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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now for a segment about an election in our hemisphere that is truly historic, but barely breaking through as a news story in the United States. It's in the nation often considered the US's closest ally in Latin America, the nation of Colombia. There are also many Colombian New Yorkers we know who've been paying very close attention and we'll invite your calls in a few minutes. The news is that Colombia elected its first leftist leader, Gustavo Petro and the first Afro-Latina vice president, Francia Márquez.

News of the election caused celebrations in Bogota and flooded social media after the results were announced, those celebrations did. Petro and Márquez won over half the vote against their opponents, their platform focused on tackling poverty and environmental conservation by proposing solutions to climate change, inclusion, and social justice.

Here to speak with us today about this very big news in our hemisphere and also the implications for the United States is Julie Turkewitz, the Andes bureau chief for The New York Times covering Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Suriname, and Guyana. She has covered the Colombia election. Hi, Julie. Welcome back to WNYC. Thank you for coming on.

Julie Turkewitz: Hi, Brian. Thanks so much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Well, let me start with a big sort of international view. Remind us of the place of Colombia internationally in this hemisphere and its relationship to the United States.

Julie Turkewitz: Sure. Colombia is the third-largest nation in Latin America. It is at the northern tip of South America and it has for years, and particularly in the last 20 years been Washington's strongest partner in Latin America and because of that has received billions of dollars in aid for many things, but in particular to help combat its drug economy and related conflict.

Brian Lehrer: There's been a lot of conflict within Colombia. Do you call it civil war or what would you call the ongoing conflict in Colombia, or how resolved that long conflict, let's say, has become?

Julie Turkewitz: Sure. Colombia is a country that has experienced decades of conflict, and one can call them multiple internal conflicts or one internal conflict, really depends on your perspective, but the most prominent conflict was the conflict between the FARC and the government. The FARC is a, or was a brutal leftist insurgency that existed for more than 50 years and really dominated the national narrative for a long time. The big news was that in 2016, the FARC and the government came to a peace agreement and the FARC largely laid down its arms in exchange for the government promising to implement all kinds of social programs that would address some of the issues of inequality and poverty that had started the war in the first place.

The shadow of that conflict, which became much more complicated than just a war between the government and the FARC, really hangs over this election, but also the shadow of that peace deal hangs over this election. One of the consequences of the FARC's outsize presence in the country is that it was really hard for a legitimate political left to flourish because people associated the left with the violence and the brutality of the FARC. The 2016 peace deal has really opened the political space for a legitimate left to come more popular and is really the precursor or one of the precursors to what we are seeing today in the election of Gustavo Petro, the first leftist president in the country.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, and just one more note of background before we get into the actual election results and the implications for there and maybe even for here. We talk about the violence of the FARC, the Guerrilla group, but Colombia's conservative political government that was popular because it was resisting the FARC also engaged in violence, didn't it?

Julie Turkewitz: During these many, many years of conflict, you saw many actors who are today accused and in some cases found guilty of human rights abuses. The FARC engaged in human rights abuses, there were also paramilitaries that rose up and engaged in many human rights abuses, and also the military is accused in a very prominent scandal of killing civilians in the early 2000s and trying to pass them off as military kills, as rebel kills, really, to show that the military was winning the war.

That also those human rights abuses, which are associated with the current ruling class are also the shadow and the backdrop to what we're seeing in Colombia voting for a very different candidate and the candidate who really in part made his career denouncing some of those human rights abuses committed by government actors.

Brian Lehrer: Tell us more, who is this newly elected president, Gustavo Petro, and who is this newly elected vice president, the first Afro-Latina vice president there, Francia Márquez.

Julie Turkewitz: Sure. Gustavo Petro has billed himself as an anti-establishment outsider candidate, but the truth is he has been a prominent voice in Colombian politics for at least the last two decades. He really has been the voice and the face of the leftist opposition. He was a senator, a former mayor of Bogota, a long-time legislator. Also from the time that he was a teenager until about 1990, he was the member of a different rebel group called the M19. The M19 was never as a large or as violent or as prominent as the FARC, but it had some of the same goals of sort of remaking society in a more just way.

