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      Ingrid Betancourt to Make a Bid for President of Colombia

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      Ingrid Betancourt’s candidacy comes at a critical time, when Colombians are fed up with the political establishment and the future of the peace agreement is at stake.BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Ingrid Betancourt, a former congresswoman and one-time guerrilla hostage who has come to symbolize both the brutality of Colombia’s long war and the country’s efforts at reconciliation, will run for president, she said Tuesday.Ms. Betancourt enters a wide open race at a time when Colombia is at a critical political and social crossroads.When she was kidnapped 20 years ago, Ms. Betancourt was campaigning for the same office. Now, she said, the country is facing the same “corrupt system” and “political machinery” that she had fought back then.“Today I am here to finish what I started,” she said, standing on a stage at a hotel in downtown Bogotá, the country’s capital, flanked by allies. Ms. Betancourt, who was captured in 2002 and held by the country’s largest guerrilla force, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, for more than six years, announced her bid for the May election with the country facing enormous challenges.Following more than 50 years of war, the government and the rebel group, known as the FARC, signed a peace deal in 2016. But since then, a swell of other armed groups have swept into the vacuum and continued to fight.Violence has surged in parts of the countryside — and critics have faulted the government for not investing enough to address the inequality and poverty that had helped fuel the war, as it had committed to doing in the peace deal.Many in Colombia are fed up with the political status quo, a sentiment that burst into the public sphere last May, when thousands took to the streets for more than a month to protest hardship that was only made worse by the pandemic.Following her years in captivity — when she was sometimes held in chains — Ms. Betancourt has both supported the peace process and criticized the FARC, emerging as a symbol of national attempts to acknowledge the costs of the war, but also to move beyond it.Sergio Guzmán, an analyst in Bogotá, called Ms. Betancourt the country’s “reconciliation candidate.”In an interview with The Times last year, Ms. Betancourt called the peace deal “a window — a generational opportunity — to leave behind the insane violence we have lived in all our lives.”The question, Mr. Guzmán said, is whether that’s what Colombians want.“All our elections have been fear and hope and hate,” he went on. “No election has really been fought on compassion and reconciliation.”There is widespread discontent with the current president, Iván Duque, who is a product of the country’s right-wing political establishment, while a left-wing populist, Gustavo Petro, is leading in the polls amid a leftist, anti-incumbent wave that is sweeping Latin America.“Can Ingrid become a balm to those prevailing negative emotions that we’re feeling right now?” Mr. Guzmán said. “I don’t know. That’s one of the things that her candidacy is going to tell us.”But to make any headway among voters, he said, “she needs to sell the idea that reconciliation is better than populism.”While Ms. Betancourt is widely known throughout the country, a win in May is far from certain.To even get to the May election, Ms. Betancourt would first have to win the March primary, in which she will compete against other centrists.Nathalia Angarita for The New York TimesToday, there are more than 20 candidates for the presidency, with most of the best-known candidates grouped into three coalitions: a coalition on the left, headed by Mr. Petro; a coalition in the center, which Ms. Betancourt is joining; and a coalition on the right, whose members are seen as the torchbearers for the current government.To even get to the May election, Ms. Betancourt would first have to win the March primary, in which she will compete against others in the center, including Alejandro Gaviria, a former health minister and recent head of a prestigious university.Mr. Guzmán pointed out that Ms. Betancourt joined the race late in the electoral calendar and called her bid “a Hail Mary.”Colombia has never had a woman president, and Ms. Betancourt is one of just four women candidates in the three leading coalitions.The most prominent female candidate to this point has been Francia Márquez, a young, Afro-Colombian politician and environmental activist who is also a victim of the war.Ms. Márquez, who has joined the coalition on the left, has distinguished herself not only because of her identity — Colombian politics has been dominated by wealthy white men — but because of her outspoken embrace of feminist politics and willingness to criticize Mr. Petro.Ms. Betancourt is the daughter of a Colombian politician and a Colombian diplomat, and later became a French citizen through her first husband.In 2002, following time in Congress, Ms. Betancourt launched a campaign for presidency as a member of the Partido Verde