Piedad Córdoba (1955-2024)
Piedad Córdoba, an iconic and controversial figure of the Colombian and Latin American left, passed away at the age of 68 on January 20. A look at her political life.
Senator Piedad Córdoba, a veteran politician and iconic and controversial figure of the Colombian and Latin American left since the early 2000s, passed away at the age of 68 on January 20.
She was a tenacious and outspoken woman who left few people indifferent. Córdoba was a complicated figure, lionized by the left, but hated by the right.
The Liberal politician
Piedad Córdoba was born in Medellín (Antioquia) in 1955, the daughter of a black chocoano teacher and a white antioqueña schoolteacher.
Politics runs in her family. Her paternal uncle was Diego Luis Córdoba, a lawyer and political leader who was a Liberal representative for Antioquia (1933-1947) and later senator for Chocó (1947-1964). Diego Luis Córdoba, the first chocoano lawyer, fought for respect, dignity and political equality for Afro-Colombians and for the creation of the department of Chocó in 1947. He was the founder of the cordobista Liberal political dynasty in Chocó, which remains politically influential to this day: Piedad Córdoba’s niece, Nubia Carolina Córdoba, was elected governor of Chocó in 2023.
Piedad Córdoba studied law at the Pontifical Bolivarian University in Medellín, graduating in 1977. She later obtained specializations from the Pontifical Bolivarian University and the Javeriana University in Bogotá.
She began in politics as a protégé of veteran antioqueño Liberal politician William Jaramillo, who was the last appointed mayor of Medellín (1986-1988). Córdoba, who held her first public office as deputy comptroller of the city since 1984, served as secretary-general of the municipality in his administration. In 1988, she won her first elected office, being elected to Medellín’s city council. She unsuccessfully ran for the House of Representatives in 1990, but obtained a seat in the departmental assembly. In 1991, in the early congressional elections held following the adoption of the 1991 Constitution, Córdoba was elected to the House atop a jaramillista Liberal list with 22,000 votes.
As a representative, she was one of the main rapporteurs for the law of black communities (Law 70 of 1993), an historic law which recognized the collective property rights of Afro-Colombian communities and provided for the protection of their rights and cultural identities. She also proved to be a skilled politician, working her way into the ranks of the Liberal Party leadership in 1993.
In 1994, Piedad Córdoba was elected to the Senate with 25,400 votes, notably competing against another jaramillista Liberal list led by Luis Guillermo Vélez. Shortly thereafter, Jaramillo and Vélez had a very public falling-out. Piedad Córdoba would go on to be re-elected to the Senate four more times, in 1998 (53,900 votes), 2002 (40,600 votes), 2006 (42,900 votes) and 2010 (67,400 votes).
Within the Liberal Party, Córdoba remained aligned with the left-leaning, social democratic faction close to Ernesto Samper and Horacio Serpa.
The combative legislator
Córdoba quickly gained a reputation as a combative, tenacious and opinionated senator who never shied away from taking controversial, radical stances on some issues. With her work, she made some allies, but also a lot of powerful enemies.
As a senator, Córdoba defended issues including gender equality, sexual and reproductive health, workers’ rights, LGBT+ rights (regularly sponsoring unsuccessful bills to legalize same-sex unions) and ethnic minority (Afro-Colombian and indigenous) rights, among others. If a legislator’s effectiveness is measured by how many of their initiatives become laws, then she was a very ineffective legislator. Few of her bills ever became law—one of the few bills she sponsored that did become law was the 2001 law creating the special constituencies for Afro-Colombians, indigenous peoples and Colombian expatriates in the House. However, in Colombian politics, plenty of legislators who don’t get much legislation passed are still widely recognized as effective because they raise awareness of certain issues, denounce abuses and scandals or hold the government accountable (in congressional debates known as ‘political debates’). Córdoba was a voice for causes like LGBT+ rights or ethnic minority rights which were quite marginalized on the political scene at the time. She proudly revendicated her own Afro-Colombian heritage, becoming known for her ubiquitous colourful turbans invoking her heritage.