It had engaged in some violent activities but demobilized in 1990 and really became a political force, and after that demobilization, Gustavo Petro really converted from a rebel to a legitimate part of the political class and the political and governing conversation. There's some people in the country who see him still as a rebel, and there's that stigma of the FARC, of the violence, and are concerned that for some reason that rebel past will influence how he acts today. There are others who see his election and his conversion from a rebel, from a member of a group that used arms to create change to the president. This is proof to some people that, that demobilization and peace process that happened in 1990 with the M19 was actually a success.

Brian Lehrer: And vice president-elect Márquez?

Julie Turkewitz: Yes, Francia Marquez is a fascinating individual. She is a 40-year-old environmental activist who rose from poverty and violence in the state of, or the Department of Cauca to become, I would say, the country's most prominent voice on social justice and she really has captivated by the nation by speaking about race and class and gender in a way that just isn't happening at these high political levels. She is the country's first Afro-Colombian vice president. It's also notable that she is a woman.

Colombia has had female vice presidents in the past. The current vice president is one, but she really has single-handedly changed the discourse in the country around race and class and social justice. It's going to be pretty fascinating to see what role she plays in the Petro government and how much she is able to translate that discourse into some kind of policy.

Brian Lehrer: I want to follow up on that about race and class and the Colombian context and put that in a hemisphere white context, but listeners, I also want to open up the phones. If we have anybody listening right now with any ties to Colombia, maybe you're an immigrant from Colombia, maybe you have other reasons that you have connections to that country, what do you think about this election or what do you want to ask about it, anyone? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet at Brian Lehrer. For Julie Turkewitz, the Andes bureau chief for The New York Times. She's in Bogota today, 212-433-9692.

Race in the context of Colombia and Latin America or South America wide if it applies to other countries, I think a lot of non-Latino people in the US may not think about race down there. Might think in this country we say so casually, you're Black, you're Latino, you're white, you're Asian, even though there are many distinctions within all of those groups. It's not just Latino like one big unified thing, so what is the role of race in inequality or politics in Colombia?

Julie Turkewitz: Colombia just like the United States is an incredibly diverse country. You have people who at the end of the day it is going back many generations, a country of immigrants who came and occupied a country in which many Indigenous people were already living. The country is extremely racially diverse. It's also ethnically diverse. There are many Indigenous populations that play. I would say a visible role in politics, maybe not a particularly powerful role but activism-wise are increasingly vocal and increasingly influencing political policy.

You have in the same way that you have in the US, many different movements demanding their rights and demanding a sense of dignity. You have the same movement happening or movements happening in Colombia. Francia Márquez comes from Kalka, which is a department where many descendants of African slaves live and they've really made their livelihoods living as one with the environment, I would say. It's a very mountainous area, it's area full of rivers. It's an area full of gold also. Gold mining is very big.

The point is what I think that Francia Márquez has done in Colombia is that she has her way of speaking about race and class and gender is very specifically Colombian. She has mobilized not only Afro Colombian people across Colombia, but also generally populations that have not had as prominent a place in Colombian politics, so Indigenous communities, rural, what we call Campesino communities, so like poor farming communities, women, particularly single mothers, Francia Márquez became a single mother at age 16.

She has created this like cross gender class race discourse that at the end of the day she really talks about it as being but dignity. A lot of the slogans that she has used are about creating policies that allow people in Colombia to live in dignity. The last point on that that I'll just say is that her discourse is extremely distinctly Colombian. She has at times pulled on movements that are happening in the United States.

When I went to see her in Cali earlier this year, she gave this speech to this packed, in this packed street, thousands of people there. One of the very first things she says was that this idea of that we need to get like the political class off of our neck and we need to break the structural racism that has not allowed us to breathe. She's definitely conscious of and pulling on some of the discourse that exists in the United States

Brian Lehrer: People could be having similar conversations about similar lines in Brazil and Ecuador, in Venezuela, elsewhere in the region?

Julie Turkewitz: Sure, sure. I think that in each place they have their own histories and they have their own leaders who are different places, but yes, I would say that across the region there certainly is a consciousness of what's happening in the United States and a use of some of that language and discourse.

Brian Lehrer: Daisy in the Hudson Valley, you're on WNYC. Hi, Daisy.

Daisy: Hi. Well, I'm going to say that I moved from Colombia at age 16 and I voted on Sunday. I voted for Francia and Petro, and I voted especially for Francia, I think her story is so moving, like the concept of upper mobility in Colombia is just not prominent at all. Francia had been Afro descendant and she used to be a house cleaner and a mother at such a young age. She's just so inspiring and she's an environmental activist. I'm very excited for this.

