When Iván Duque swept to power in the summer of 2018 as the head of the rightist Democratic Centre Party, one of the main points of speculation from pundits was whether he was simply a frontman for his good friend, Colombian political boss and former president, Álvaro Uribe. He is certainly a younger, prettier face with educational credentials from Georgetown University and other US institutions (although exaggerating his connections with Harvard). He has written several books mostly lionizing market opportunities and has multilateral experience, mainly in the financial sector. But it was Uribe’s sponsorship that put Duque on the political map.
Uribe is the founder and leader of the Democratic Centrists, under whose banner Duque made his Presidential run. Uribe is perhaps Latin America’s most famous rightwing populist, with long-suspected connections to the Medellín drug trade and the infamous Sinaloa Cartel and its paramilitaries. Uribe broke with his old Social Party of National Unity when his former protégé President Juan Manuel Santos started negotiations with the FARC guerrillas to end Colombia’s bitter 50-year-long civil war. While Santos won the Nobel Prize for the 2017 peace deal finalized in Havana, it has remained a controversial issue in Colombian politics. In 2018 the entire Colombian political establishment (including Santos) came together in a joint effort to support Duque against the leftist former Bogotá mayor Gustavo Petro.
