Former Bogotá Mayor Claudia López on Saturday didn’t particularly focus on the rising hypothesis over whether or not she’s going to run for president of Colombia in 2026 when she spoke on the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute’s annual Worldwide LGBTQ Leaders Convention in D.C. and with the Washington Blade.
“In per week I’m going to return to Colombia and I’m coming again with a really, very punctual process,” she stated in a speech she gave after the Victory Institute inducted her into its LGBTQ+ Political Corridor of Fame on the JW Marriott. “Democracy on the planet basically wants emotional reconnection.”
López, 54, was a scholar protest motion chief, journalist, and political scientist earlier than she entered politics.
She returned to Colombia in 2013 after she earned her PhD in political science at Columbia College.
López in her speech stated Juan Francisco “Kiko” Gomez, a former governor of La Guajíra Division in northern Colombia, threatened to assassinate her as a result of she wrote about his ties to legal gangs. A Bogotá decide in 2017 convicted Gómez of ordering members of a paramilitary group to kill former Barrancas Mayor Yandra Brito, her husband, and bodyguard and sentenced him to 55 years in jail.
López in 2014 returned to Colombia, and ran for the nation’s Senate as a member of the center-left Inexperienced Alliance occasion after she recovered from breast most cancers. López gained after a 10-week marketing campaign that value $80,000.
“I used to be the one girl, the one LGBTQ member of my caucus,” she stated in her speech. “After all I had the respect, but additionally the accountability to signify them significantly properly, [and] in fact all of the residents who belief me and all of the residents of Colombia.”
“As soon as you’re elected, you’re elected to signify equally and faithfully the entire folks, not solely your personal folks,” added López.
López in 2018 was her occasion’s candidate to succeed then-President Juan Manuel Santos when he left workplace. López in 2019 grew to become the primary girl and first lesbian elected mayor of Bogotá, the Colombian capital and the nation’s largest metropolis.
“This in fact speaks extremely properly of my metropolis,” she stated in her speech.
López took workplace on Jan. 1, 2020, lower than a month after she married her spouse, Colombian Sen. Angélica Lozano. (López was not out when she was elected to the Senate.) Lozano was with López on the Victory Institute convention.
López’s time period ended on Dec. 31, 2023. She is going to return to Colombia as soon as her Superior Management Fellowship at Harvard College ends this month.
“I ended my mayorship,” López advised the Blade. “It has been, in fact, the respect of my life to be the primary feminine mayor of my metropolis. It was a fully lovely job, however very difficult.”
“I wanted a 12 months of relaxation, of leisure, and I used to be lucky to obtain a Harvard scholarship this 12 months,” she added.
López throughout the interview referred to as for an finish to polarization and reiterated her help for democracy.
“We have to hear to one another once more, we have to have a espresso with one another once more, we have to contact one another’s pores and skin,” she stated.
López stated events, candidates, and their political coalitions in Colombia and world wide must “hear, reconnect, and set up with folks” on the grassroots. López additionally advised the Blade there’s a “world disaster of democracy.”
“Every nation has its personal contexts and challenges, nevertheless it appears to me that there’s a frequent aspect there,” she stated.
“So, I return to Colombia rested, grateful after a 12 months of reflection, with proposals in thoughts, however decided to dedicate time to what I contemplate a very powerful work for democracy at the moment, which is to reconnect from the grassroots,” added López.
‘I do know what love and training can do for any individual’
López took workplace lower than three months earlier than the COVID-19 pandemic started.
“We have been stuffed with hope, able to go to supply a brand new social and environmental contract for Bogotá society for the twenty first century,” she stated. “However a few (months) after being sworn into workplace, the pandemic of COVID-19 got here.”
Unemployment and poverty charges soared in Bogotá throughout the pandemic, and town’s residents had much less entry to well being care and different primary companies.
López famous her administration in response to the pandemic supplied scholarships to younger folks, supported companies, and elevated funding of town’s social companies. López additionally stated her administration applied Latin America’s first city-based care system for feminine care givers, and construct three extra LGBTQ group facilities in poor and working-class neighborhoods.