However, after 1998 Piedad Córdoba’s claim to fame—or infamy, for her detractors—became her unwavering support for a negotiated solution to the armed conflict. Regardless of opinions one may have of her, she remained true to her principles and political beliefs (something worth noting for a Colombian politician), at the cost of her own political capital and even risking her life. In 1999, she was kidnapped on the orders of Carlos Castaño, the ruthless commander of the AUC paramilitaries. Castaño accused her of contributing to the guerrillas’ ‘subversive diplomacy’ during the Caguán peace process. According to her retelling of those events, in spite of her fear and certainty that she’d be killed, she courageously defied her captors and insulted Castaño to his face when she met him. She was released after two weeks in captivity, but the experience forced her into exile in Canada in 2000, before returning to Colombia to campaign for her own re-election in 2002, although her sons stayed behind in Canada. In Colombia, death threats continued and she escaped unharmed from two attacks. In 2006, Jaime Gómez, one of her advisors, disappeared and was later found dead with signs of torture (the case remains unsolved with little progress made).
Piedad Córdoba was one of the most important leaders of the opposition to Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010), denouncing his ‘democratic security’ policies and, later, the parapolítica scandal. As co-president of the Liberal Party in 2003, she ensured the divided party (at least its leadership) remained in opposition to Uribe and supported abstention in Uribe’s 15-question referendum, ensuring that the referendum failed because of low turnout, despite Uribe’s popularity at the time. She was removed from the party leadership in December 2003. Opposed to former president César Gaviria, who returned as leader of the Liberal Party in 2005, she founded an internal left-wing ‘dissident’ faction within the party, Poder Ciudadano.
Uncompromisingly forthright, Córdoba’s opinions and comments often caused controversy. She was a close friend and ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, and at the same time vehemently attacked the Colombian government under Uribe before international audiences. Infamously, during a left-wing seminar in Mexico City in March 2007, Córdoba said that Uribe was an illegitimate “paramilitary president” leading a “fascist government”, accusing him of being an accomplice and sponsor of the imprisonment, disappearance, torture and death of social leaders who had openly opposed his government, including her own advisor, Jaime Gómez. She called on Latin American left-wing governments to break diplomatic relations with the “illegitimate government” of Colombia. Uribistas and right-wingers called her a traitor, some even filing formal complaints in the Supreme Court against her for treason.
Peace, humanitarian exchanges and Chávez
In spite of her differences with Uribe, in August 2007 the president appointed her as facilitator to negotiate a ‘humanitarian exchange’ (acuerdo humanitario—exchanging FARC prisoners for hostages) with the FARC, mediated by Hugo Chávez. Her new role catapulted her into the spotlight and made her the standard bearer for the liberation of hostages.
During their mediation, Córdoba was able to meet with ‘Simón Trinidad’ and ‘Sonia’, two senior FARC leaders that were imprisoned in the United States, while Chávez met with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose obsession at the time was the release of the FARC’s most ‘valuable’ hostage, Íngrid Betancourt. In November, Córdoba and Chávez met with ‘Iván Márquez’ and other FARC commanders at the Miraflores Palace in Caracas. Out of this meeting came infamous pictures of Córdoba, all smiles, accepting a bouquet of flowers from the guerrilla leaders and wearing a black beret. While she sought to downplay the importance of these pictures, in Colombia they fueled accusations that she was an accomplice of the FARC, a terrorist sympathizer or even a traitor.
In November 2007, Uribe abruptly terminated Córdoba and Chávez’s mediation, after Córdoba allowed Chávez to speak directly with the commander of the Colombian army over the phone. Despite the diplomatic tensions, Chávez and Córdoba continued their mediation efforts, culminating in the release of two hostages, Clara Rojas and Consuelo González de Perdomo, in early January 2008, followed in February by the unilateral release of four more hostages in February 2008.
Córdoba vowed to continue working for a humanitarian exchange and the release of hostages, with or without the government’s authorization. She founded Colombianos y Colombianas por la Paz, an NGO with a predominantly left-wing membership which supported humanitarian exchanges. From 2008 to 2012, Córdoba helped negotiate the release of 31 hostages held by the FARC. In recognition of her work, she was even nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Adolfo Pérez Esquivel in 2009.
