Colombia: the roar of the sovereign announces freedom
By: Beatrice E. Rangel - 31/10/2023
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The map of Colombia changed colors and political temperature on Sunday, October 29. In the elections to elect Mayors and Governors, centrist formulas prevailed in opposition to the extremes embodied by President Gustavo Petro.
Most analysts consider this result as a kind of plebiscite on President Petro's management. And, of course, the verdict is deeply negative for the Colombian government. But this only reflects the tip of an immense Iceberg that not only affects Colombia but all of Latin America. Because when you sharpen your lens and study each of the victorious candidates, you discover a connecting factor between them. Despite being a super diverse group in ethnic terms; Of education, training and geographical location, all those elected have in common that they have worked for a community cause and from that seed the bush of political success has germinated. This indicates that democracy is deepening in Colombia since those elected are not tokens imposed by the hierarchies of the political parties but rather members of communities chosen by each of them. It is clearly seen that the process of placing the epicenter of politics in the heart of democracy is beginning, which is the freedom of each community to define its political association and elect its leaders. Finally, then, the long process of correcting the founding defect of Latin America begins.
The region, as is known, was entered into the Western cultural axis by two medieval powers: Spain and Portugal. Both established in America the medieval institutional order that is distinguished by the control of a small group of powerful people over the collective through the intervention of the economy and politics. Thus Latin America was born with the pyramid of power inverted. Instead of the communities choosing their leadership, the leadership was imposed by the elites. This is why throughout the region the central state apparatus consumes all fiscal and rent-seeking resources while the municipalities, which are the first trench of relationship between the authority and the community, subsist with the crumbs that the central state is pleased to give them. In the United States, on the contrary, municipalities are owners of their resources, independent of provincial and state authorities and a breeding ground for the constant generation of new political and social leadership.
In Colombia, the sovereign's turn in favor of transferring the axis of power to the communities was evident in these elections and the good news is that it is not a unique and solitary process.
In neighboring Venezuela, its heroic civil society has been doing the same for a decade. What happens is that the change in Venezuela was not observed because it captured the barbaric nature of the totalitarian regime that took power starting in 20112 to the attention of the entire world. But in 2015, the Assembly that emerged from the popular vote came from the free selection of the communities that chose as their representatives people who had worked within them. And now in 2023 the people of Venezuela freely and really painfully in terms of the obstacles put in place by the regime decided to participate in a primary election process and select Maria Corina Machado as their representative before the regime. Mrs. Machado is the daughter of the civil society that she has accompanied in the ordeal that has taken her children to remote lands, cells and tombs.
In short, the roar of the Colombian sovereign promises to become a raucous song to freedom of continental dimensions in the next decade.
«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».