Know the story of a Colombian candidate in the M-19 guerrilla

The leftist leader and candidate for the presidency of Colombia Gustavo Petro, who has held public office since he was very young, carries a history that for many is a stigma.

It is a past that its detractors do not forgive: Petro was a member of the M-19, a guerrilla group demobilized in 1990, but which committed many symbolic acts and led to one of the most tragic violent episodes in the country’s history.

The leader of the left has a controversial public life, marked not only by his revolutionary past, but also by his role as senator and mayor of Bogotá. In his third attempt at the country’s highest office, Petro continues to be criticized by his main political opponents for his time in the guerrilla.

Gustavo Francisco Petro Urrego’s history as a guerrilla goes back, like his own political life, to a turbulent period in Colombian politics. Born in Ciénaga de Oro, Córdoba, on the Caribbean coast, in 1960, he moved to Zipaquirá, a municipality about 45 kilometers north of Bogotá. Still very young, at 21, his work in the public sphere as a municipal councilor, a kind of councilor.

At that age, he also approached the urban guerrilla group M-19, founded in protest against the alleged theft of the 1970 elections, won by conservative candidate Misael Pastrana.

The beginnings of the Petro on the M-19

Petro tried to be president twice, in 2010 and 2018, and makes the third attempt in 2022. He says that his political awakening was still in his childhood, in the late 1960s, when he saw his father cry over the death, in 1967, of the leader Argentine revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara. In addition, he was moved by the death of Chile’s socialist president Salvador Allende in 1973, he told Reuters in an interview.

Petro joined the April 19 Movement at age 18. Known as M-19, the group was part of the so-called second wave of guerrilla movements, which grew across the country in the 1970s, still influenced by the Cuban Revolution.

It was 1978 and he was living in Zipaquirá, a city on the outskirts of Bogotá, when he read the documents that summarized the M-19 Conference. The politician himself reported this passage in his autobiography, “Petro una vida, many lives”.

“From a rational point of view, the thesis was very logical and popular: it was necessary to reclaim the country’s history, the popular soul. It was easy for us to understand the need for this request, because we lived in the midst of this popular world,” Petro wrote.

“I was a member of the M-19 and exercised legal activity in the city of Zipaquirá, including as a councilor,” he told journalist Guylaine Roujol from the Bándalos YouTube channel in 2021. In the interview, he spoke about the events that led him to join in urban warfare.

“In Zipaquirá, people wrote communiqués and placed them under the doors of houses on cold nights, around 11 pm”, Petro revealed about some of his first actions as a clandestine militant of the “Eme”, as they called the M-19. .

At that time, he says, one of the reasons that led many young people to “take up arms” was the continuous state of siege in which Colombia lived for years, whose style of government was similar to the “military dictatorships of the Southern Cone”.

“Without liberties, without constitutional rights, with the ability to popularly elect president, but in a somewhat false democracy; they ruled not by laws but by decrees, always aiming to contain the popular movement,” he said.

Colombia, the figure of “state of siege” was used constantly between November 1949 and 1978, including during the military dictatorship of Gustavo Rojas Pinilla (1953-1957), according to the book “Quince años de Estado de Sitio en Colombia: 1958-1978 ”, by writer Gustavo Gallón Giraldo.

In 1984, President Belisario Betancourt again declared a state of siege due to the violence that continued unabated in the country, with the active presence of several guerrillas that put the Colombian government in check.

During that period, the M-19 made the first draft of a proposed peace agreement to the Betancourt government (1982-1986). The guerrillas called, among other conditions, for an end to the state of siege, “which was the continuous form of government in Colombia for 25 years,” Petro recalled.

In 1984, while leading his double life, Petro was named an M-19 militant after signing the peace accords with the Betancourt government, and spent a year and a half in prison by order of the military criminal justice system.

“I tried to stay in Zipaquirá clandestinely, which was very difficult. Finally, I was captured under a state of siege decree. I was arrested. But I was not convicted in legal terms. I have not been sentenced by a judge or justice. We could simply say that I was ‘detained’ and, by decision of an army colonel, I spent 18 months in prison by the military justice”, reported the current presidential candidate.

The beginning of the M-19

The M-19 was a socialist urban guerrilla, very different from the communist conception of other guerrilla groups, such as the FARC.

The creation of the Movimento 19 de Abril (from which the acronym comes) took place in 1970 “because of electoral fraud against Anapo”, said Pedro. Anapo, the National Popular Alliance, was the party founded by General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, who was dictator of Colombia between 1953 and 1957.

But in the elections of April 18, 1970, when the former dictator was emerging as the favorite and possible winner, his opponent, the conservative Misael Pastrana Borrero, ended up winning the morning after the election. Because of the alleged fraud, the M-19 was created.

The guerrilla armed struggle took hold in Colombia in the 1970s and was characterized by “acts of symbolic impact”, according to the National Center for Historical Memory (CNMH). Among his actions are the seizure of the Dominican Republic’s embassy in 1980; the theft of weapons from the Cantón Norte, a military stronghold, through a tunnel in northern Bogotá; and —in a “symbolic” act, as Petro recalled —, the theft of the sword of the revolutionary hero Simon Bolivar (1783-1830).

“Whose sword was it?” asked Petro. “The sword belonged to none other than the people. And she was really kidnapped”, she told in an interview with journalist Carolina Sanín, on the television program “Mesa Capital”. On the day of the signing of the peace agreement with the M-19, in 1990, the guerrillas returned Bolívar’s sword.

The taking of the Palace of Justice in 1985

There was, however, another action, the source of all the controversy surrounding the group: the capture of the Palace of Justice in Colombia, in 1985, by the M-19, became one of the most painful tragedies in recent Colombian history. The guerrillas took the Palace of Justice on November 6, 1985, in downtown Bogotá. For two days, the insurgents held 350 hostages, including magistrates, judicial officials and visitors, and the building was set on fire.

During the military operation to regain control of the palace, 98 people died and another 11 were reported missing.

Petro’s political opponents blame him for being part of the violent tragedy that took place at the palace. But Petro maintains that he did not participate in the act.

“When the violent seizure of the Palace of Justice and the even greater and much more violent reaction of the state took place, I was being tortured in an army stable in the city of Bogotá. I was quite young at that time and ended up in prison after the torture,” Petro told the CNN in 2013.

The candidate said that, with the seizure of the Palace of Justice, the M-19 sought “to denounce Belisario for breaking the peace agreement he had signed with the group. He wanted to relaunch the peace process and national dialogue with gun pressure.”

The demobilization of the M-19

With the signing of the peace agreement and the full demobilization of the M-19, Petro entered a new political chapter.

The M-19 accepted the peace process with the government of Virgílio Barco, as it declared “that war was not the solution and had decided to lay down its arms”, as reported by the CNMH. The agreement was signed on March 9, 1990.

The history of the guerrilla group left “political milestones as the subsequent processes of political participation” both of the party that was born after the signing of the agreements “and of the many leaders in other movements and political parties” generated in the movement, according to the Centro de Memória Histórica.

After demobilization, the current presidential candidate studied at a private university thanks to a scholarship and held various public positions.

Petro was an advisor to the government of the department of Cundinamarca and regional deputy in the 1990s. For security reasons, he had to go into exile and was appointed diplomat by the Samper government in 1994. Three years later, he ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Bogotá. Later, in 2002, he managed to be elected deputy. In 2006, he was elected to the Senate by the Alternative Democratic Pole Party. He ran for president in 2010 without success, but was elected mayor of Bogotá in 2012.

In 2018, Petro was the second most voted candidate for the presidency, in an election won by Iván Duque, the current president, in a highly polarized campaign.