The new president of Colombia

 

The new president of Colombia wants to mend fences with the US

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With Gustavo Petro's victory in Sunday's presidential elections in Colombia, a new chapter in the nation's relationship with the US has begun. The country has been Washington's closest partner in the area for decades and has never had a left-wing president. However, Petro's election as the nation's top official and a leftist rebel might fundamentally alter that relationship.

In addition, he wants to start a conversation on three key issues: defending the Amazon rainforest, putting an end to the drug war, and shifting Colombia's economy away from fossil fuels and other extractive industries. Given their stark differences on subjects like Venezuelan relations, his future discussions with US Vice President Joe Biden are likely to be difficult.

Gustavo Petro, a former guerrilla, wins Colombia's presidential election.

Shortly after the results were released, Petro received congratulations from outgoing conservative President Iván Duque, and Hernández immediately admitted defeat. In a video posted to social media, Hernández said, "I accept the result, as it should be, if we want our institutions to remain robust. "I genuinely believe that everyone will benefit from this choice."

Additionally, Colombia chose its first Black woman to serve as vice president. Francia Márquez, Petro's running mate, is an attorney and prominent environmentalist whose resistance to illicit mining has drawn threats and a grenade attack in 2019. Voters in the first round of the election last month rejected long-ruling centrist and right-leaning politicians and opted for two outsiders in the third-most populous country in Latin America due to widespread unhappiness with rising inequality, inflation, and violence.

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The election of Petro was the most recent leftist political triumph in Latin America, propelled by the demand for change among voters. In 2021, leftists won presidential elections in Chile, Peru, and Honduras; in Brazil, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is currently leading the polls for this year's election.

According to Elizabeth Dickinson, senior analyst for Colombia at the consultancy International Crisis Group, "What I do think it illustrates is that the tactic of fear, hate, and stigmatization towards the left no longer works as a policy to win people." But for some voters, whose closest example of a socialist administration is the problematic neighbor Venezuela, the results were an immediate cause for concern.

Additionally, Petro has his own allies in Washington; he told CNN that he speaks "frequently" with US Senator Bernie Sanders and that he just had a face-to-face meeting with the Progressive Caucus, a group of US politicians with a left-leaning agenda. On March 23, 2022, during a presentation event in Bogota, Colombia, candidates Gustavo Petro for president of Colombia and Francia Marquez for vice president make hand gestures. Luisa Gonzalez for Reuters

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The newest president of Colombia has also expressed a desire to forge a new South American progressive coalition. Instead of the three authoritarian nations of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, this would probably feature the presidents of Chile and Argentina, Gabriel Boric and Alberto Fernandez.

By excluding those three countries from the Summit of the Americas, a regional conference that was held in Los Angeles in early June, Biden recently provoked criticism among several Latin American leaders. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, president of Mexico, decided to completely skip the ceremony out of sympathy.

Petro, however, told CNN that he would have gone regardless. Of course, he responded. I would have gone to Biden and told him that it was wrong to not invite some nations, but I would never turn down the chance for dialogue.