To echo what Julie was saying about people in Colombia being afraid of the left. My whole family voted for the other guy and my nephew who's 19, my nephew and I voted for Petro. It's people historically being afraid of the left. If you call somebody a leftist, it's an insult and people in Colombia are afraid that Colombia's going to become like Venezuela. We know that that's not going to be the case and we are excited.

Brian Lehrer: Why do you think it won't be the case that Colombia becomes like Venezuela, which many people now consider a pretty failed leftist experiment?

Daisy: Well, because if I did, then I wouldn't have voted for Petro and Francia, so I have faith in that. I believe in what they're saying. Equally, we have Francia, right? It's a ticket that there are women present in this movement. It's not like Chavez movement that it was very populous in an essence and it has like this savior authority. "I'm the one that can do this." It's a very different movement. They're all very Trump, Chavez, and Hernandez, the three of them had that populous movement of like, "I'm the only one that can do this. I'm the only one who can speak for the people," and Petro's not like that. It's Petro and Francia, they go hand in hand. It's just a government with a more left-leaning ideas.

Brian Lehrer: Daisy, thank you so much for your call. We really appreciate it. Anna in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hi, Anna.

Anna: Hi. I have family in South Florida and I'm of Colombian descent and I wasn't paying much attention to the election at all until my family started sending me these forwarded WhatsApp stuff, messages that to me echoed a lot of the things that we were hearing in the January 6th committee hearings, that like if Petro were to win it was because it was a stolen election.

If he were to win, then there would be guerilla, or if he were to lose that he would bring back the guerillas to do something to take over again. I mostly have believed my family is a pretty rational educated group of people. When they started sending me these forwarded things, it just brought so much up because if they're in these, it just brought a lot up.

Brian Lehrer: Both from Colombian history and from the recent history of Trump and the stolen election claims here?

Anna: Right, and then like how we think of the Florida Latino Hispanic population as being like so important. I think even you've talked about it before about these like WhatsApp forwards that are going through the South Florida Hispanic community. Again, I thought my family was so rational and then I was getting these things and asking them like what makes them think that and they could only rely on the forwarded WhatsApp messages.

Then maybe I forgot the name of your guests, but I think that there's a pretty strict like division between the foreign Colombian voters and who they voted for. Like the Colombian voters in the United States, the percentage of those that voted for Petro versus Hernandez versus like in the country of Colombia.

Brian Lehrer: So interesting. Anna, thank you very much and our guest is Julie Turkewitz who's the Andes bureau chief from The New York Times based in Bogota. Even though we have a lot of callers with Colombian ties on the line, but Julie, those two bring up all kinds of issues. The first one, the difference between the Colombian left and what some people fear might be the slippery slope toward a Venezuelan-left authoritarian model. Maybe people will say the Bolivian-left, depending on their politics.

Then the second caller bringing up the misinformation and disinformation online, almost Trump-style, and the split between the expats and people who live there. Let's tick through each of those briefly. Let's take the last one first. Colombian Americans, is it a more conservative Colombian population that has immigrated here and voted internationally?

Julie Turkewitz: First of all, I love these comments. Thank you, everyone. Yes, the US Colombian population is generally more conservative or generally leans conservative just as I think Cuban Americans do and Venezuelan Americans do. That is not to say, of course, that Colombian Americans are in any way a homogenous group politically.

I think there was definitely a concern particularly in south Florida and there continues to be concern about Petro. We saw Maria Elvira Salazar who is a US representative openly criticizing Petro on Twitter in the run-up to the election. There's certainly, I think, a lot of fear that is caused rumor that is flying around about what Petro is going to do for the country. I was hoping maybe I could make the transition right from there to this question of Venezuela and is Colombia going to become Venezuela.

I think when Venezuela is a country that was taken over by a leftist president who made all kinds of promises to poor people just as Gustavo Petro is. I think when we ask the question, is Colombia going to become Venezuela? I think it's important to ask a more specific question. Are we talking about the economic failure in Venezuela? Are we talking about the democratic failure and the fact that the current job is a successor of Chavez, and then his successor became these authoritarians?

