Colombia’s president was every inch the revolutionary. From the balcony of the presidential palace last week, Gustavo Petro denounced “neoliberalism” for causing war, Covid-19, hunger and the climate crisis. He railed against businesspeople whom he said were plotting to frustrate his reforms.
Then he addressed the crowd below: “The moment has come to rise up: the president is inviting his people to rise up, not to kneel, to become the masses who know they have the future in their hands.”
Six months into his presidency, Colombia’s first leftwing president is casting aside the mantle of moderation he had assumed in last year’s election campaign and reviving the revolutionary rhetoric of his youth as a member of an urban guerrilla group.