Ernesto Samper (Bogotá, 74 years old) is considered by not a few the first leftist president who has had Colombia in his recent history, a recognition that is now attributed to the current president ,. The Presidency of Samper, between 1994 and 1998, was marked -and is highly remembered -for accusations that he had supported his campaign. That did not prevent him from becoming one of the political leaders who has worked the most for Latin American integration – not only from Unasur, where he was secretary general between 2014 and 2017 – or embrace much more progressive positions than when he ruled.
Samper was visiting this week in Mexico to participate in a Morena event, President Claudia Sheinbaum’s party, with whom she also met. The ex -president feels comfortable talking about the challenges of the left in the region, the advance of the most radical and of the, while dodging any compromised statement about Petro or Venezuela. What he never loses is the opportunity to provide dose of humor in his conversations: “I had to be a president with many difficulties, but I have enjoyed the position of former president. I consider myself better former president. If one could be a former president without being president, it would be the ideal situation.”
Ask. Two years ago, in the, he said that Lula would consolidate the progress of progressivism; that the proposals of the progressive sector in Latin America were clearer; That Petro had changed the political spectrum and that Nicolás Maduro was an excellent negotiator. Does still think the same?
Answer. I think there are new factors that were not foreseeable and threats that I did not see two years ago on Latin America, which began with a right -wing process and that can end in a kind of new fascism in Latin America.
P. What lessons do these leave with Latin America?
R. Against what many think, Trump has opened an opportunity and worries that we don’t know how to take advantage of it. On the issue of free trade, there are countries that could rethink the relationship with the United States. In addition, the expulsion of migrants in the manner that is being done, passing over the laws, will cause a review of the American feeling that existed in the region. That a person is returned to kicks and handcuffs, without giving him the right to defend himself and with a disintegrated family, will generate a nationalism that could be used to reformulate the treatment of migrants within Latin America. There are countries, I do not want to mention which, in which the treatment of migrants does not differ much from the one in the United States.
P. Do you think that anti -imperialist discourse is still valid or is a rotoric resource outdated against the real challenges in the region?
R. The anti -American feeling had remained anesthetized in recent years. That of gringos and yanquis go home It was no longer seen on the walls. But the treatment that is being given to migrants will be the seedbed of a new anti -American feeling in which it could be structured, and I speak it in good sense, a nationalism that we had lost.
P. Trump has three Arietes in Latin America Claros: (Argentina), Daniel Noboa (Ecuador) and Nayib Bukele (El Salvador). What role does the left have to play before these leaders?
R. Milei, bolsonaro o son zombies Digital, are not Latin American style leaders, with charisma and authority, with the ability to attract crowds. They are simply digital products. Neither Bolsonaro, who tried a blow, nor Bukele, who has turned his country into a prison, will leave a historical trail to feel proud of them.
P. What do you think are going to be the axes of Trump’s policy towards Latin America?
R. It will be a controversial policy, as was the first. The novelty is that it is beginning to ventilate claims of territorial hegemony that we had not seen for many years, in the region or in the world. In spite of all that, I do not think we are going to be the ones who come to Trump. Trump will be trancar in the United States. Trump’s phenomenon will implio in the United States. He is playing a series of fibers that in any other circumstance would put the hair of Punta to a normal gringo.
P. Do you think that in the Latin American left there is any project that is inclusive, sustainable and modern?
R. The left has ideological gravitation axes: there is social inclusion, which we sometimes confuse with anti -discrimination. We are very damaged wokismo, Trying to be sharing the defense of minorities when in the background we all know that what unites them is a class difference. We cannot continue talking against the neoliberal model without proposing an alternative. We need a different regional financial architecture from what the IDB, the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund can be. I think there is an ideological basis of claims that we still share, but what we fail is in the way of doing politics. We have left over the networks, that the right is handling much more efficiently because it has more money and because it manages a raw material that is much more effective: fears, fears, hatreds, grudges. It is shown that these negative emotions call people more than selling an illusion or a utopia.
P. But is there any government that stands out in particular?
R. I give great importance to the ability to organize social resistance, popular resistance. And I don’t do it chauvinistically. There are factual powers that have been occupying the spaces that previously occupied progressive parties: media, economic monopolies that have bought their media and put them at the service of their interests. Judges and prosecutors who are at the service of lawfare Against progressive leaders. While all that happens, only those parties or government projects that have managed to create a social and popular support base that counteracts that right -wing of elites can resist. I see it in Mexico, without a doubt, where Morena has achieved a strong popular support base. I think he still has it. And although I see difficulties in Colombia, it cannot be ignored that Petro, although perhaps he is not able to put a successor, can put 25% or 30% support for an eventual candidate.
P. What is the main ideological challenge of those left?
R. He wokismo It has reduced us to a kind of minority tribalism. Inequality is a structural phenomenon that has historical, cultural, but above all social and property roots. It is a problem of gaps, of the field and city gap, of the gender, digital. What you have to do is close those gaps and that is the task that the left cannot lose sight of. You have to close the gaps, not only through legal measures or cultural recognitions and much less sharing everyone. If something unites an indigenous woman or an Afro of the Pacific are the conditions of inequality in which they are all.
P. To what extent is a renovation in the leadership of the left in Latin America?
R. We, I include myself, we have unfortunately fallen into the patron of Latin American progressive caudillismo. If you ask me what important political change should be done in Latin America, I would tell you that moving from the old presidentialism to a form of semiparliamentary government. This caudillista leadership exalted the heads of state, but left a bad chiefs of government. To my colleagues and myself find it difficult to get out of political scenes and end up fighting with the people who helped us.
P. Is there real space for self -criticism in left -wing projects in Latin America?
R. No, ideological polarization has postponed all self -criticism processes, self -reflection, including inward looks. But I think that if something has to claim the left is that there is still the possibility of selling alternatives. The right wants to put us in a pragmatism that excludes create new paths of social inclusion. I believe that people are still permeable to those messages.
P. How does the government of Gustavo Petro value in Colombia?
R. I have supported Petro’s project more than the government, because I have differences with the government and coincide with the project. The first is that I think it is a progressive project that has supported social reforms, Latin American integration and peace. I do not regret having supported it for those three factors.
P. How are those three factors?
R. All bad. On the issue of Latin American integration, Colombia will have Petro’s last year, the Presidency for the time De la Celac, from the Andean community … has the opportunity to leave a mark on integration. It will not be easy, but let’s say we leave a question there. As for social reforms, he let the health reform ate all others. On the issue of peace, the initial reasoning that one cannot have the house with ten fires and turned off only one was valid. It will leave some important things, such as peace has to be territorial, it is no longer national. And we must highlight positive things. People who had never done so arrived in the government if it is not because a leftist project arrives. Second, the country’s institutionality was reiterated, because in Colombia there is government, there is parliament, there are cuts, there are control agencies, the armed forces do not get into coup adventures. And third, before international politics were Brazil and Mexico, and now Colombia is a point of reference.
P. He says that New People arrived and have also followed people who represent everything that one understands that a left -wing project should not have, such as. How do you explain that you continue to have so much power in government?
R. For me the explanation is that the only one capable of electorally articulating the historical pact and asserting Petro’s political capital is Armando Benedetti. I think he thinks he is the person who will allow him to maintain the political project and consider that this is valid.
P. Is the Petro government to be an antecedent or an exception in which the left in Colombia has governed?
R. Many would have wanted the government to have better, but somehow a social awareness that was asleep in recent governments. I think that is the imprint that we must have to continue thinking that there are options for a progressive project to become continuous in Colombia.