In Colombia, however, her friendly ties to Chávez, criticisms of Uribe (at the peak of the uribista ‘democratic security’ fervour) and her allegedly cordial ties to the FARC scandalized public opinion, sounding anti-patriotic or even subversive. In several comments and public statements, she often seemed to justify or excuse the FARC’s armed struggle and endorse the ‘right to rebellion’. Córdoba said that the FARC were the product of a ‘closed and exclusive society’—which isn’t an invalid historical analysis, but a controversial comment for a group then widely considered as terrorists. In 2008, she praised ‘Manuel Marulanda’ (the founder of the FARC) for having ‘confronted the establishment’ and equated him to other historical figures who ‘resisted’ like Jorge Eliécer Gaitán and independence heroine Policarpa Salavarrieta. In 2008, she invited university students to ‘subversion and rebellion’ (against the ‘neoliberal politics and militarization’ of the country).
Córdoba repeatedly complained that she was the victim of persecution by the right-wing establishment, who were trying to ‘annihilate’ her. Indeed, Córdoba was, along with other opponents of Uribe like Gustavo Petro, intimidated, followed and had her communications illegally intercepted by the rotten intelligence agency, the DAS, on orders from the presidency. Córdoba and her supporters said that this was part of a massive smear campaign against her. In 2019, a judge found the Colombian State responsible for the chuzadas (wiretaps) against her and sentenced the state to pay financial reparations (the ruling was upheld by a court in 2022).
Political death
In March 2008, FARC commander ‘Raúl Reyes’ was killed in a Colombian military operation across the border in Ecuador. Among the materials seized during the operation was a treasure trove of computer files (over 600 GB), containing explosive revelations about the FARC’s ties to politicians, foreign governments, illegal arms trafficking and more. Several of the emails were to or from the pseudonyms ‘Teodora’, ‘Teodora de Bolívar’ or la negra, believed to be Piedad Córdoba according to investigators.
With these files as the key evidence, in September 2010 Inspector General Alejandro Ordónez found her guilty of ‘collaboration and promotion’ with the FARC and removed her from office and disqualified from holding public office for 18 years. According to the Procuraduría, Córdoba overstepped her powers as facilitator and provided advice and information to the FARC (like suggesting that they send voice recordings of hostages, not videos) and sought to strengthen political ties with them to support a ‘new government’. The decision acquitted her of charges of treason.
Ordóñez drew connections between the contents of the emails and her travels and activities, but didn’t conclusively prove that the emails were written by her, that what wad discussed actually happened or how she benefited from her ties to the FARC. The ruling was also supported by military intelligence, intercepted phone conversations between FARC members and the testimony of a Ukrainian mercenary who infiltrated the guerrilla. In addition, Ordóñez used her own public statements (including her comments in Mexico in 2007 or the photo with flowers and the beret) against her, arguing that they proved her ideological affinity and that they greatly benefited the FARC’s interests.
Córdoba strongly denied any ties to the FARC, and her defence considered that the Reyes computer files were inadmissible because they had been seized from a foreign country illegally and that the chain of custody had been broken in handling the materials. They pointed that the emails were actually found in Word documents, meaning that they may have been edited. An Interpol report in May 2008 had said that they had found no evidence that Colombian authorities had modified the contents of the laptops, although the initial handling of the data did not conform to international standards. Ordóñez dismissed all of these arguments and ignored any legitimate doubts and questions raised by the evidence.
The case was highly controversial in Colombia and Latin America. It raised questions about the extent to which she really collaborated with the FARC and to what extent Ordóñez was punishing her for her radical and ‘heretical’ political opinions. Córdoba and her allies and sympathizers on the left denounced the decision as political persecution by a right-wing Inspector General who had clear political biases and double standards in disciplining politicians. A few years later, in December 2013, Ordóñez would remove the mayor of Bogotá, Gustavo Petro, from office in a similarly contentious decision which was later suspended by the IACHR. Ordóñez is known for his ultra-conservative views and open aversion to left-wing politics.