Oxígeno, a young political movement with a pacificist, environmental, anti-corruption philosophy. On Feb. 23, 2002, she was traveling to a campaign event in the city of San Vicente del Caguán, when she was stopped at a roadblock and taken hostage by the FARC.During her years in captivity in the jungle, she was treated brutally and tried to escape repeatedly, experiences she recounted in her book “Even Silence Has An End.”She was eventually rescued by the Colombian government, and over the years she has emerged as the country’s best-known victim. But she has also been the subject of criticism — from those who say she has taken attention away from poorer, lesser known victims, and from others who have criticized her for seeking compensation from the Colombian government following her captivity and rescue.Ms. Betancourt has lived in France for years and returned to Colombia just months ago. In her campaign speech, she directly addressed criticism that the move was designed for personal political benefit.“I have returned in search of the highest political benefit,” she said, “that all of us can have a true democracy.”Her campaign announcement said little about policy proposals beyond repeated vows to fight corruption — and to address the impact of violence on the country.“My story is the story of all Colombians,” she said.In a country of more than 50 million people, nine million are registered with the government as conflict victims.“While the FARC enslaved me and my companions, the drug cartels, violent groups and corrupt politicians enslaved each of you,” she went on.“We are going to leave behind this culture of mafias, violence and lies, and we are going to learn again to be free citizens.”Sofía Villamil More

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      En Latinoamérica, la izquierda asciende

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      Los candidatos con plataformas izquierdistas han logrado victorias en una región con dificultades económicas y una desigualdad que va en aumento.RÍO DE JANEIRO — En las últimas semanas de 2021, Chile y Honduras votaron con determinación por presidentes de izquierda para reemplazar a líderes de derecha, con lo que se extendió un cambio significativo que lleva varios años ocurriendo en toda América Latina.Este año, los políticos de izquierda son los favoritos para ganar las elecciones presidenciales en Colombia y Brasil, sustituyendo a los presidentes en funciones de derecha, lo que pondría a la izquierda y a la centroizquierda en el poder en las seis economías más grandes de una región que se extiende desde Tijuana hasta Tierra del Fuego.El sufrimiento económico, el aumento de la desigualdad, el ferviente descontento con los gobernantes y la mala gestión de la pandemia de COVID-19 han impulsado un movimiento pendular que se distancia de los líderes de centroderecha y de derecha que dominaban hace unos años.La izquierda ha prometido una distribución más equitativa de la riqueza, mejores servicios públicos y redes de seguridad social ampliadas. Pero los nuevos líderes de la región se enfrentan a graves limitaciones económicas y a una oposición legislativa que podría restringir sus ambiciones, así como a unos votantes intranquilos que se han mostrado dispuestos a castigar a quien no cumpla lo prometido.Los avances de la izquierda podrían impulsar a China y socavar a Estados Unidos mientras compiten por la influencia regional, dicen los analistas, al presentarse una nueva cosecha de líderes latinoamericanos desesperados por lograr el desarrollo económico y con más apertura hacia la estrategia global de Pekín de ofrecer préstamos e inversiones en infraestructuras. El cambio también podría dificultar que Estados Unidos siga aislando a los regímenes autoritarios de izquierda en Venezuela, Nicaragua y Cuba.Con el aumento de la inflación y el estancamiento de las economías, los nuevos líderes de América Latina tendrán dificultades para lograr un cambio real en los problemas profundos, dijo Pedro Mendes Loureiro, profesor de estudios latinoamericanos en la Universidad de Cambridge. Hasta cierto punto, dijo, los votantes están “eligiendo a la izquierda simplemente porque en este momento es la oposición”.Los niveles de pobreza se encuentran en el nivel más alto de los últimos 20 años en una región en la que un efímero auge de las materias primas permitió a millones de personas ascender a la clase media tras el cambio de siglo. Varios países se enfrentan ahora a un desempleo de dos dígitos, y más del 50 por ciento de los trabajadores de la región están empleados en el sector informal.Los escándalos de corrupción, el deterioro de la infraestructura y la ausencia crónica de fondos en los sistemas de salud y educación han erosionado la confianza en el gobierno y las instituciones públicas.Personas sin hogar en fila para recibir el almuerzo de los voluntarios en São Paulo en agosto. “El tema ahora es la frustración, el sistema de clases, la estratificación”, dijo un analista.Mauricio Lima para The New York TimesA diferencia de lo que ocurrió a principios de la década de 2000, cuando los izquierdistas ganaron presidencias decisivas en América Latina, los nuevos gobernantes tienen que hacer frente a la deuda, a presupuestos magros, a escaso acceso al crédito y, en muchos casos, a una oposición vociferante.Eric Hershberg, director del Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos y Latinos de la American University, dijo que la racha ganadora de la izquierda nace de un sentimiento generalizado de indignación.