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Left Politics

Lessons From Colombia: A Victory For The People

June 27, 2022 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. , , ,
On June 19, Colombians elected the first leftist president and the first Afro-Colombian vice president in history. This was possible, despite being in a repressive state, because of a strong national social movement that organized an effective national strike in the spring of 2021. Clearing the FOG speaks with Charo Mina Rojas, an Afro-Colombian human rights defender and leader in the 2016 peace process, about this victory, the obstacles they faced and how they will counter efforts by the wealthy class to prevent further progress. Activists in the United States have much to learn from the Colombian people's movement and an important role to play in preventing interference by the US government.

Colombia’s New President: What This Victory Means For The Continent

June 22, 2022 Danny Shaw, Council on Hemispheric Affairs. , , ,
On August 7th a new left of center government will take power in Colombia. Many questions remain to be answered but one thing is clear: this historic election marks a break with a long Colombian history of State violence and monolithic conservatism. On June 19, Gustavo Petro beat his rival, the businessman Rodolfo Hernández, by a margin of 50.44% to 47.03%, after 100% of the country’s polling stations reported their results. Both his opponent and current president Iván Duque recognized the results, congratulating Petro. Despite an information war and decades of violence against the left, over 11 million Colombians successfully mobilized and voted for the historic change. La Unión Patriótica (UP) was one leftist political party that suffered from this political genocide.

Colombia’s First Ever Left-Wing President: What Does It mean?

June 20, 2022 Ben Norton, Multipolarista. , , ,
Gustavo Petro won Colombia’s presidential election on June 19. This will make him the first left-wing leader in the South American nation’s history. In the video, podcast, and written analysis below, Multipolarista editor Benjamin Norton discusses Petro’s historic victory, what it means for Colombia, Latin America, and the world, and how difficult it will be for him to govern. Gustavo Petro won the first round of Colombia’s presidential election on May 29. In the second round, he defeated far-right candidate Rodolfo Hernández, a real estate mogul with an estimated $100 million in wealth. Petro previously served as mayor of the capital Bogotá, and long before that a former guerrilla in the armed socialist group M-19.

Gustavo Petro To Be First Left-Wing President And Francia Márquez The First Afro-Descendant Woman VP

June 20, 2022 Julie Varughese, Toward Freedom. , , ,
Celebrations took place this evening as people took to the streets of Colombia after left-wing presidential candidate Gustavo Petro was deemed the winner of the second-round election. This victory makes his running mate, Francia Márquez, the first Afro-descendant woman who will serve as vice president once the term begins in August. The Pacto Histórico coalition candidates won more than 50 percent of votes. Petro’s competitor, Rodolfo Hernández, conceded the election, congratulating Petro. “I called Gustavo to congratulate him on his victory and offer him my support to fulfill the promises of change for which Colombia voted today,” Hernández tweeted. The millionaire ran on the League of Anti-Corruption Governors ticket and had been likened to a “Colombian Trump” for his brash manner. “Colombia will always count on me.”

Gustavo Petro Wins Historic Elections In Colombia

June 20, 2022 People's Dispatch. , ,
Preliminary results from Colombia’s second round presidential race indicate the victory of the left-wing Historic Pact coalition led by Gustavo Petro and Francia Marquez. The duo had received 40% of the votes cast in the first round, 10 points shy of a first round victory. The progressive duo was facing off against political outsider Rodolfo Hernández of the League of Anti-Corruption Governors movement who received just under 47% of the vote in the precount. The period leading up to these elections have been marked by irregularities, violence, and strong media campaigns demonizing the progressive candidates. Days before the polls, the prominent Colombian news magazine Semana, published a cover with Petro and Hernández’s faces and underneath wrote “ex-guerrillero or engineer”.

Colombia’s New Dawn?

June 19, 2022 Alborada. , , ,
Colombians head to the polls this Sunday for a presidential election that will determine the country’s political trajectory for the next four years – and far beyond. With the two candidates offering vastly contrasting visions of the country, the tightly-poised contest carries ramifications likely to be felt long after the 2022-2026 electoral term ends. At the head of the progressive Historic Pact coalition, Gustavo Petro has campaigned on a platform of strengthening human rights and environmental protections, increased social investment and implementation of the 2016 peace agreement between the then-government of Juan Manuel Santos and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Petro and the Pact’s vice-presidential candidate, the African-Colombian social activist and feminist organizer Francia Márquez, have drawn strong support from social groups long marginalized under Colombia’s exclusionary political system.

Colombia: World Power Of Life Or Neo-Fascist Pillar?

June 12, 2022 Agustín Laó-Montes, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
We live at a historical crossroads, an era of civilizational crisis where life and death are at stake worldwide, a situation in which Colombia faces a deep dilemma. On May 29, 2022, around 21 million citizens voted in Colombia's national elections to elect its executive branch. The victory of the Historical Pact “Colombia Can” comes to the fore, an alignment of the new left with Gustavo Petro as president and Francia Márquez as vice-presidential formula. It is the first time that a left-wing coalition has triumphed in a presidential election in Colombia, adding 8.5 million votes, the largest number obtained in the first electoral round by any political group in the country's history. On June 19, a second round will be held to decide the two main executive positions, since no one obtained more than 50% of the vote.

