Latin America’s new left
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 22 June 2022
⏱️ 27 minutes
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Summary
Colombia has elected its first leftist president. Unthinkable a decade ago, his victory signals a dramatic shift in the pandemic-wracked region. Plus, the powerful testimony from election workers whose lives were upended by Donald Trump’s false claims.
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For the first time in its 200-year history, Colombia will have a leftist president: More than 50 percent of voters chose Gustavo Petro, a former guerilla fighter and mayor of Bogatá, to lead the country.
Petro is one of several new left-wing leaders in Latin America, as voters kick out leaders who they feel failed them during the pandemic when inequality in the region soared. Now, Petro says he aims to work with a coalition of left-wing presidents to tackle climate change and issues affecting women and Indigenous people. We checked in with the Post’s Bogatá bureau chief, Samantha Schmidt, to talk about what this moment could mean for Latin America, and whether the United States could be taking a back seat in the region.
And, yesterday’s hearings on the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol included powerful testimony from former election workers in Georgia who described how their lives were derailed after Trump targeted them.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | On Sunday night, we had a presidential election that was historic. |
| 0:07.6 | Samantha Schmidt is the post-Burochef in Bogota. |
| 0:11.1 | She's been reporting on Colombia's tense presidential election. |
| 0:14.7 | And on Sunday, she was with the winning candidate when the results came in. |
| 0:18.9 | Gustavo Pedro won the election, and he will now be the first leftist president that Colombia |
| 0:25.7 | has had in more than 200 years. |
| 0:31.6 | It seems like Pedro may have thought he was going to win because the campaign managed |
| 0:36.2 | to get a huge arena for their victory speech that night. |
| 0:42.0 | It's the Moistad arena in Bogota, which is often used for concerts and soccer games. |
| 0:48.4 | And the stands were packed. |
| 0:50.5 | And people were waiting a long time after the results came out for the candidates to |
| 0:55.4 | come on stage. |
| 0:56.4 | And when they did, I mean, people just erupted in cheers. |
| 1:00.2 | There was a massive Colombian flag across the stands in the back. |
| 1:07.6 | People were kind of lifting up their phones to take photos. |
| 1:10.1 | You can see the lights all over. |
| 1:11.9 | You know, at one point, confetti was, you know, dropped from above. |
| 1:16.1 | People were chanting like, si se bullo, si se bullo. |
| 1:19.9 | Yes, we did. |
| 1:20.9 | Yes, we did. |
| 1:21.9 | Yes, we did. |
| 1:26.3 | At one point, Pedro said something pretty powerful that said, you know, he was going to |
... |
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