Opinion: After 50 years, could Colombia finally have awoken from its nightmare?
María José Pizarro Rodríguez
With our new progressive president and coalition government, we now have a chance at peace and unity – let’s not waste it
María José Pizarro is a Colombian senator and member of the progressive Historic Pact coalition
Sat 20 Aug 2022 06.00 EDT
For more than 50 years, Colombia has suffered a war that has killed nearly 450,000 civilians and displaced more than 8 million people from their territories. My father, Carlos Pizarro Leongómez — once a commander of the guerrilla movement M-19 — signed a peace agreement with the Colombian state after years of insurgency, and stood as a presidential candidate in 1990. Forty-seven days after the agreement had been signed, he was assassinated. This event changed my life, broke my family, and devastated our country.
Now at last, we may be nearing the end of our national nightmare. On 7 August, Gustavo Petro was sworn in as president of Colombia, joining Afro-Colombian land defender Francia Márquez at the helm of the country’s first progressive government. In his inaugural speech, Petro promised his incoming government will bring “true and definitive peace” to Colombia. To do this, he has invited historic political opponents to the table to reach a common agreement through which both guerrilla and paramilitary forces will lay down their arms.
The call for peace has been building across the country. Following Petro’s election victory, the final active guerrilla force in the country, the ELN (Ejército de Liberación Nacional), requested fresh negotiations with the government to lay down their arms. Soon after, a joint letter by dozens of rightwing paramilitary forces, drug cartels, and criminal gangs called for a ceasefire to negotiate terms for peace. At Petro’s inauguration ceremony on 7 August, the cries of the chanting crowd could be heard from hundreds of metres away: ¡No más guerra! No more war.
The pursuit of unity has been central to Petro’s presidential programme. It is also the reason that so many progressive candidates like myself are now in Congress. Over the course of many months of deliberation, we brought together a broad coalition that embraced workers, urban professionals, farmers, Indigenous and Afro-Colombian peoples. This alliance, known in Colombia as the Historic Pact, won a landmark victory in the legislative elections in March and became the single largest force in Congress.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/20/colombia-president-coalition-peace-gustavo-petro