I think that just to break it down a little bit, if we're asking about the economic question, is a Petro-Colombia going to become Venezuela? I think one argument that Petro has made repeatedly is in some ways, the country is similar to Venezuela right now. I mean, you have these vast divides in terms of economic access and access to opportunity. I have traveled fairly extensively in both countries and there are parts of Colombia that I see where people are suffering just as much in Colombia as they are suffering in Venezuela. This was the argument of Petro is, we already are Venezuela. Don't be afraid of me.

The other argument that he has made is that economically what really doomed Venezuela was the overreliance on the oil industry and then the mismanagement of the oil industry. What Gustavo Petro has said is that specifically that he wants to move away from over reliance on the oil industry. In Colombia, the oil industry is also very, very important.

That being said, the question of, economically, is Colombia going to become a Venezuela, it's important to know that there are very legitimate economic concerns about how Petro is going to manage his government. I mean, he has made all of these promises about expanding social programs, overhauling the pension system, expanding access to all kinds of things. The question is how is he going to pay for it?

The country has a high deficit, high inflation, low rate of taxation compared to other countries in the region. When the current president tried to put in place a tax reform last year, it sent hundreds of thousands of people to the street in anger. I think that there is widespread concern about, economically, how is Petro going to handle the government and how is he going to pull this off? I think the country right now is on tenterhooks, waiting to hear who he is going to appoint to be his, what they call here ministro de hacienda, the finance minister. That I think will say a lot about how he plans to, as he says, make sure that Colombia doesn't become economically Venezuela,

Brian Lehrer: Maryam calling from Cincinnati, but lives in Bogota. Hi, you're on WNYC.

Maryam: Hi, I'm so happy to be here. I just want to finger snap the person who just brought up all the things about this, the narrative of Venezuela and Colombia, and I would like to invite you to take seriously the role the media has in perpetuating and creating a narrative. I also want to talk about economies and oil and the natural world and how excited we are in Colombia to be able to have not a person, which is really two people.

Because I think a lot of us voted because we fell in love with Francia Marquez who cannot be talked about enough, but we voted because our creativity was unlocked and freed to think that the impossible was possible. When we talk about economies, I think we have to remember that economies were created by men. It's not an actual natural phenomenon that happens on the planet.

As we deal with our grief about climate collapse, we as the children of those who've been colonized and we've been moved and displaced from our land, we're invigorated to be a leader and not following the lead of the United States, because as we talk about Venezuela and we create that narrative as if it's equal to Colombia, we have to be responsible enough to understand that US also has a contribution, not only in Venezuela but in the land of South America and how the history has been written. For the first time, I think, Colombians think that they're writing their own history and I think that's very liberating,

Brian Lehrer: Maryam, thank you so much. As we run out of time, Julie, on both sides of what she brought up, one was the historic role of the United States in South America an issue at all in this campaign? Then on the flip side, does the result in Colombia have any implications for the United States?

Julie Turkewitz: Yes. I think those are great, great questions. We did not see the role of the US as a key election issue. The discourse was not-- Gustavo Petro does not rail against the imperialist United States or he does not make criticism of US policy in Colombia a key part of his campaign discourse. That being said, the US has endorsed many of the policies that he is now running against. Actually, but honestly, in some ways, both him and his rival were running against.

I think that we are going to see a shift in the relationship between Colombia and the US. Maybe not. I do not think that we're going to see a break. Just yesterday, it was either yesterday or today, Biden and Petro spoke on the telephone. I think some of the things that Petro is talking about doing in the country, the United States is already moving in that direction a bit in its US-Colombia policy.

Petro, I think if there's any conflict, it's going to be about just what that shift looks like, to be more specific, if we're talking about the ''war on drugs", which is an imprecise term, but really the idea of how do we stop the drug economy in Colombia that where of course the drugs go to the United States Petro has talked about rather than just trying to get rid of the drug crop, which has been the prevailing strategy. Petro has talked about creating development opportunities in the communities that are forced to grow the drug crop. That is really a movement that the US has already been making in its support of Colombia on the drug war, but Petro I think wants to move much faster and in a much more aggressive way.

Brian Lehrer: Callers with Colombian ties, thank you all so much. Julie Turkewitz, Andes bureau chief for The New York Times based in Bogota, thank you so much. Now, a lot more Americans know a lot more about Colombia and that historic election this past week. Thank you very much.

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