He spent 12 years of his youth in the ranks of an urban guerrilla group, taking the alias of a revolutionary general from Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. Later, he would serve as a progressive mayor of Bogotá, Colombia’s capital, and as a senator. He ran for president unsuccessfully twice, unable to overcome the conservative wall erected nearly two centuries ago around the Colombian presidency.
But on Sunday, Gustavo Petro, 62, was finally able to topple that wall and was elected president, making history as the first leftwing head of state of the South American country.