Political limbo
Ordóñez’s decision removed Córdoba from Congress and barred her from any public office for 18 years—political death.
Left in political limbo, Córdoba grew further distanced from the Liberal Party and drawn closer to the radical left. In 2012, Córdoba and other left-wing groups (including the Communist Party) and social movements founded Marcha Patriótica, a new left-wing movement. The new movement, which heavily used chavista-like Bolivarian imagery, advocated for a negotiated solution to the conflict, agrarian reform, reparation to victims, popular sovereignty and opposition to neoliberal policies. From the beginning, Marcha Patriótica was stigmatized by accusations from the defence ministry and right-wing politicians that it was infiltrated by the FARC or the guerrilla’s latest political front. Over 200 of its members were killed from 2011 to 2020.
After President Juan Manuel Santos publicly announced the beginning of peace negotiations with the FARC in 2012, the Marcha Patriótica, with its strong base among social movements, sought to lead a grassroots popular mobilization in favour of the peace process. However, the movement went nowhere fast: it did not run candidates for Congress in 2014, and ended going up separate ways, with Córdoba focused on her son Juan Luis Castro Córdoba’s Senate candidacy with the Liberals (he won 23,500 votes, miles away from a seat). After 2014, Marcha Patriótica lost most of whatever political impetus it had, while retaining some relevance as a social actor.
Political comeback
Ultimately, Córdoba’s time in political limbo was relatively short. In 2011, in a separate case, the Supreme Court had ruled that evidence from the Reyes laptops was inadmissible in court, because it had been seized illegally in a foreign country (Ecuador) in violation of due process and mutual legal assistance treaties. In 2016, the Council of State overturned Córdoba’s disciplinary sanction, coinciding with the Supreme Court that the evidence obtained from the laptops was illegal and inadmissible. The Council of State also ruled that the other evidence was insufficient. The administrative court therefore revoked her political ineligibility and ordered the Procuraduría to pay her a compensation for the salaries she should have received for the remainder of the 2010-2014 term. In October 2016, the Council of State overturned another disciplinary sanction (and 14-year political ineligibility) against her, clearing her to return to active politics.
Córdoba announced her 2018 presidential candidacy in June 2017, though with her own movement, Poder Ciudadano, rather than Marcha Patriótica (she didn’t tell them about her candidacy beforehand). She submitted over 836,000 valid signatures to register her candidacy, a significant and impressive number, but her candidacy was very lonely. No other left-wing movement, not even those she had close ties to (the Communists, Marcha Patriótica, left-wing social movements), supported her, and neither did the ex-FARC. In a campaign where the right waved the boogeyman of castrochavismo, Córdoba attracted little support: she never polled more than 1-2%. In April 2018, she dropped out. In the 2018 congressional elections, her son, Juan Luis Castro, had been elected to the Senate for the Greens with 23,500 votes. He resigned his seat in August 2021.
Córdoba later confided that, after being forced to drop out, she fell into a very deep depression, hurt that everyone on the left had turned their backs to her after she sacrificed so much political capital in working for peace. She was hospitalized in Cuba for 20 days and lost consciousness for 12 days.
In 2020, Córdoba announced her political retirement, fed up with the nature of politics and saying that she wouldn’t return to Congress even if she was tied up.
Her retirement didn’t last long, and she quickly changed her mind. Just a year later, in an interview with the Venezuelan culture minister, she said that it was very likely that she’d return to the Senate. She admitted that she lived and breathed politics, and that Congress needed people like her willing to fight. In September 2021, she announced her senatorial candidacy with Petro’s new left-wing coalition, the Pacto Histórico. Córdoba said that she was “summoned by the historical moment” and convinced that Petro was the man the country needed and that he would win. Córdoba was placed eighth on the Pacto’s closed list. The Pacto’s list won 20 seats in the Senate in the congressional elections in March 2022.
