By Juan Gonzalez Valdivieso
On September 11th, 1973, a US-backed military coup overthrew the democratically elected government of Chile led by Socialist Party leader Salvador Allende. Given his own success, Allende believed that electoral means could bring about socialist ends. Despite this optimism, the coup took his life after he responded to the attack by staying inside the presidential palace to defend it at all costs. Following the tragedy, Cuban revolutionary and then-Prime Minister Fidel Castro said the following:
“The Chilean example teaches us the lesson that it is impossible to make the revolution with the people alone. Arms are also necessary! And that arms alone aren’t enough to make a revolution. People are also necessary!”
“Chilean revolutionaries know that now there’s no alternative other than revolutionary armed struggle. They tried the electoral way — the peaceful way — and the imperialists and reactionaries changed the rules of the game. The reactionaries trampled the Constitution, the laws, the Parliament — everything.”
Twenty-five years after Castro uttered these words, Latin America experienced a phenomenon now known as the “Pink Tide.” This refers to a wave of elections that saw many socialist executives take power democratically across the region. It began with the 1998 landslide victory of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. Chávez was followed by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Evo Morales of Bolivia, and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina. Many of the region’s more robust electorates soon rejected this trend, however — namely those of Brazil, Uruguay, Ecuador, and Argentina -- electing conservative leaders soon after. It wasn’t until the late 2010s that a second Pink Tide took hold — this time, featuring the likes of Andres Manuel López Obrador in Mexico, Pedro Castillo in Peru, Gabriel Boric in Chile, and, most recently, Gustavo Petro in Colombia. Petro’s election last year rocked the status quo, as decades of pendular motion between liberals and conservatives had cast aside the prospects for socialist leadership.
Petro is a product of the leftist guerrilla movements that emerged in Colombia during the mid-1960s, a development in political militancy largely born out of the 1959 Cuban Revolution. From 1974 to 1987, he was a member of the 19th of April Movement — colloquially referred to as M-19 — an urban guerrilla effort with the goal of expanding electoral democracy in the country via armed struggle. The future premier would go on to pursue a prolific political career, serving in the Colombia House of Representatives from 1991 to 2006, the Senate from 2006 to 2012, and as mayor of the capital Bogotá from 2012 to 2015.
Petro’s chosen vice president, Francia Márquez, is an equally momentous figure. A native of Yolombó — a small mountain town located in the Cauca region — she began working as an environmental activist at 13, participating in the Ovejas River defense from 1994 to 1997, an effort to prevent the development of dams in an important water source for her community. In 2014, Márquez led a direct action of 80 Afro-Colombian women. The demonstrators marched from the Cauca to Bogotá, demanding an end to illegal mining in the region.
Their efforts were successful. By the end of 2016, the Colombian government had disassembled and removed all illegal mining machinery. This victory earned Márquez the 2018 Goldman Prize for excellence in environmental protection. She is also the first Afro-Colombiana vice president in the nation’s history.
During their presidential run, Petro and Márquez outlined a platform of five reform agendas:
Labor: shorten the workday, increase access to overtime pay, and regulate short-term contract work.
Pensions: provide a guaranteed 223,000 Colombian pesos per month — roughly $155 adjusted for purchasing power — to the 75% of Colombians whose incomes currently do not qualify for a pension.
Taxation: raise $5.6 billion in revenue by raising wealth taxes, eliminating corporate exemptions, and raising export tariffs on oil and gas.
Political System: prohibit private funding of political campaigns and lower the age requirement for congresspeople.
Healthcare: transfer the responsibility of selecting private health providers from individuals to municipal and provincial governments.
Since the inauguration of Petro and Márquez in August of last year, only tax reform has found legislative success, having passed in November of 2022 with a revised fundraising goal of $4.2 billion. The labor and pension reforms remain in congressional limbo while the political reform has already died, having been canceled by Petro in March of this year after legislative changes severely transformed the proposal from its initial iteration. As for healthcare, the reform has prompted notable scrutiny and opposition by all parties, including President of Congress and Petro ally Roy Barreras. This backlash caused Education Minister Alejandro Gaviria to resign. Revised language has since softened the proposed healthcare reform considerably.
Beyond the minutiae of legalese, however, the ambitious aims of the administration’s reform agenda have placed a legitimate target on the backs of Petro and Márquez. At best, they’ve become the subjects of inflammatory rhetoric and baseless criticism. At worst, they’ve become victims of attempted acts of violence.
While campaigning, Petro had to cancel a visit to the nation’s coffee-growing region after learning of a credible death threat against him. The threat came from La Cordillera, a paramilitary organization with ties to the drug trade, law enforcement, the Colombian military, and far-right politicians. Márquez has faced similar challenges.
She narrowly survived two assassination attempts this year alone. The first happened in January when seven kilograms of explosives were found near her home in the Cauca. The second took place in March, when explosives were found near an airport Márquez was passing through in the Choco region.
Since then, right-wing demonstrations against Petro and Márquez have become commonplace. The most notable of which took place on May 5th. The event was held at Bogotá’s Plaza de Bolívar, and featured thousands of retired military personnel as well as law enforcement officials. The occupational character of the crowd triggers bitter déjà vu for anyone familiar with democratic socialist history in Latin America at large. After all, the successor to Allende in post-coup Chile was none other than Augusto Pinochet, the commander-in-chief of the Chilean Army during Allende’s short-lived presidency.
Luckily, this correlation has not gone unnoticed, as Petro himself took active steps to counteract the trend’s more worrying manifestations late last month. On April 26th, he announced the resignation of seven ministers in his cabinet in hopes of removing the internal dissonance and gridlock the cohort had been struggling with, particularly with regard to his proposed health reforms. In early May, Petro also tweeted out, saying, “Why are they conspiring for a coup? Because they are terrified that we will end impunity. The truth intimidates them so much that they despair.”
Cautionary measures and public denouncements notwithstanding, Petro and Márquez should brace for what is to come. They must embrace the optimism of Allende alongside the cynicism of Castro. For the belief in electorally derived socialism cannot mean the dismissal of its most glaring shortcomings. Only by taking heed — pushing their agenda onward while remaining wary of undemocratic attacks — will this administration entrench a legacy of democratic socialism in Colombia and serve as a success story for prospective socialist nations across the region.
Juan Gonzalez Valdivieso is a Colombian Marxist. In his writing, he seeks to interrogate the nuances of socialist thought and praxis.
