by VIjay Prashad

ON March 13, 2022, Colombia held its primary election. The Pacto Histórico (or Historical Pact) is a coalition of twenty different political parties and formations from the far-Left.

It includes the Left formation Humane Colombia, led by Gustavo Petro, who won the primary with more than 80 per cent of the vote.

Petro, who began his political career as a guerrilla with the M-19 group in the 1980s, was the mayor of Colombia’s capital, Bogotá from 2012-2014 and has been a senator since 2018.

The current president – Ivan Duque – cannot contest the election, since a 2015 law restricts presidents to one four-year term. He is far behind in the polls. Unless something dramatic happens, it is unlikely that Duque’s Democratic Centre party, with Zuluaga as the candidate, will be able to hold onto office. The other candidates in the race, most from the right (such as Federico Gutiérrez and Ingrid Betancourt), bounce around with less than 5 per cent of the vote each.

Alongside this presidential primary, the people of Colombia voted in a new parliament (both senate and chamber of representatives). In these elections, the Pacto Histórico made substantial gains, entering the senate and the chamber of representatives with as many seats as the Conservatives and the Liberals – the two parties that traditionally controlled Colombia; Duque’s Democratic Centre party faded away with losses in both chambers.

One of Petro’s more electric pledges is to shut down Colombia’s oil industry.

Well over half of Colombia’s exports are from fossil fuels (57 per cent from petroleum alone); almost 92 per cent of Colombia’s coal – is exported, and since Colombia is the fifth largest producer of coal (31.5 million tonnes in 2021), this is a significant amount.

Major Canadian and US companies dominate this sector. Whether Petro will be allowed to get away with this act, far more threatening to the energy multinationals than nationalisation alone, is to be seen.

Really good writeup; please read it. This is huge news considering that Colombia is the only NATO member in Latin America. They are the Israel of Latin America.

peoplesdemocracy.in/2022/0320_pd/could-colombia-have-left-wing-government

Shoutout Vijay Prashad fr 💯

Colombia isn't a NATO member tho, they're the first partner in latam tho

Damn Petro leading the polls by a big margin

Only thing thay could prevent his win is CIA f***ery tbh it seems

They already working on it

"Already, however, the United States has been making noises about the upcoming presidential election. In early February 2022, before the primary, the US state department sent undersecretary of state for political affairs Victoria Nuland to Bogotá for meetings of the US-Colombia High-Level Strategic Security Dialogue (the successor to Plan Colombia, the mechanism by which the US funded the Colombian government and paramilitary groups in its war against FARC and the Colombian Left). Nuland is famous for her role in the destabilisation of Ukraine in 2014, when she participated in the Euromaidan protests as a US government official and – by telephone – gave orders to the US ambassador in Kiev about who the next president of that country should be. In Bogotá, Nuland told the press, ‘We must safeguard (the elections) against outside actors interested in manipulating elections, as they have tried to do in other parts of the world’.

Nuland and the US government have weaponised the war in Ukraine to their benefit in Colombia, where they have joined the Colombian oligarchy in blaming the protests on Russia, Iran, and Venezuela. Diego Molano, the minister of defence, said that Venezuela’s army had received ‘support and technical assistance from Russia and Iran’. Nuland told BluRadio in Bogotá that the United States is ‘concerned that the Russians seem to be increasingly active in the border with Venezuela’. No need for any evidence for claims such as this, which are then inflamed in the Colombian media and used as a way to discredit the Colombian Left and Petro."

Message for victoria nuland

"Already, however, the United States has been making noises about the upcoming presidential election. In early February 2022, before the primary, the US state department sent undersecretary of state for political affairs Victoria Nuland to Bogotá for meetings of the US-Colombia High-Level Strategic Security Dialogue (the successor to Plan Colombia, the mechanism by which the US funded the Colombian government and paramilitary groups in its war against FARC and the Colombian Left). Nuland is famous for her role in the destabilisation of Ukraine in 2014, when she participated in the Euromaidan protests as a US government official and – by telephone – gave orders to the US ambassador in Kiev about who the next president of that country should be. In Bogotá, Nuland told the press, ‘We must safeguard (the elections) against outside actors interested in manipulating elections, as they have tried to do in other parts of the world’."

kill me

for a bit sure, it always gonna swing back tho, latin america be like that

‘We must safeguard (the elections) against outside actors interested in manipulating elections, as they have tried to do in other parts of the world’."

she needs one of these

We got a couple countries going strong for a while rn

Colombia has always had a strong left tbh i could see it be more long lasting than most socdem parties in latam

that's fair

imperialists got a particular bee in their bonnet for colombia tho they wouldn't be able to not be extra in f***ing with it for long

Yeah that's def true.. they gotta be prepared for glowie intervention Victoria Nuland already talking crayz

Same typa rhetoric as before the coup in Bolivia

i know this sounds naive but i rlly was shocked how it went down in bolivia

evo is built different, thought he was going to withstand in 2019

Yeah that's the issue when u got a military that's not fully aligned w the party, mfs can get bankrolled and used against u, but MAS back in power anyway in Bolivia

Tbh whatever we got to say abt the govt, Venezuela wouldnt have lasted either if they didn't have party loyalty in the military, they got that one right

Goes against western liberal sensibilities but then again they dont have to deal with CIA backed military coups lmao

of course

any worldview that doesnt realize the centrality of military loyalty to the continued survival of the state is silly

Fax
But like in western liberal democracies that doesn't have to be done on the basis of partisanship bc no military faction is gonna get bankrolled by some NED spooks like in latam

Westoids will call it undemocratic to instill party loyalty somehow but what other options do u have really

Colombia should pay Black Colombians reparations.

let’s go Gus

Petro got this in the bag imo.

I just hope he don’t fold like Boric and Castillo and start allying with centrists and libs. Luis Arce’s direction in Bolivia the way to go

He got a more militant background than Boric, he was part of a guerilla organisation called M-19, that remind you of anything?

Petro didn't condemn Chavez like Boric did, but he does condemn Venezuela and Nicaragua, not sure about his stance on Cuba tho

He won't be like Luis Acre or Evo Morales, but he's def not like Boric.

Yeah he real af for his guerrilla past and I’m sure I’ve read about him wanting to normalize relations with Venezuela

His Fidel tweet so hard tho

Voting in their president today