“En realidad se trata de los sectores de la clase media baja y de la clase trabajadora que dicen: ‘treinta años de democracia y todavía tenemos que ir en un autobús decrépito durante dos horas para llegar a un centro de salud malo’”, dijo Hershberg. Citó la frustración, la ira y “una sensación generalizada de que las élites se han enriquecido, han sido corruptas, no han actuado en favor del interés público”.La COVID-19 asoló América Latina y devastó economías que ya eran precarias, pero la inclinación política de la región comenzó antes de la pandemia.Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, exlíder de izquierda de Brasil, tiene una ventaja considerable sobre Bolsonaro en un cara a cara, según una encuesta reciente.Mauro Pimentel/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesEl primer hito fue la elección en México de Andrés Manuel López Obrador, que ganó la presidencia con un resultado arrollador en julio de 2018. Durante su discurso de la noche electoral, declaró: “El Estado dejará de ser un comité al servicio de una minoría y representará a todos los mexicanos, a ricos y pobres”.Al año siguiente, los votantes de Panamá y Guatemala eligieron gobiernos de centroizquierda, y el movimiento peronista de izquierda de Argentina tuvo un sorprendente regreso a pesar del legado de corrupción y mala gestión económica de sus líderes. Con la promesa de “construir la Argentina que nos merecemos”, Alberto Fernández, profesor universitario, celebró su triunfo frente a un presidente conservador que buscaba la reelección.En 2020, Luis Arce se impuso a sus rivales conservadores para convertirse en presidente de Bolivia. Se comprometió a ampliar el legado del exlíder Evo Morales, un socialista cuya destitución el año anterior dejó brevemente a la nación en manos de una presidenta de derecha.En abril del año pasado, Pedro Castillo, un maestro de escuela de provincia, sorprendió a la clase política peruana al derrotar por un estrecho margen a la candidata derechista a la presidencia, Keiko Fujimori. Castillo, un recién llegado a la política, arremetió contra las élites y presentó la historia de su vida —un educador que trabajó en una escuela rural sin agua corriente ni sistema de alcantarillado— como una encarnación de los defectos de la clase gobernante.En Honduras, Xiomara Castro, una candidata de plataforma socialista que propuso el establecimiento de un sistema de renta básica universal para las familias pobres, venció con facilidad en noviembre a un rival conservador para convertirse en presidenta electa.Xiomara Castro, que ganó las elecciones en Honduras, ha propuesto un sistema de renta básica universal para las familias pobres.Daniele Volpe para The New York TimesLa victoria más reciente de la izquierda se produjo el mes pasado en Chile, donde Gabriel Boric, un antiguo activista estudiantil de 35 años, venció a un rival de extrema derecha con la promesa de aumentar los impuestos a los ricos para ofrecer pensiones más generosas y ampliar enormemente los servicios sociales.La tendencia no ha sido universal. En los últimos tres años, los votantes de El Salvador, Uruguay y Ecuador han desplazado a sus gobiernos hacia la derecha. Y en México y Argentina, el año pasado, los partidos de centroizquierda perdieron terreno en las elecciones legislativas, socavando a sus presidentes.Pero en general, Evan Ellis, profesor de estudios latinoamericanos en el Colegio de Guerra del Ejército de Estados Unidos, dijo no recordar una América Latina “tan dominada por una combinación de izquierdistas y líderes populistas antiestadounidenses”.“En toda la región, los gobiernos de izquierda estarán particularmente dispuestos a trabajar con los chinos en contratos de gobierno a gobierno”, dijo, y posiblemente “con respecto a la colaboración en materia de seguridad, así como a la colaboración tecnológica”.Jennifer Pribble, profesora de ciencias políticas de la Universidad de Richmond que estudia América Latina, dijo que el brutal número de víctimas de la pandemia en la región hizo que las iniciativas de izquierda, como las transferencias de efectivo y la atención universal a la salud, fueran cada vez más populares.“Los votantes latinoamericanos tienen ahora un sentido más agudo de lo que el Estado puede hacer y de la importancia de que el Estado participe en un esfuerzo redistributivo y en la prestación de servicios públicos”, dijo. “Eso condiciona estas elecciones, y está claro que la izquierda puede hablar más directamente de eso que la derecha”.Gabriel Boric, quien fuera activista estudiantil, ha prometido una amplia expansión de los servicios sociales en Chile.Marcelo Hernandez/Getty ImagesEn Colombia, donde las elecciones presidenciales se celebrarán en mayo, Gustavo Petro, exalcalde izquierdista de Bogotá que perteneció a un grupo guerrillero urbano, ha mantenido una ventaja constante en las encuestas.Sergio Guzmán, director de la consultora Colombia Risk Analysis, dijo que las aspiraciones presidenciales de Petro se hicieron viables después de que la mayoría de los combatientes de las FARC, un grupo guerrillero marxista, dejaron las armas como parte de un acuerdo de paz alcanzado en 2016. El conflicto había dominado durante mucho tiempo la política colombiana, pero ya no.