The new president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, ordered this Sunday, as the first act of his government, that the sword of the Liberator Simón Bolívar, a symbol of his guerrilla and later political struggle, be brought to the stage where the investiture ceremony takes place. .
“As president of Colombia, I ask the Military House to bring the sword of Bolívar, an order of the popular mandate of this president.” This was stated by Petro in the midst of an ovation from the crowd that attends the act.
The theft of Bolívar’s sword was the first act of the guerrilla Movement April 19 (M-19), which stole it on January 17, 1974 from the Quinta de Bolívar, a house museum in the center of Bogotá where it was in exhibition.
#7Aug #Colombia #Inauguration @PeriodistaAlejo: Bolívar’s sword arrives at the capture of President Gustavo Petro after he issued the order to search for it. The song “alert, alert, alert that walks, Bolívar’s sword through Latin America” is heard. pic.twitter.com/1BRLjOyG7P
– Report Now (@ReporteYa) August 7, 2022
The piece was returned by the M-19 to the Colombian government on the occasion of its demobilization. This after signing a peace agreement in 1990, during the government of then President Virgilio Barco, and since then it has remained in a glass case in the Casa de Nariño, seat of the Executive.
Petro’s swearing-in ceremony
For Petro, who in his youth was a member of the M-19, the sword has a great symbolic value, and that is why he wanted it to be at his investiture ceremony, along with the sculpture of the dove of peace, created by master Fernando Botero for the signing of the peace agreement with the FARC, in 2016, but the government of his now predecessor, Iván Duque, did not allow it.
According to what the communications coordinator of the investiture act, Marisol Rojas, told EFE this morning, the Duque government demanded policies, which were fulfilled, but “yesterday (Saturday) late in the afternoon, President Duque gave the order to that Bolívar’s sword does not come out.
However, Petro, as soon as he was sworn in as president, ordered that the sword be brought to the stage where his investiture ceremony is taking place.