Liberal Piedad Córdoba, who was active in Colombia’s politics for decades, passes away

Colombian politics lost one of its most representative personalities this Saturday. Piedad Córdoba, a woman from Congress, protagonist of the most important events of recent decades, was found lifeless by her bodyguards. When he was admitted to Los Conquistadores Clinic in his hometown of Medellin, he was already dead. It was established that the cause was a heart attack. Known for her fight to achieve a negotiated settlement of the armed conflict with the then-FARC guerrilla and her participation in negotiations with this armed group that led to the release of several kidnapped people, she was always a controversial figure.

President Gustavo Petro was one of the first to react to his death. “As a Congressman I met him and as a Senator he died. A true liberal has died,” the President said through a trill. At the time of his death, Piedad was a senator for the Historical Pact, the party from which Petro had become president. She spent almost half her life in Congress, where she first came to power in 1992 as representative of the Chamber for her department, Antioquia, and where she was later senator until 2010. Most of his career was spent within the party. Generous. He came from a family that had led the party for decades in Chocó, where his ancestral lineage was from. However, he distanced himself from the Red Tent due to his progressive views and being close to the left, which led him to found the Poder Ciudadano Siglo XXI movement as an internal dissent.

“Piedad Córdoba was a woman beaten by an era and a society. He fought his entire mature life for a more democratic society. Her body and mind did not resist the pressure of an anachronistic society that valued the adjustment of young people, that hated dialogue and peace, that hated blacks, indigenous peoples, and the poor who, along with her Behaved like a criminal. A fascist lawyer expelled her from the Senate and made fun of her voters, I wanted to compensate for the damage and help her become part of the historic treaty list, I thought she deserved it,” says Trill of Petro. Are.

Although she was not the first African-descendant woman to reach Congress – Nestley Lozano had already done so in 1962 – she achieved an unprecedented role in national politics for an African-descendant woman. She traveled to Latin America in search of alliances to advance peace processes with foreign guarantors, and became close to several leftist Latin American presidents, notably Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil and Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. This last friendship was the cause of his greatest criticism in Colombia, where he was accused of pursuing a secret political agenda favoring Chavismo and guerrilla.

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