“El tema ahora es la frustración, el sistema de clases, la estratificación, los que tienen y los que no tienen”.Justo antes de Navidad, Sonia Sierra, de 50 años, se encontraba fuera de la pequeña cafetería que regenta en el principal parque urbano de Bogotá. Sus ingresos se habían desplomado, dijo, primero en medio de la pandemia y luego cuando una comunidad desplazada por la violencia se trasladó al parque.Sierra dijo que estaba muy endeudada después de que su marido fuera hospitalizado con covid. Las finanzas son tan ajustadas que hace poco despidió a su única empleada, una joven venezolana que solo ganaba 7,50 dólares al día.“Tanto trabajar y no tengo nada”, dijo Sierra, cantando un verso de una canción popular en la época navideña en Colombia. “No estoy llorando, pero sí, me da sentimiento”.En Recife, Brasil, se complementan los ingresos recogiendo mariscos.Mauricio Lima para The New York TimesEn el vecino Brasil, el aumento de la pobreza, la inflación y una respuesta fallida a la pandemia han convertido al presidente Jair Bolsonaro, el titular de extrema derecha, en un candidato débil de cara a la votación programada para octubre.El expresidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, un izquierdista que gobernó Brasil de 2003 a 2010, una época de notable prosperidad, ha conseguido una ventaja de 30 puntos porcentuales sobre Bolsonaro en un cara a cara, según una encuesta reciente.Maurício Pimenta da Silva, de 31 años, subgerente de una tienda de suministros agrícolas en la región de São Lourenço, en el estado de Río de Janeiro, dijo que se arrepentía de haber votado por Bolsonaro en 2018 y que ahora tiene la intención de apoyar a Da Silva.“Pensé que Bolsonaro mejoraría nuestra vida en algunos aspectos, pero no lo hizo”, dijo Da Silva, un padre de cuatro hijos que no tiene relación con el expresidente. “Todo es tan caro en los supermercados, especialmente la carne”, agregó, lo que lo llevó a tomar un segundo empleo.Con los votantes enfrentados a tanta agitación, los candidatos moderados están ganando poca influencia, lamentó Simone Tebet, una senadora de centroderecha en Brasil que planea presentarse a la presidencia este año.“Si miramos a Brasil y a América Latina, estamos viviendo un ciclo de extremos relativamente aterrador”, dijo. “El radicalismo y el populismo se han impuesto”.Ernesto Londoño More

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      Leftists Are Ascendant in Latin America as Key Elections Loom

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      Growing inequality and sputtering economies have helped fuel a wave of leftist victories that may soon extend to Brazil and Colombia.RIO DE JANEIRO — In the final weeks of 2021, Chile and Honduras voted decisively for leftist presidents to replace leaders on the right, extending a significant, multiyear shift across Latin America.This year, leftist politicians are the favorites to win presidential elections in Colombia and Brazil, taking over from right-wing incumbents, which would put the left and center-left in power in the six largest economies in the region, stretching from Tijuana to Tierra del Fuego.Economic suffering, widening inequality, fervent anti-incumbent sentiment and mismanagement of Covid-19 have all fueled a pendulum swing away from the center-right and right-wing leaders who were dominant a few years ago.The left has promised more equitable distribution of wealth, better public services and vastly expanded social safety nets. But the region’s new leaders face serious economic constraints and legislative opposition that could restrict their ambitions, and restive voters who have been willing to punish whoever fails to deliver.The left’s gains could buoy China and undermine the United States as they compete for regional influence, analysts say, with a new crop of Latin American leaders who are desperate for economic development and more open to Beijing’s global strategy of offering loans and infrastructure investment. The change could also make it harder for the United States to continue isolating authoritarian leftist regimes in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.With rising inflation and stagnant economies, Latin America’s new leaders will find it hard to deliver real change on profound problems, said Pedro Mendes Loureiro, a professor of Latin American studies at the University of Cambridge. To some extent, he said, voters are “electing the left simply because it is the opposition at the moment.”Poverty is at a 20-year high in a region where a short-lived commodities boom had enabled millions to ascend into the middle class after the turn of the century. Several nations now face double-digit unemployment, and more