Green is for Go in Colombia

• COHA op-ed of the week

An extraordinary event may be reflected in Colombia’s electoral polling: conceivably the politics of thuggery, corruption and Bogotá-inspired violence under the ruling Uribe administration, is being successfully challenged by Mockus’ Green Party.

The amazing rise of Antanas Mockus and his Green Party in Colombia belies the stereotype, common even among Latin America specialists, of a country irredeemably plagued by violence and appropriately known for its “faux democracy.” Mockus and the Greens prove that Colombian democracy can be real enough, though admittedly conflicted. The sudden surge of Mockus is not completely surprising. It is, rather, a new chapter in an old struggle between two powerful political currents in Colombia’s societal evolution, where controversial movements of popular mobilization and democratic optimism have repeatedly had to face presidential administrations, now embodied in the Álvaro Uribe administration, one that is no stranger to violence and intimidation. What is at stake is not just how Uribe will go down in history, but whether the harsh realities of the Uribe presidency will allow the White House to reverse itself and back the pending U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (which it seems to want to do) that President Obama opposed while he was a member of the Senate.

Yet, this is something new. Mockus, a popular two-term former mayor of Bogotá, is a mathematician, philosopher, and former rector of the National University in Bogotá. The flamboyant and eccentric child of Lithuanian immigrants once mooned a student assembly to get their attention. As mayor, he donned tights and a cape as “Supercitizen,” and was married in a circus tent while riding an elephant. In war-torn Colombia, he, on the contrary, has pacifist tendencies.

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This analysis was prepared by COHA Senior Research Fellow W. John Green Ph.D.