Petro president

“We are surprised by the capricious attitude and lack of will of President Duque in the face of the refusal to lend Bolívar’s sword to accompany the protocol act of the transition of command of President-elect Gustavo Petro,” the coordinator told Efe on Saturday. of communications of the act of investiture, Marisol Rojas.

Petro’s insistent and sudden order this Sunday, which involved a several-minute break while attendees waited in the sun, shows how important this object is to him.

The relic arrived in a glass case, guarded by four soldiers from the Presidential Guard Battalion, dressed in uniforms of the Bolivarian Army from the time of independence, a symbolic gesture of the presidential changeover in Colombia.

And he remained by the new Colombian president’s side throughout his speech.

“This sword has so much history that today it will add one more, about why it took so long to arrive in this square,” Petro said as he began his speech with a smile.

“I want her to never be locked up again, never to be held again, never to be sheathed again, to belong to the people,” added the president.

And he suggested a symbolic protocol for the following acts of presidential installation.

“It is the sword of the people. That is why we wanted it here, at this time, in this place. Perhaps it will become a symbolic protocol act, that it will always accompany them (the presidents), that it will always accompany them (the presidents). libertarian sword of Bolívar”.

Simón Bolívar, known as “the Liberator”, was the revolutionary who led the independence of several South American countries, including Colombia. His sword is tied to the history of the country.

But this relic also played a considerable symbolic role for the M-19 guerrillas, of which Petro was a militant in his youth.

The theft of Bolívar’s sword on January 17, 1974 was the first act of the guerrilla Movement April 19 (M-19), which stole it from the Quinta de Bolívar, a house museum in downtown Bogotá.

The M-19 returned it years later, in 1991, after they demobilized after a peace agreement with the Colombian State, but the sword became a myth and without a doubt a symbol of his guerrilla and later political struggle.

While the sword was missing, the governments of the day tried endlessly to find it, and in the meantime, the M-19 successfully kept it hidden.

There is a lot of speculation about who kept and cared for it for so many years and certainly not all, nor most, were insurgents. There is talk of playwrights, poets and that he spent time in Cuba.

Without a doubt, this Sunday, the sword came to light again.

And the presidential inauguration ended as Petro wanted it to begin: with him hand in hand with his wife walking behind the guarded sword.

Bolivarism, an ideology polarizing

Bolivarism is a line of thought based on the life and, above all, the work of Simón Bolívar, a 19th-century revolutionary politician and military man, born in Venezuela, who fought for the independence of several South American countries from Spanish rule.

Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru and Bolivia are the nations that owe their independence to Bolívar’s vision and struggle.

And, although Bolívar lived two centuries ago, the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez dusted off the ideology with his dogmatic Bolivarism, giving the concept a new dimension.

During the last years, the figure of Bolívar and Bolivarism have been used as a road map by some Latin American leftist politicians, who defend the regional integration and sovereignty of Latin America without foreign interference.

It is a controversial concept, which has also been used by its liberal and right-wing opponents as a polarizing element.

In fact, several right-wing representatives in Colombia criticized this Sunday Petro’s first order to ask for Bolívar’s sword.

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