than 50 percent of workers in the region are employed in the informal sector.Corruption scandals, dilapidated infrastructure and chronically underfunded health and education systems have eroded faith in leaders and public institutions.Homeless people lining up to receive lunch from volunteers in São Paulo in August. “The issue now is the frustration, the class system, the stratification,” one analyst said.Mauricio Lima for The New York TimesUnlike the early 2000s, when leftists won critical presidencies in Latin America, the new officeholders are saddled by debt, lean budgets, scant access to credit and in many cases, vociferous opposition.Eric Hershberg, the director of the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at American University, said the left’s winning streak is born out of widespread indignation.“This is really about lower-middle-class and working-class sectors saying, ‘Thirty years into democracy, and we still have to ride a decrepit bus for two hours to get to a bad health clinic,’” Mr. Hershberg said. He cited frustration, anger and “a generalized sense that elites have enriched themselves, been corrupt, have not been operating in the public interest.”Covid has ravaged Latin America and devastated economies that were already precarious, but the region’s political tilt started before the pandemic.Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s leftist ex-leader, has a sizable advantage over Mr. Bolsonaro in a head-to-head matchup, according to a recent poll.Mauro Pimentel/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe first milestone was the election in Mexico of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who won the presidency by a landslide in July 2018. He declared during his election night address: “The state will cease being a committee at the service of a minority and it will represent all Mexicans, poor and rich.”The next year, voters in Panama and Guatemala elected left-of-center governments, and Argentina’s Peronist movement made a stunning comeback despite its leaders’ legacy of corruption and economic mismanagement. President Alberto Fernández, a university professor, celebrated his triumph over a conservative incumbent by promising “to build the Argentina we deserve.”In 2020, Luis Arce trounced conservative rivals to become president of Bolivia. He vowed to build on the legacy of the former leader Evo Morales, a socialist whose ouster the year before had briefly left the nation in the hands of a right-wing president.Last April, Pedro Castillo, a provincial schoolteacher, shocked Peru’s political establishment by narrowly defeating the right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori for the presidency. Mr. Castillo, a political newcomer, railed against elites and presented his life story — an educator who worked in a rural school without running water or a sewage system — as an embodiment of their failings.In Honduras, Xiomara Castro, a socialist who proposed a system of universal basic income for poor families, handily beat a conservative rival in November to become president-elect.Xiomara Castro, who won election in Honduras, has proposed a system of universal basic income for poor families.Daniele Volpe for The New York TimesThe most recent win for the left came last month in Chile, where Gabriel Boric, a 35-year-old former student activist, beat a far-right rival by promising to raise taxes on the rich in order to offer more generous pensions and vastly expand social services.The trend has not been universal. In the past three years, voters in El Salvador, Uruguay and Ecuador have moved their governments rightward. And in Mexico and Argentina last year, left-of-center parties lost ground in legislative elections, undercutting their presidents.But on the whole, Evan Ellis, a professor of Latin American studies at the U.S. Army War College, said that in his memory there had never been a Latin America “as dominated by a combination of leftists and anti-U. S. populist leaders.”“Across the region, leftist governments will be particularly willing to work with the Chinese on government-to-government contracts,” he said, and possibly “with respect to security collaboration as well as technology collaboration.”Jennifer Pribble, a political science professor at the University of Richmond who studies Latin America, said the brutal toll of the pandemic in the region made leftist initiatives such as cash transfers and universal health care increasingly popular.“Latin American voters now have a keener sense of what the state can do and of the importance of the state engaging in a redistributive effort and in providing public services,” she said. “That shapes these elections, and clearly the left can speak more directly to that than the right.”Gabriel Boric, a former student activist, has promised a vast expansion of social services in Chile. Marcelo Hernandez/Getty ImagesIn Colombia, where a presidential election is set for May, Gustavo Petro, a leftist former mayor of Bogotá who once belonged to an urban guerrilla group, has held a consistent lead in polls.Sergio Guzmán, the director of Colombia Risk Analysis, a consulting firm, said Mr. Petro’s presidential aspirations became viable after most fighters from the FARC, a Marxist guerrilla group, laid down their weapons as part of a peace deal struck in 2016. The conflict long dominated Colombian politics, but no more.