“I do know what love and training can do for any individual,” she stated.
The U.N. Refugee Company says upwards of three million Venezuelans at the moment are in Colombia.
Then-Colombian President Iván Duque in February 2021 introduced Venezuelan migrants who register with the nation’s authorities might be legally acknowledged.
Former Bogotá Mayor Gustavo Petro, a former senator who was as soon as a member of the M-19 guerrilla motion that disbanded within the Nineties, succeeded Duque as president on Aug. 7, 2022. Colombia and Venezuela restored diplomatic ties lower than a month later.
Venezuela’s Nationwide Electoral Council on July 28 declared President Nicolás Maduro the winner of the nation’s disputed presidential election. Tamara Adrián, the nation’s first transgender congresswoman who ran within the presidential main earlier this 12 months, are amongst those that denounced voting irregularities.
WPLG, a South Florida tv station, on March 16, 2021, reported López sparked controversy after she advised reporters there have been “some very violent acts from Venezuelans.”
“First they homicide, after which they steal,” she stated. “We’d like ensures for Colombians.”
López made the feedback after a Venezuelan migrant murdered a Colombian police officer in Bogotá.
“The issue just isn’t migration from Venezuela,” López advised the Blade in response to a query about Venezuela. “The issue is authoritarianism in Venezuela and you must hold the give attention to it.”
“The issue is what it’s: It’s not the migrants, it’s in Maduro, it’s within the dictatorship, it’s in authoritarianism.”
Greater than 200,000 folks died within the warfare between the Colombian authorities and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia that started in 1962.
Santos and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia Commander Rodrigo “Timochenko” Londoño on Sept 26, 2016, signed an LGBTQ-inclusive peace settlement. Colombian voters a couple of days later narrowly rejected it a referendum that happened towards the backdrop of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric from spiritual and conservative teams.
Santos and Londoño lower than two months later signed a second peace settlement, which additionally incorporates LGBTQ-specific references.
López described herself as “an individual completely dedicated to the peace course of.” She added, nevertheless, she has “a little bit of a foul style in my mouth now that I look again.”
“The peace course of with the FARC, which was to demobilize the FARC, interval, actually tried to have and had a gender focus, in fact a range focus, a give attention to human rights for all victims, and positively (the) many LGBT victims who had been victims of FARC recruitment, abuse, stigmatization, and so forth.,” López advised the Blade. “So, in some sense, or in lots of senses, having that gender and variety perspective was a approach of recognizing the victims of our group.”
She famous opponents lied concerning the LGBTQ-specific provisions “to deceive and delegitimize the peace settlement.”
“It’s not about making something invisible, and even downplaying something, however relatively about being far more strategic in understanding that we don’t need our flags and causes to be uncovered in a approach that finally ends up being a boomerang for our personal group,” López added. “So, I say that’s the reason it’s a disappointment, as a result of I believe it’s a lesson. Not less than for me, it made me suppose and it makes me suppose, and I’ve stated it brazenly since then, that we’ve got to be far more cautious and far more, above all, strategic, in how we elevate our flags in order that they actually don’t solely have symbolic, however actual advances and in order that in no case do they develop into a boomerang towards ourselves.”
‘I understand how you are feeling’
López throughout the interview praised the current elections of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, Uruguayan Vice President Beatriz Argimón, and different ladies in Latin America. She additionally expressed sympathy with LGBTQ Individuals who’re involved concerning the incoming Trump-Vance administration.
“I understand how you are feeling,” stated López in her speech. “I’ve been there once we misplaced the peace referendum in 2016. I’ve been there when three candidates who represented impartial, new options in Colombia, and insurance policies have been killed by mafia teams in 1990. I’ve been there when a mafia cartel was in a position to fund and elect a president for all of us. I’ve been there when paramilitary teams have been in a position to help and elect one other president in Colombia.”
“I understand how obscure and tough and difficult and painful democratic occasions are, however we can not (again) democracy solely once we win,” she added. “It’s exactly when issues are difficult, once we endure defeats which might be painful, that we have to connect to our democratic and humanistic values and ideas.”
