Long before Gustavo Petro emerged as the seemingly victorious left-wing candidate for president, he was part of the M-19, an urban guerrilla group that tried to take power by force in the name of advancing social justice.
For some Colombian voters, his past has been a source of concern after decades of armed conflict. For others, it offered a sign of hope for one of the most unjust countries in Latin America.
The M-19 was born in 1970 in response to alleged fraud in that year’s presidential election. It was much smaller than the country’s main guerrilla force, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which was Marxist and sought refuge in Colombia’s jungles and rural areas.
The M-19 was an urban military group formed by college students, activists and artists who sought to overthrow a system of government they believed could not bridge the chronic divide between rich and poor.
“The M-19 was born in guns to build a democracy,” Mr Petro told DailyExpertNews in an interview.
Originally, it sought to promote a Robin Hood image by stealing milk from supermarket trucks to distribute in poor neighborhoods and, in a symbolic act of rebellion, stole a sword from a museum Simón Bolívar used in Colombia’s war of independence.
Petro, 62, joined the group when he was 17 and an economics student, horrified by the poverty he witnessed in the city where he lives, outside Bogotá, the capital.
Though less ruthless than other rebel groups, the M-19 orchestrated what is considered one of the bloodiest acts in the country’s recent history: the 1985 siege of Colombia’s national courthouse that led to a fight with police. and the military, which killed 94 people.
The group also stole 5,000 weapons from the Colombian military and used kidnapping as a tactic to extract concessions from the government.
Petro, who spent 10 years in the M-19, has largely stored stolen weapons, said Sandra Borda, a political science professor at the University of the Andes in Bogotá.
Most importantly, he was not part of the main circle that made the decisions in M-19. He was still very young at the time,” she says. “He did not participate in the main operations of the M-19, the military operations.”
At the time of the courthouse takeover, Mr. Petro is in prison for his involvement with the group and has described being beaten and electrocuted by authorities.
The group was finally demobilized in 1990, in what was considered one of the most successful peace processes in the country’s long conflict history. It became a political party that helped rewrite the country’s constitution to pay more attention to equality and human rights.
mr. Petro ran for the Senate as a member of the party and launched his political career.
Sofia Villamil and Julie Turkewitz contributed reporting from Bogota.