“The issue now is the frustration, the class system, the stratification, the haves and have-nots,” he said.Just before Christmas, Sonia Sierra, 50, stood outside the small coffee shop she runs in Bogotá’s main urban park. Her earnings had plummeted, she said, first amid the pandemic, and then when a community displaced by violence moved into the park.Ms. Sierra said she was deep in debt after her husband was hospitalized with Covid. Finances are so tight, she recently let go her only employee, a young woman from Venezuela who earned just $7.50 a day.“So much work and nothing to show for it,” Ms. Sierra she said, singing a verse from a song popular at Christmastime in Colombia. “I’m not crying, but yes, it hurts.”In Recife, Brazil, supplementing income by harvesting shellfish.Mauricio Lima for The New York TimesIn neighboring Brazil, rising poverty, inflation and a bungled response to the pandemic have made President Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right incumbent, an underdog in the vote set for October.Former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a leftist firebrand who governed Brazil from 2003 to 2010, an era of remarkable prosperity, has built a 30 percentage point advantage over Mr. Bolsonaro in a head-to-head matchup, according to a recent poll.Maurício Pimenta da Silva, 31, an assistant manager at a farming supplies store in the São Lourenço region of Rio de Janeiro state, said that he regretted voting for Mr. Bolsonaro in 2018, and that he intended to support Mr. da Silva.“I thought Bolsonaro would improve our life in some aspects, but he didn’t,” said Mr. Pimenta, a father of four who is no relation to the former president. “Everything is so expensive in the supermarkets, especially meat,” he added, prompting him to take a second job.With voters facing so much upheaval, moderate candidates are gaining little traction, lamented Simone Tebet, a center-right senator in Brazil who plans to run for president.“If you look at Brazil and Latin America, we are living in a relatively frightening cycle of extremes,” she said. “Radicalism and populism have taken over.”Ernesto Londoño and Flávia Milhorance reported from Rio de Janeiro. Julie Turkewitz reported from Bogotá. More

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      US expected to remove Farc from international terrorist list

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      US expected to remove Farc from international terrorist listThe announcement comes five years after the demobilised rebel group signed a peace deal with the Colombian government The US is expected to remove the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) from its international terrorist list, five years after the demobilised rebel group signed a peace deal with the Colombian government and formed a political party.The announcement is expected to bolster the struggling peace process, which has been implemented haltingly as violence from dissident rebel groups and drug traffickers continues to trouble the South American nation.US officials quoted by Reuters and the Wall Street Journal said the move could happen as early as Tuesday afternoon, while the state department said that it had provided notifications to Congress on “upcoming actions” regarding the Farc.The US added the Farc to its terror list in 1997, when the rebel group was at the height of its power, commanding thousands of fighters and launching large-scale attacks on regional capitals and military bases. The group kidnapped thousands of politicians and ordinary Colombians, and planted landmines across the country.Colombia’s ex-guerrillas: isolated, abandoned and living in fearRead more“Taking the Farc off the list is long overdue, since the group that the state department listed doesn’t exist any more,” said Adam Isacson, the director for defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America (Wola), a thinktank. “13,600 guerrillas demobilized and became ex-guerrillas in 2017.”“More than four years later, more than 90% of them remain demobilized and transitioning to civilian life. To keep penalizing and shunning all contact with them is not only absurd, it’s counterproductive,” he said.The Farc took up arms against Colombia’s government in 1964, claiming to fight in defense of peasant farmers. They soon turned to drug trafficking and kidnapping for ransom to bolster their war chest, carrying out massacres and atrocities over decades of civil war that killed more than 260,000 and left more than 7 million displaced. Government forces, state-aligned paramilitary groups and other leftist rebels contributed to the bloodshed.A peace deal was signed in October 2016, formally ending the war and promising rural development, though the accord failed to pass a public referendum. Colombia’s then-president, Juan Manuel Santos, won a Nobel peace prize for his efforts despite the defeat, and subsequently ratified a revised peace deal via Congress the following month.But since the signing of the peace deal, the limitations on Farc members imposed by the terror listing have hindered the accord’s implementation, analysts say, as individually listed former combatants are unable to access the local banking system.