Córdoba and Petro were never particularly close. Their political backgrounds differed, and they represented different visions of the left. While Córdoba was enthusiastically chavista and was, at the very least, somewhat sympathetic towards the FARC and their ostensible cause; Petro was always hostile to the FARC in the 2000s and at odds with the ‘radical’ far-left factions of the Colombian left in the 2000s. Córdoba and Petro both wanted to be president and fought for control of the left. By 2021, Córdoba realized that she had lost that battle and that Petro was the only one who could be president.
As recently as 2019, Córdoba said that she’d never vote for Petro and that Petro would never be president because he was a “bad human being” only interested in himself. Córdoba was particularly angered by a WikiLeaks cable from 2008 in which Petro, then a Polo senator, told US diplomats that he didn’t discount the possibility that some members of the Polo maintained inappropriate ties with the FARC. Petro didn’t mention Córdoba (who wasn’t a Polo member), but Córdoba didn’t enjoy that the leaked cable had brought one of the most difficult moments in her political life back into the spotlight.
Old demons
As she returned to politics, Piedad Córdoba’s old demons came back to haunt her.
In February 2022, her brother Álvaro Córdoba was arrested in Medellín at the request of the Southern District of New York on drug trafficking charges. US authorities accused him of being part of a cocaine smuggling network, connected to FARC dissidents. He was targeted in a sting operation by a DEA confidential source, who claimed to be seeking protection to smuggle as much as three tons of cocaine per month to the US through Mexico. Córdoba connected source in touch with an associate who had good quantities of ‘chickens’ (presumably cocaine) and could help arrange protection. Córdoba also offered to arrange a visit to a FARC dissident encampment with 300 well-armed guerrillas who would supply the drugs and provide security. Shortly before Christmas 2021, Córdoba and an associate delivered a five kg sample of cocaine to the source in exchange for $15,000.
Piedad Córdoba said that her brother’s arrest was ‘political persecution’.
In August 2022, the Colombian Supreme Court authorized Álvaro Córdoba’s extradition to the United States. In September and again, on appeal, in November 2022, Petro signed off on his extradition and he was sent to the US in January 2023. The issue had become a hot potato for Petro, involving a political ally, drug trafficking and relations with the US. Petro chose to send a message to the US that he remained a dependable ally in the fight against drug trafficking. Álvaro Córdoba, who maintained his innocence, said his extradition was arbitrary, unjust and political and lamented that Petro had ignored all his arguments against extradition. He apologized to his sister for having to deal with the ‘betrayal’ of certain people in the Pacto. Piedad Córdoba, in an interview with Semana, said that she never asked Petro for mercy and that he couldn’t do anything to stop his extradition because it was such a delicate issue.
On January 2 of this year, Álvaro Córdoba pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges against him in New York.
In February 2022, new accusations against her, revealed by Noticias Caracol, revived the old story of her alleged ties to the FARC and the nature of her activities as facilitator with Chávez during the humanitarian exchanges in 2007-2008. Her former advisor, Andrés Vásquez, told prosecutors that she had manipulated the release of hostages in coordination with the FARC, advising them to speed up or delay the release of hostages to score political points both for her and Chávez. She also advised the FARC how they should better present proof of life so that the hostages would look ‘good’. Both Córdoba and Chávez sought to use the liberation of hostages to further their political goals. Córdoba, at the time, was eyeing a presidential run (with the Liberal Party) in 2010, and emails from Reyes’ laptops showed that she would be Chávez’s candidate and could potentially be supported by the FARC
Most explosively, she allegedly recommended that the FARC delay the release of Ingrid Betancourt and three American defence contractors given their ‘value’ as leverage (all were rescued in a military operation in 2008). Córdoba even questioned Betancourt’s precarious health condition, dismissively saying that Betancourt had always been thin. Following these revelations, Betancourt said that Córdoba had deliberately delayed her liberation. Vásquez said that the FARC came to trust Córdoba and follow her recommendations and confirmed that she was alias ‘Teodora’.
