Petro, Gustavo

Gustavo Petro was born on April 19, 1960 in the city of Cienaga De Oro (Cordoba, Colombia). He studied at the Hermanos de La Salle College in Zipakira (Department of Cundinamarca ).

At the age of 17, as a student, he joined the left-wing guerrilla group April 19 Movement (M-19), which arose in protest against election fraud ^[2] . Engaged in military and political activity, became one of the leaders of the group, and was also elected ombudsman of Sipakira . In 1985, he was arrested for illegal possession of weapons and sentenced to 18 months ^{[3] [4]} . After the armed seizure of the Palais de Justice in Bogotá by the M-19 members, he used his influence for peace negotiations with the government and helped in the cessation of the M-19 in 1990. After the amnesty, he participated in the formation of the political party Democratic Alliance M-19 (AD M-19).

After the dissolution, M-19 studied at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Externado Colombia, then studied public administration at the Graduate School of Public Administration. He studied at the Pontifical University of Bogota, where he received a master's degree in economics. He continued his studies in Belgium at the Leuven Catholic University and the University of Salamanca .

In 1990-1991 he was an adviser to the government of the province of Kundinamarka. In 1991-1994 and 1998-2006, he was a member of the House of Representatives of Colombia .

In 1994-1996 he served as the first secretary of the Embassy of Colombia in Belgium.

In 2002, he was elected to Congress in Bogota from the political movement Vía Alterna, founded by him with Antonio Navarro Wolf and other former M-19 comrades. During this period, he was called the "best congressman" by his parliamentary colleagues.

In 2005, he participated in the unification of left-wing parties into the Alternative Democratic Pole (on the basis of the previous Independent Democratic Pole coalition) and in 2006-2010 he was a senator from the alliance.

In 2010, he was a candidate in the presidential election , in which he received 9% of the vote and took 4th place. In 2011, due to a number of disagreements with the leadership, he left the Alternative Democratic Pole and created his own Progressive Movement to participate in the election of the mayor of the Colombian capital.

In 2011, he was elected mayor of Bogota for a three-year term from 2012 to 2015. However, in December 2013, the Attorney General of Colombia decided to dismiss him because of the mayor’s decision to remove the right to take out garbage from private firms ^[5] . In March 2014, he left the city hall, but on April 23, President Juan Manuel Santos reinstated him as mayor by court order and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights .

By banning the carrying of weapons, as mayor, he achieved a reduction in the level of killings to a minimum in two decades. He also introduced measures to rehabilitate drug addicts and to combat global warming, but his plans for the construction of the subway were canceled by his successor, Enrique Penyalosa , who preferred land transport.

In March 2018, he was registered as a candidate for the presidential election from the Humane Colombia bloc. In the first round, he received 25% of the vote and went into the 2nd round, where, without receiving direct support from the second center-left candidate, Sergio Fajardo and gaining 42% of the vote, he lost to right-wing candidate Ivan Duque .

• Gustavo Petro (neopr.) . Official site. Date of treatment June 9, 2018. (Spanish)
• Biography of Gustavo Petro (neopr.) . RIA News. Date of treatment June 9, 2018. (Russian)