From masked protests to the ballot box: Colombians shake up elections

Before Jhon Hernández became a voter for the first time last month, he was a front-line protester clamoring for change. He joined tens of thousands of Colombians last year in demanding stronger social programs and an end to a proposed tax reform, as COVID-19 restrictions wreaked havoc on the nation’s poor people.

This year, Mr. Hernández ditched the ski mask that had identified him as a protester and instead organized a voter registration drive, convinced that the way forward is not through bigger protests, but smarter voting.

“Change depends on our vote,” says the community leader, who cast his ballot in a presidential election for the first time this year, despite being eligible for the past 15 years.

He’s not alone. More Colombians cast their ballots in last month’s first-round election than in any other vote in the past 20 years, spurred in large part by the historic street protests. Frustration with the government’s out-of-touch policy proposals, combined with a growing desire for change, has laid the groundwork for the major political shift underway in this weekend’s presidential runoff.

For decades, Colombia has been ruled by an elite group of establishment politicians. But, this weekend, two candidates who are eschewing the status quo face off in what is expected to be a historically close runoff. Both candidates are seen as leaning left – even if one is far from a traditional leftist – to cater to protester demands.

“The vast majority of Colombians are fed up with this exclusionary political and economic class that has been governing only in their [own] favor, with the excuse that the armed conflict precluded them from addressing anyone else’s concerns,” says Elizabeth Dickinson, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group.

“Undoubtedly, this scenario is a defeat for the traditional parties. It shows fatigue with their way of doing politics and dissatisfaction with expectations going unmet,” says Daniela Garzón, a researcher at the Peace and Reconciliation Foundation, a think tank in Bogotá.

From national strike to presidential elections

Last year, protests brought Colombia to a halt, with blockades and mass demonstrations lasting more than two months. Initially sparked by a proposed tax reform, the protests quickly broadened to include frustration over income, housing, education, and healthcare inequalities.

Close to 40% of Colombians live in poverty, nearly 50% of the workforce is informally employed, and violence is surging as armed groups expand, despite the promises of a 2016 peace deal.

Police repressed the protesters violently, and conservative President Iván Duque addressed few of their grievances. These issues became top voter concerns.

In Cali, the epicenter of unrest, Mr. Hernández joined from day one, angry over the poor medical attention he received after injuring himself as a construction worker.

With a rock-slinging cohort of protesters, Mr. Hernández and his neighbors ousted police from their neighborhood, and held a six-block area for two months. They transformed a police station into a library, held art events and concerts, and hosted community assemblies to discuss solutions to the unrest.

The levels of participation seen in these protests were unprecedented, says Victoria González, a professor at the Universidad Externado in Bogotá. People supported protesters in any way they could: organizing soup kitchens, leading vigils and silent marches, teaching art classes, and hosting outdoor seminars on politics. Some Colombians, especially in working-class neighborhoods, were learning for the first time how Congress works.

This “contributed to creating a wider political conscience,” she says.

Mr. Hernández says he’d never voted in an election before because “nothing was going to change.” But participating in the protests and the decision-making that positively impacted his community was empowering. When protests ended with no real solutions, he decided the only option left was to vote.

“What do we win by protesting if we’re not going to vote?” he says.

Demonstrations aren’t new in Colombia, but in the past, protesters typically “didn’t directly participate in elections,” says Dr. González.

“Now they believe their only hope for transformation is participating [at] the ballot box.”

Bye-bye status quo?

This weekend’s runoff pits Gustavo Petro, a former guerrilla who, if victorious, would become Colombia’s first leftist president, against Rodolfo Hernández, a populist businessman pledging to end corruption.

Mr. Petro previously served as mayor of Bogotá, and has promised free higher education, welfare for poor people, a transition away from oil exports, and investment in the rural economy. He’s raised fears among some conservatives and the business community that as a leftist he would move Colombia in the direction of neighboring Venezuela.

Mr. Hernández, also a former mayor in the city of Bucaramanga, has inspired fed-up voters with his anti-corruption platform and straightforward manner of speaking. His populist rhetoric, asserting that “the thieves need to be kicked out of politics,” has connected with Colombians and earned him a surprise spot in the runoff.

Despite comparisons to Donald Trump and a wave of support from establishment candidates who didn’t make it into the second round, Mr. Hernández has released policy proposals that skew surprisingly to the left. They call for a full implementation of the peace deal, talks with the largest remaining rebel group, marijuana legalization, and restrictions on riot police. But he has also mentioned an intention to rule by emergency decree if he wins office, raising concern about his commitment to democratic institutions.

It’s not just Colombia rejecting the status quo. Across Latin America, lack of opportunity, and more recently the consequences of the pandemic, have fueled anti-incumbent fervor, catapulting outsiders into office. From Gabriel Boric in Chile to Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico, successful candidates are increasingly speaking to and depending on votes of discontent.

But two anti-establishment outsiders reaching the final round makes Colombia unique, says Patricio Navia, a political scientist and professor at New York University. Both candidates are promising a clean break from the right-wing brand of politics that has won the presidency in the past four election cycles.

New generation of social leaders

On a recent afternoon in Cali, former protesters rode motorcycles to a rough neighborhood in the city’s south where they served food, offered free haircuts – and encouraged locals to vote.

Mayra Mueses, a protester-turned-organizer, says initially she had little interest in electoral politics. She’d never voted in her life. But, after five people were killed at the protest blockade she oversaw for two months last year, she felt driven to seek out new ways to pressure the government for change.

By talking to other protesters and educating herself, she “understood that the repression that came from the police had been ordered,” from people in power, says Ms. Mueses. “We began to ask ourselves, ‘In whose hands are we if [politicians] are giving orders to kill their own people?’”

At least 80 people died during the protests last year, according to the rights group Indepaz, and Ms. Mueses’ political awakening isn’t unique in areas where protesters took to the streets..

A recent poll shows nearly 70% of people between the ages of 18 and 24, the protagonists of last year’s demonstrations, will vote for Mr. Petro on June 19. They’re concerned with poverty and lack of opportunities, having witnessed friends join violent gangs and parents work until old age without pensions.

Older generations are wary of the stigmas associated with the left, in a nation that suffered decades of civil war between extreme leftist guerrilla groups and the government. Many are falling in line behind Mr. Hernández.

Ms. Mueses has no plans to return to protesting, deterred by the violence that injured and killed so many last year. But even if Mr. Petro loses, she says, that would not dampen her commitment to social change. “We understand that it is the responsibility of the youth, like us, to vote.”

Since the social uprisings last year, she adds, “many social leaders have been born.”