Gustavo Petro

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Gustavo Petro Biography

Colombian politician, economist, and presidential candidate who is known for having served as the mayor of Bogota. He is known for his left-leaning politics and for being a member of the guerrilla group Alianza Democratica M-19. He is also known as one of the founding members of the Progresistas movement.

He attended the Colegio de Hermanos de La Salle where he founded the student political newspaper Carta al Pueblo. He became involved with the M-19 gorilla movement at 18 and was subsequently arrested for his role in the Palace of Justice Siege. His career in politics began in 2002 when he was elected to the Chamber of Representatives of Colombia.

As mayor of Bogota, he was able to accomplish a progressive agenda which included the creation of the Women’s Secretariat as well as the LGBTI Citizenship Center which helped to incorporate 49 centers for birth control and abortion care in cases permitted by the government.

He was born and raised in Cienaga de Oro, Colombia.

He is known for being an opposing force of Alvaro Uribe‘s government and often encouraged debate on the Parapolitics scandal in February of 2007.

Petro was born in rural Ciénaga de Oro, in the department of Córdoba, in 1960. His parents were farmers. Seeking a better future, Petro’s family decided to migrate to the more prosperous Colombian inland town of Zipaquirá – just north of Bogotá during the 1970s.

Gustavo Francisco Petro Urrego (Spanish pronunciation: [ɡusˈtaβo fɾanˈsisko ˈpetɾo uˈreɣo] ; born April 19, 1960) is a Colombian politician, economist, and presidential candidate who previously served as mayor of Bogotá. A left-wing politician, Petro was a member of the revolutionary group M-19 in the 1980s. The group later evolved into the Alianza Democrática M-19, a political party in which Petro participated as a member of the national congress in the 1990s. Petro served as a senator as a member of the Alternative Democratic Pole party following the 2006 legislative elections with the second largest vote in the country. In 2009, he resigned his position to aspire to the presidency of Colombia in the 2010 Colombian presidential election, finishing fourth in the race.

At a young age (around 17) Petro became a member of the 19th of April Movement (M-19), a Colombian guerrilla organisation movement that emerged in 1974 in opposition to the National Front coalition after allegations of fraud in the 1970 presidential elections.

Petro studied at the Colegio de Hermanos de La Salle, where he founded the student newspaper Carta al Pueblo (“Letter to the People”). At the age of 18 he became a member of the 19th of April Movement, and was involved in activities. During his time in 19 April Petro became a leader, and was elected ombudsman of Zipaquirá in 1981 and councilman from 1984 to 1986.

In 1985, Petro was arrested by the army for the crime of illegal possession of arms. He was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in prison.

Following the M-19’s attack on the Palace of Justice Siege (Toma al Palacio de Justicia) Petro used his influence within M-19 to promote peace talks with the government, helping to bring about the eventual dismantling of M-19 in 1990, and the subsequent amnesty for its members.

After the demobilization of the M-19 guerrilla movement, former members of the group (including Petro) formed a political party called the M-19 Democratic Alliance which won a significant number of seats in the Chamber of Representatives of Colombia in 1991, representing the Cundinamarca Department.

In 2002, Petro was elected to the Chamber of Representatives of Colombia representing Bogotá, this time as a member of the Vía Alterna political movement he founded with former guerrilla colleague Antonio Navarro Wolff and other former M-19 guerrilla members. During this period he was named “Best Congressman”, both by his own Congress colleagues and the press.

Senator Petro has vehemently opposed the government of Álvaro Uribe. In 2005, while a member of the Chamber of Representatives of Colombia, Petro denounced the lottery businesswoman Enilse López (also known as “La Gata” [the cat]). As of May 2009, she is imprisoned and under investigation for ties to the (now disbanded) paramilitary group United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). Senator Petro alleged that the AUC financially contributed to the presidential campaign of Álvaro Uribe in 2002. Uribe refuted these statements by Petro but, during his presidential reelection campaign in 2006, admitted to having received financial support from Enilse López.

As a member of Vía Alterna, Petro created an electoral coalition with the Frente Social y Político to form the Independent Democratic Pole, which in 2005 fused with the Alternativa Democrática to form the Alternative Democratic Pole, joining a large number of leftist political figures.

In 2006, Petro was reelected Senator of Colombia, mobilizing the second highest voter turnout in the country. During this year he also exposed the Parapolitics scandal, accusing members and followers of the government of mingling with paramilitary groups in order to “reclaim” Colombia.

Petro has frequently reported threats against his life and the lives of his family, as well as persecution by government-run security organizations. On May 7, 2007 the Colombian army captured two Colombian Army intelligence non-commissioned officers that had been spying on Petro and his family in the municipality of Tenjo, Cundinamarca. These members had first identified themselves as members of the Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (DAS) the Colombian Intelligence Agency but their claims were later denied by Andrés Peñate, director of the agency.

On April 18, 2007 the Vigilance and Security Superintendency released a communique rejecting Petro’s accusations concerning the CONVIVIR groups. The Superintendency said that many of the groups mentioned were authorized by the Departments of Sucre and Córdoba, but not by the Antioquia government; it also added that Álvaro Uribe, then Antioquia’s governor, had eliminated the legal liability of eight CONVIVIR groups in 1997. It was also mentioned that the paramilitary leader known as “Julian Bolívar” had not yet been identified as such and was not associated with any CONVIVIR during the authorization of these groups.

On April 17, 2007, Senator Petro began a debate in Congress about CONVIVIR and the development of paramilitarism in Antioquia Department. During a two-hour speech he revealed a variety of documents demonstrating the relationship between members of the Colombian military, the current political leadership, narcotraffickers and paramilitary groups. Petro also criticized the actions of Álvaro Uribe as Governor of Antioquia Department during the CONVIVIR years, and presented an old photograph of Álvaro Uribe’s brother, Santiago, alongside Colombian drug trafficker Fabio Ochoa Vázquez.

