De la Espriella, Cepeda, and Colombia’s Political Divide

Thank you so much for being with us today on Latin America in Focus, Sandra.

It's a pleasure to have you here.

To start-

Mm-hmm

... now that Colombia's first round is over, we're looking at a very polarized race between Abelardo de la Espriella, an outsider and a right-winger, and Ivan Cepeda, a leftist senator who is viewed as a continuation of the government of current President Gustavo Petro.

Mm-hmm.

Now, you have written about and argued that this left-right divide amounts to a kind of Latin Americanization of Colombia.

Yeah.

Can you explain to our listeners what you mean by that?

Sure.

Uh, I think that the, the main issue with Colombia, and this is something that comparative politics people always complain about because they, they say every time that you are talking about Latin American politics, everybody's always says, "Well, except for Colombia," right?

Right.

I mean, Colombia is the outlier case.

Uh, and mainly it's due to the fact that since we had a, a civil conflict for more than 60 years, especially with the FARC, the most important insurgent group in Colombia, um, it was very difficult for the left, the, the civil left, right, to, to constitute itself in a strong political party, right?

Mm.

So the left was always on the fringe of the political spectrum in Colombia, and I would say that during most of the 20th century, we had governments that belonged to what you would, would call the center and the center right.

But we didn't have a full political and ideological spectrum.

Um, when the conflict with the FARC is over, during the peace negotiations that President Juan Manuel Santos advanced, what you have there is a space that opens up for the left, and this is the window of opportunity that Gustavo Petro takes advantage of.

And, and since that moment on, what you have is the left being a strong political force in, in Colombia, which basically means that our political and ideological spectrum now it's, it's wider than it was before.

Hmm.

It's more similar than to the political spectrum that you find in any other Latin American country, right? I mean, you have your classical left, and then in this particular case, you have a right that you might define as extreme populist right, which is also new for Colombia.

Hmm.

But that you can find in countries like Argentina or El Salvador or e- even the United States, right? So what you see here is a process of normalization of the political system in Colombia, which gives the sense to us, because this is new to us, that we're in the middle of a very polarized political conversation.

But you know, if you compare us to the rest of the region, what you might have here is closer to the conversations that we've seen in the past in other Latin American countries.