“US sanctions have handicapped economic and political reintegration, penalizing ex-combatants who laid down their arms in good faith and continue to remain committed to the process despite enormous challenges,” said Elizabeth Dickinson, a Colombia analyst at the International Crisis Group (ICG). “We have heard testimonies of ex-combatants who have had to go from bank to bank in order to open accounts, a basic requisite to start cooperative agricultural projects.”The terror listing also hamstrung the US government’s ability to support and influence the peace deal, which was negotiated with the backing of then-president Barack Obama’s administration, Dickinson said.“US officials cannot meet with the former Farc, they cannot sit in the same room, USaid cannot provide financing to any projects whose beneficiaries include the Farc, or might include them,” Dickinson said. “Five years after the signing of the accord, these restrictions are illogical and counterproductive.”TopicsFarcColombiaAmericasUS politicsUS foreign policynewsReuse this content More

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      Colombia’s Troubles Put a President’s Legacy on the Line

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      SEOUL — Iván Duque swept into Colombia’s presidency in 2018 as a young, little-known technocrat riding a surging right-wing movement. He tapped public anger against a peace deal that he said had treated the country’s deadly insurgents too softly. And he warned that the proposals of his left-wing opponent could stifle steady growth.Three years and a global pandemic later, it is Mr. Duque who is presiding over high unemployment and an angry electorate — and who is on the defensive about the steps he has taken to tame persistent violence by militants.Mr. Duque contends his policies have opened opportunities for the middle- and low-income classes, encouraged entrepreneurship and paved the way for Colombia to return to its prepandemic growth. He also touted social policies that could address issues of police conduct and social inequality that led to violent clashes this year, killing dozens.Mr. Duque after he won office in 2018, riding a surging right-wing movement. Three years into his term, he is presiding over high unemployment and an angry electorate.Andres Stapff/Reuters“The three pillars of our overall plan of government, which were legality, entrepreneurship and equality, have been producing results,” Mr. Duque said last week in an interview in South Korea with The New York Times. “Obviously, they were affected by the pandemic. But I think we have demonstrated our resilient spirit.”Mr. Duque’s legacy — and that of his patron, the firebrand former President Álvaro Uribe, who still dominates Colombian politics — is on the line. Colombian voters go to the polls in May, when Gustavo Petro, a former presidential candidate, previous mayor of Bogotá and a onetime guerrilla member, could become the country’s furthest-left leader in its history at a time when leftists are again claiming victories across South America.Mr. Duque can’t run again because of term limits, and his party’s candidate hasn’t been determined. Still, his government faces some of the lowest approval ratings of his presidency. Colombia’s economy, trade and investment from abroad were hit hard by the coronavirus, which exacerbated long-running social tensions over stark wealth inequality and police conduct.Colombia’s economy, trade and investment from abroad were hit hard by the coronavirus, which exacerbated long-running social tensions.Federico Rios for The New York TimesHe has also come under increased pressure to tame Colombia’s armed insurgencies and hasten the fulfillment of the government’s peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by the Spanish acronym FARC, despite his criticism of the terms of the deal on the 2018 campaign trail.In South Korea, Mr. Duque was seeking trade and investment opportunities, such as expansions by Korean manufacturers and increased sales of Colombian coffee, avocados and bananas. He even cited the filming of a South Korean movie — Mr. Duque has long championed creative investments in areas like the arts and research — in Bogotá.The president is trying “to get South Korean investors interested in playing big ball,” said Sergio Guzmán, of the Bogotá-based consulting firm Colombia Risk Analysis.The challenge for Mr. Duque, Mr. Guzmán added, is that a victory by Mr. Petro could undo what he and his predecessors had accomplished.