On Observing The 2022 Presidential Elections In Colombia

June 2, 2022 Jemima Pierre, Black Agenda Report. , ,
On May 26th, in my capacity as the co-coordinator of the Haiti/Americas Team for the Black Alliance for Peace, I traveled with a delegation to Colombia to serve as an official observer of its presidential elections. The elections were historic: not only was a leftist presidential ticket leading in the polls, but the vice presidential candidate on that ticket was Francia Márquez, a popular and well known Afro-Colombian feminist activist. As observers, our roles were to bear witness to history by ensuring there was no impropriety or fraud at the voting booth or in the democratic process. The impetus for the delegation came after the results of the March 13, 2022 primary elections in Colombia clearly indicated that the two leading candidates of the leftist “Pacto Historico” party were Gustavo Petro (a former guerilla activist turned mayor of Bogota) and Francia Márquez.

Colombian Left May Be On The Verge Of Winning Power

May 31, 2022 Andrew Willis Garcés, Andrea Parra, and Nikki Marín Baena, Convergence. , , ,
The Colombian Left has seen its greatest electoral successes ever in 2022. In March, during the combined congressional general election and presidential primary (yes, they do both on the same day), for the first time ever, the Left party alliance won the most congressional seats of any party, and the two Left presidential candidates came in first and third, respectively, in votes received across all parties. The governing right-wing party has almost totally collapsed, winning only 12% of the vote. Those elected to Congress in March included a few leaders of an historic general strike last May, including a college student who went viral conducting an outdoor protest orchestra. Most U.S. news coverage of Colombia references gang violence and drug cartels, masking the vibrant web of Afro-Colombian, indigenous, feminist, student, campesino and worker movements that have shaken the country with mobilizations and now electoral wins over the last year.

Southern Workers Gather To Build Workers Assembly Movement

May 21, 2022 Southern Workers Assembly, Workers.org. , , ,
Under the slogan “Build the Workers Assembly Movement! Organize the South!” nearly 80 workers from eight Southern states gathered in Durham, North Carolina, for a Southern Workers Assembly Organizing School over the weekend of April 29 to May 1. Workers came to the School from Atlanta; New Orleans; Charleston, South Carolina; Richmond and Tidewater, Virginia; Charlotte, Raleigh, Durham, Asheville and Eastern North Carolina; northern Kentucky; and elsewhere. Over the last year, the network of areas building Workers Assemblies across the South has grown substantially to include nine different cities, the development of several industry-based councils — including Amazon, health care and education workers — and interest in developing assemblies in additional locations as well. 

The Left Must Be Ruthlessly Strategic

May 9, 2022 Nathan J. Robinson, Current Affairs. , ,
Sometimes I wish there were as many leftist reading groups on The Art of War as there are on Marx’s Capital. It’s not that I don’t think leftists should understand socialist economics. Plenty of people I respect teach classes on Marx’s Capital. But it’s one thing to know what you want; it’s another to know how to get it. One fair critique of the revived American left is that while we have developed a compelling platform and inspired many to embrace the creed of democratic socialism, we are insufficiently savvy about the pursuit and use of power. I don’t think this can entirely be blamed on the left. American socialism has always been marginal, and it’s impressive that we have as many democratic socialists in office around the United States as we do.

The Left Has Culture, But The World Still Belongs To The Banks

February 11, 2022 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. , , ,
‘[T]here is great intellectual poverty on the part of the right wing’, Héctor Béjar says in our latest dossier, A Map of Latin America’s Present: An Interview with Héctor Béjar (February 2022). ‘There is a lack of right-wing intellectuals everywhere’. Béjar speaks with a great deal of authority on these matters because, for the past sixty years, he has been intimately involved in the intellectual and political debates which have taken place in his native Peru and across Latin America. ‘In the cultural world’, Béjar notes, ‘the left has everything, the right has nothing’. When it comes to the great cultural debates of our time, which are manifest in the political sphere around social changes (the rights of women and minorities, the responsibility to nature and to human survival, etc.), the needle of history bends almost fully to the left.

Cryptocurrencies: A View From The Left

January 8, 2022 Thomas Redshaw, Red Pepper. , ,
The use of cryptocurrencies is rapidly increasing across the world. In 2020, scholars at the University of Cambridge estimated there were 101 million people using cryptocurrencies worldwide, an increase from 35 million just two years previously. The rise of cryptocurrency is usually a story of pizzas bought with bitcoins now worth over a billion dollars, kingpins of darknet drugs markets ordering assassinations and hospitals being held to ransom by anonymous hackers. These new levels of activity however are pushing cryptocurrency, and its underlying blockchain technology into the mainstream – with significant consequences. The first and arguably biggest impact so far is cultural.

Next Steps In Recovering Democracy In Honduras After Historic Left Victory

December 7, 2021 Peoples Dispatch. , , ,
Following Xiomara Castro’s victory in the Honduran elections, Bertha Zúniga Cáceres, Coordinator, COPINH, spoke to Peoples Dispatch about what this means for people’s movements in the country. She talks about the government’s plans in its first 100 days, what movements like COPINH think are the next steps for rebuilding democracy, and more.

Five Reasons Why The Left Won In Venezuela

November 23, 2021 Leonardo Flores, Popular Resistance. , , ,
For the first time in four years, every major opposition party in Venezuela participated in elections. For the fifth time in four years, the left won in a landslide. Voters elected 23 governors, 335 mayors, 253 state legislators and 2,471 municipal councilors. The governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) won at least 19 of 23 governorships (one race remains too close to call) and the Caracas mayoralty in the November 21 “mega-elections.” Of the 335 mayoral races, the vote count has been completed in 322 of them, with PSUV and its coalition taking 205, opposition coalitions 96 and other parties 21. Over 70,000 candidates ran for these 3,082 offices, and 90% of the vote was counted and verified within hours of polls closing.
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