in the approval of the pension reform in the seventh commission of the Senate, to which she belonged.

Caracas

Piedad Córdoba never hid her sympathies for Hugo Chávez.

The long chapter of political kidnapping in Colombia revealed his arrival in the high spheres of the Bolivarian revolution in neighboring Venezuela.

The families of the politicians kidnapped by the FARC guerrilla tirelessly pressured the Government of Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010) to achieve a humanitarian agreement.

Although this claim never materialized, the Executive authorized Córdoba to mediate with the FARC between 2007 and the beginning of 2008. The efforts of the congresswoman, together with Chávez, produced the unilateral release of several politicians such as Luis Eladio Pérez, Gloria Polanco, Clara Rojas or Consuelo González de Perdomo.

Iván Márquez, of the FARC, Hugo Chávez and Piedad Córdoba in Caracas, in November 2007.Gregorio Marrero (AP)

Uribe cut short the mediation of Chávez and Córdoba after the congresswoman, during a visit to the Army commander, General Mario Montoya, had the soldier speak to the Venezuelan president from his own cell phone.

For Uribe it was unacceptable, they crossed a red line.

“I screwed up, brother, I didn't want anything other than creating trust and I didn't imagine what was going to happen,” Piedad acknowledged at the end of 2007 at the Meliá hotel in Caracas, according to journalist Daniel Coronell in a recent column.

A semester later, Ingrid Betancourt, along with three American contractors and a group of soldiers, were freed in Operation Jaque.

Córdoba was a standard bearer of liberations.

The good offices of the congresswoman famous for her turban were recognized on her day.

Always under scrutiny for her relationship with the FARC, the controversy surrounding her role was reignited after a former advisor accused her in 2022 of having taken advantage of her closeness to Chávez to advise the guerrillas and manipulate politically motivated times. liberation of those kidnapped, in particular that of Betancourt, who spent six and a half years in the jungle.

“Today it is clear that if my kidnapping was prolonged, it was also due to the work of Piedad,” Betancourt declared this week.

Piedad Córdoba speaks on the phone while accompanied by Yolanda Pulecio, mother of Ingrid Betancourt, in April 2008.Christian Escobar Mora (AP)

In more recent times, Córdoba was also identified as the

godmother

in Venezuela of Alex Saab, the person who originally contacted the Barranquilla businessman with Nicolás Maduro and other Chavista authorities.

“Maduro – and Hugo Chávez when he was alive – wanted her to be president of Colombia,” journalist Gerardo Reyes, author of a book about the man accused of laundering illegal money for the Venezuelan regime, said in an interview with this newspaper.

"But they confirmed it, and here comes the esoteric part, through a Santeria rite in which Simón Bolívar's official medium tells her, in the name of the Liberator, that she is going to be president."

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