“He’s a weak president,” said Mr. Guzmán. “He’s a lame-duck president. He’s a president whose most important legacy will be for his successor not to be able to undo his own policies.”FARC rebels in the mountains of Colombia in 2018. Mr. Duque has come under increased pressure to tame Colombia’s armed insurgencies.Federico Rios for The New York TimesMr. Duque disputed that, saying that his efforts — including wage subsidies and a proposal to widen university access — could help put the economy back on track. Though a protégé of Mr. Uribe, the charismatic leader who revved up the government’s offensive against FARC nearly two decades ago, Mr. Duque never fully fit the populist mold. Born into a politically prominent family, the 45-year-old president worked for years in development banking. He speaks in clipped, think-tank English: “I will give you very concise numbers,” he said at one point before doing exactly that.He was elected after campaigning on increasing economic growth and changing the terms of the peace accord with FARC, but he quickly ran into challenges. In 2019, frustration over the lack of opportunities and possible pension changes sparked mass protests. So did a tax proposal this year meant to close a fiscal hole exacerbated by the pandemic.Mr. Duque’s tax proposal had merit, said Luis Fernando Mejía, director of the Colombian research institute Fedesarrollo, but he seemed unable to sell it to the public.The firebrand former President Álvaro Uribe, who still dominates Colombian politics.Federico Rios for The New York Times“It was a very, very good reform,” he said, “but he was not able to consolidate political capital and to create an adequate strategy to push through a reform that I think had been very important.”Mr. Duque is also trying to thread the policy needle in a polarized time, making it increasing difficult to please both his party’s base and unhappy voters.The tax protests became part of broader unrest over inequality and police violence. Some police used brutal and deadly force on demonstrators.In the interview, Mr. Duque cited his efforts to increase scrutiny on the police and to equip them with body cameras. But he said some of the demonstrators had been spurred by “people producing fake news” and other instigators to elevate the violence.His trickiest balancing act may be enacting the peace accord with FARC. In 2019, his effort to alter the terms, including tougher sentencing for war crimes, failed on legal grounds. Internationally, he is under intense pressure to carry out the accord, but domestically, his party and other conservatives continue to criticize it.Students protesting against changes to the tax code in Bogotá, the capital, in 2019.Juan Barreto/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJust weeks ahead of the deal’s five-year anniversary, more than half of its measures have not been applied or have barely begun, according to the Kroc Institute at the University of Notre Dame, an independent entity charged with oversight of the deal. Opposition groups and some of the electorate say Mr. Duque missed a critical window to push it forward.Mr. Duque and his supporters point to the accord’s time frame, which calls for its tenets to be enacted over 15 years. In the interview, he said that he had done more than his predecessor, Juan Manuel Santos, to put in place the peace deal’s landownership overhauls and development plans that would give poor farmers and former rebels jobs and opportunities.“We have been not only implementing, but the issues that we have been implementing are going to be decisive for the evolution of the accords,” he said, adding, “We have made a good progress.”Mr. Duque must balance competing interests overseas, as well. Tensions have risen between the United States — Colombia’s longtime ally — and China, a growing source of business for the country. China, Colombia’s second-largest trading partner after the United States, has invested in mines in the country and successfully bid on engineering contracts.A temporary hospital set up in April to house Covid patients in Bogotá.Federico Rios for The New York TimesMr. Duque said that the Chinese companies had won the work in open bids and that relations with the United States remained warm. “We try to build our relationship with our partners based on investment and trade and common opportunities. But usually I have to highlight that in the case of the United States, our alliance has been existing for almost 200 years, and we will continue to see the United States as No. 1.”With the United States, relations hit an awkward moment last year when members of Mr. Duque’s party endorsed Donald J. Trump and Republicans in the election, provoking a rare rebuke from the U.S. ambassador.“I think that was unwise,” Mr. Duque said. “I think that should have not been done.”These examples of polarization, he said, have complicated efforts to fix deep-rooted problems. The world is polarized, he said, as people “connect demagoguery and populism with violent sentiments and algorithms and people producing fake news and manipulating the truth.”He added, “That’s why we have concentrated in our administration not to promote polarization, but to move the country to the right direction.”Gustavo Petro, center, during a protest against tax changes in 2019. A former presidential candidate, he could become the country’s furthest-left leader in its history.Juan Barreto/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesCarlos Tejada More