Piedad Córdoba never hid her close, personal ties to Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, and remained a steadfast defender of the Venezuelan regime—insisting that Venezuela is a democracy, with free elections, dismissing the humanitarian crisis and praising Venezuela’s education and healthcare system. There were even rumours that she had had a relationship with Chávez, to which she said, years later, that she hadn’t been his girlfriend not because he didn’t ask but because she didn’t want to! But she always maintained that her work in Venezuela was strictly limited to peace talks and hostage release, and that she never had any business interests in the country.
According to Vásquez, in 2008 and 2009, Córdoba provided Venezuelan intelligence (SEBIN) with a list of ‘hostile’ uribista and ‘friendly’ Colombian businessmen in Venezuela so that the ‘hostile’ ones wouldn’t get paid. Some businessmen are alleged to have financed her political campaigns.
According to several sources, Piedad Córdoba was a close partner of Álex Saab, the Colombian businessman said to be the Maduro regime’s main money launderer through government social programs. Saab was arrested in Cape Verde in 2020 and extradited to the United States in late 2021, charged with siphoning $350 million out of Venezuela. Saab was pardoned by Joe Biden and released as part of a prisoner swap in December 2023. According to Vásquez and investigative journalist Gerardo Reyes, author of a book about Saab, Córdoba introduced Saab to Maduro and Tareck El Aissami in 2010. At the time, Córdoba helped Saab recover $30 million that the Venezuelan government owed him, in exchange for a 10% commission. Vásquez claims that Córdoba created an offshore shell company in Panama to receive the huge sums of money in commissions.
In January 2022, a report by the Ecuadorian National Assembly had said that Córdoba participated in Saab’s corruption schemes (fraudulent exports of housing materials from Ecuador, suspected money laundering), and detailed Córdoba’s trips on private flights with Saab to and from Ecuador in 2013 and 2015. The report was written by Fernando Villavicencio, who was assassinated during the 2023 presidential campaign in Ecuador.
Córdoba denied that she had any business dealings with Saab or even receiving money from his businesses. In her version, she met Saab around 2006 and had cordial ties with him over the years, but only met him a few times, and never introduced him to the Venezuelan government. She called Vásquez a compulsive liar out for revenge against her, after she found out he was involved in corrupt business dealings, perhaps using her name—“he is the one who has to explain his things, not me.”
These allegations were a major blow to Córdoba’s image and she found very few allies willing to come to her defence. The hits kept coming. In April 2022, the media revealed that Córdoba had visited extraditable prisoners at La Picota jail in the previous months, including her brother but also drug traffickers, and in March her sister tried to smuggle 2 million pesos (about $500) into the jail. Petro, who had halfheartedly defended her amidst Vásquez’s accusations, now cut her off from the campaign, asking her to ‘suspend all activities within the campaign’ until she could resolve the judicial accusations against her. In May, just days before the first round of the presidential election, Córdoba was detained at Tegucigalpa airport in Honduras for carrying $68,000 undeclared. Months later, in an interview, she said the money came from a consulting job she did in Honduras with Colombian businessmen. Petro admitted that he had made a ‘political mistake’ in including Córdoba on the Pacto’s list, having done so in good faith to make up for the fact that her career was ‘arbitrarily’ killed by Ordóñez.
Córdoba was further saddled by health problems. In July 2022, she was sworn in as senator from a clinic in Medellín, where she was in the ICU following complications from a urinary infection. She later suffered from a thrombosis in her portal vein, and had more health problems in 2023.
Politically, Córdoba was a senator in the governing coalition, but she was shunned by many of her colleagues and politically isolated. In September 2023, she professed her hatred for Roy Barreras (former senator, now ambassador to the UK) and Armando Benedetti (former ambassador to Venezuela), two chameleonic traditional politicians turned petristas in 2022, calling them rats and blaming them for being behind a smear campaign against her. In an interview with Cambio in November 2022, she complained that she was the victim of lawfare and had been treated worse than Pablo Escobar.