During Álvaro Uribe’s second term as president, Petro encouraged debate on the Parapolitics scandal. In February 2007 Petro began a public verbal dispute with President Uribe when Petro suggested that the president should have recused himself from negotiating the demobilization process of paramilitaries in Colombia; this followed accusations that Uribe’s brother, Santiago Uribe, was a former member of the Twelve Apostles paramilitary group in the mid-1990s. President Uribe responded by accusing Petro of being a “terrorist in civilian clothing” and by summoning the opposition to an open debate.

In 2008, Petro announced his interest in a presidential candidacy for 2010. He distanced himself from government policies and, along with Lucho Garzón and Maria Emma Mejia, led a dissenting faction within the Polo Democrático Alternativo. Following Garzón’s resignation from the party, Petro proposed a “great national accord to end Colombia’s war,” based on removing organized crime from power, cleaning up the judicial system, land reform, democratic socialism and a security policy differing considerably from the policies of President Alvaro Uribe. On 27 September 2009, Gustavo Petro defeated Carlos Gaviria in a primary election as the Alternative Democratic Pole candidate for the 2010 presidential election.

In the presidential election held May 30, 2010, Petro did better than polls had predicted. He obtained a total of 1,331,267 votes, 9.1% of the total, finishing as the fourth candidate in the vote total, behind Germán Vargas Lleras and ahead of Noemí Sanín.

After problems and ideological differences with the leaders of the Alternative Democratic Pole, he founded the democratic socialist Progresistas movement to compete for the mayoralty of Bogotá. On October 30, 2011, he was elected Mayor of Bogotá in the local elections of the city, position that he assumed on January 1, 2012.

In his government, the application of the Integrated Public Transport System (SITP) began, inaugurated in mid-2012. Likewise, during the administration of Petro, subsidies paid by the District to reduce Transmilenio tariffs were created. In turn, the administration since early 2014 provided a subsidy for the population affiliated to SISBEN 1 and 2 of 40% of the value of the ticket, for which it allocated 138 billion pesos. This subsidy is not delivered immediately, as it requires registration in a database, and is valid only for 21 passages when using the blue buses of the SITP.

During his administration as mayor, he faced a recall process started by opposition parties and supported by the signatures of more than 600,000 citizens. After the legal verification 357,250 signatures were validated, many more than legally required to start the process. On December 9, 2013, Petro was removed from his seat and banned from political activity for 15 years, by Inspector General Alejandro Ordóñez Maldonado, following the sanctions stipulated by the law. His sanction was allegedly caused by mismanagement and illegal decrees signed during the implementation of his waste collection system. This led to a series of protests citizens who deemed the Inspector’s move as controversial, politically biased and un-democratic.

Despite being granted an Injunction by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which suspended the sanction imposed by Inspector General Ordoñez, President Juan Manuel Santos upheld the removal and Petro was removed from office March 19, 2014. For his temporary replacement, Santos appointed as Mayor the current Labor Minister, Rafael Pardo. On April 19, 2014, a magistrate from the Superior Tribunal of Bogota ordered the president to obey the recommendations laid out by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Petro was reinstated as mayor on April 23, 2014 and finished the length of his term.

The construction of a subway for the city was one of his many undelivered proposals. During his administration, he contracted studies of the subway infrastructure to a Colombian-Spanish company for $70,000 million pesos, which successfully ended at the end of 2014. Approval from the federal government was necessary to begin construction, but the Santos’ administration refused to authorize it. The subway plans contracted by Petro’s administration were discarded by his successor Enrique Peñalosa, who opted for an elevated railway system with lower investment required and better coverage, allegedly. These claims have been refuted by several independents studies who have found out that both the social and economic cost of an elevated railway system is higher than the original underground railway system planned by the previous administration.

It was proposed as a government policy to conserve the wetlands of Bogotá and plan for the preservation of water in the face of global warming. Following order of the Constitutional Court, the process of suppression of animal-drawn vehicles used by waste pickers began, some were replaced by automotive vehicles and subsidies. In the area of public health, Mobile Attention Centers for Drug Addicts (CAMAD) were created. With these measures, the aim was to reduce the dependency of the destitute in the streets of the sector to the providers of narcotic drugs, providing psychological and medical assistance. During its administration, the District put into operation two primary-care clinics at the San Juan de Dios Hospital, closed in 2001. The Mayor promised that he would allocate resources to purchase the Hospital grounds and reopen one of the buildings of the complex. The project remained stopped due to the Cundinamarca government’s suspension of the sale of the properties. On February 11, 2015, as mayor of Bogotá, the protocol ceremony for the reopening of the San Juan de Dios Hospital Complex was finally formalized. The District bought the hospital with a view to reopening it. During his last month in office, before the liquidation of Saludcoop on December 1, 2015, the district had difficulties with the new patients who became part of the EPS Capital Salud.

In 2018, Gustavo Petro was again a presidential candidate, this time getting the second best result in voting counting, in the first round (27 May 2018). With this vote, Petro advanced to the second round and became eligible to run for President of Colombia. A lawsuit has been filed by citizens against Duque alleging bribery and fraud. The News chain Wradio made public the law suit July 11, which was presented to the CNE (Consejo Nacional Electoral, National Electoral Council, by its acronym in Spanish). The state of the law suit will be defined by the Magistrado Alberto Yepes.

On May 27, 2018 he came second in the first round of the presidential election with over 25% of the vote and lost in the run-off election on June 17.

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