At the time of her death, Córdoba had two major open investigations against her in the Supreme Court. She had a preliminary investigation for farcpolítica for her alleged ties to the FARC. In November 2023, the Supreme Court opened a new formal investigation against her for illicit enrichment, related to her activities in Venezuela in 2006-2012. The evidence against her detailed how she offered her services (and political connections to Chávez) to businessmen looking to do business in Venezuela in the late 2000s/early 2010s, in exchange for payments. One businessman, Carlo Balilla Battistini, gave her $1 million and, in 2009-2010, paid for her advertising expenses, travel expenses, flight tickets and charter flights. The court also found that her extended family also saw their assets increase significantly. Córdoba always considered these cases to be political persecution and refused to attend court summons.
A complicated legacy
Piedad Córdoba died of a heart attack on January 20 in Medellín. Her son, Juan Luis Castro, said that she had started recovering from health problems in the past year. However other media accounts of her final days claimed that she was “morally destroyed” by her brother’s extradition to the US and a sense that she had been abandoned or betrayed by her political allies, including Petro.
Gustavo Petro, on Twitter, said that a “true liberal had died” and praised her as a woman who fought all her life for a more democratic society, in an anachronistic society which treated her like a criminal and hated peace, the poor, blacks and indigenous peoples. Vice President Francia Márquez, the first Afro-Colombian woman to serve as vice president, remembered her as a woman who opened the doors of Colombian politics to Afro-Colombian women and who fought tirelessly for peace and social justice. Later, at a memorial service in Congress, Márquez said that without her she wouldn’t have become vice president and recalled that the first person she voted for, upon turning 18, was Piedad Córdoba.
Córdoba was a leading figure of the Latin American left in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Other Latin American left-wing leaders offered their condolences. Nicolás Maduro called her one of the bravest women he ever met and a tireless warrior, great revolutionary and fervent defender of human rights and peace.
In Colombia, while most were gracious and in the spirit of not speaking ill of the dead, political reactions showed how complicated and divisive her legacy is. Those on the left and centre-left emphasized her contributions to peace, minority rights and fighting for Afro-Colombians and the poor. Rodrigo Londoño, the last commander of the FARC guerrilla, praised her as a true democrat who was an essential part of the ‘political solution’ to the armed conflict. Centrist senator Humberto de la Calle said that her life was full of vicissitudes, but the coherent thread of her life was the vindication of the humble.
On the right, reactions were either muted (expressing condolences to her family) or focused on the controversies and scandals in her life. A surprising exception was José Félix Lafaurie, the very conservative president of the cattle ranchers’ federation (Fedegan) and member of the government’s ELN peace talks delegation, who offered a “respectful goodbye” to a “perseverant fighter” who never let up, was “always on the front line to defend her idea, very distant from mine.” His wife, far-right uribista senator María Fernanda Cabal, strongly disagreed with him: she tweeted that Córdoba left “a debt of pain for her relationship with the FARC; used her friendship with Chávez to profit” and died in impunity “owing the truth.” Right-wing Green senator Jota Pe Hernández celebrated the death of a shameless “bandit” who was a friend and accomplice of criminals, terrorists, murderers and dictators, and was taken by “divine justice” without paying for her crimes. Members of his party, the Greens, asked for him to be expelled for his comments.
To the left, Córdoba was a courageous, progressive icon who fought tirelessly for peace, human rights and the rights of the dispossessed, who persisted in her firm belief in a negotiated solution to the conflict at a time when few people publicly supported peace negotiations with the guerrillas. Some will also remember her as a black woman in a machista political culture, who built her political career on her own merits, never shied away from a fight and who wasn’t afraid of being blunt to defend her political values. On the other hand, many right-wingers will always see her as ‘Teodora’ of the FARC, a treasonous terrorist sympathizer and ally of the Venezuelan dictatorship, who died without revealing her secrets or paying for her alleged crimes. To them, Córdoba shamelessly profited from her connections to the Venezuelan government and her work for the release of hostages.
As her life story makes clear, it isn’t quite as black and white as these ideological viewpoints make it out. She wasn’t the devil or monster that her detractors paint her as, but she probably wasn’t the angel her defenders claim she was. In El Espectator, Sergio Ocampo Madrid wrote that she “left with more secrets than answers, with more shadows than lights.” At risk of sounding trite, she was a complicated and controversial woman with a complex life.