Translation by Peter Katel from the original Spanish language article by Ibsen Martínez, which can be found online at – https://letraslibres.com/politica/a-donde-fue-el-centro-en-colombia/
Ibsen Martínez is a Venezuelan novelist, television screenplay writer, playwright and essayist. He lives in exile in Bogotá.
Where did Colombia’s center go?
The Colombian elections of last June 19 strengthened the extremes of the political spectrum. But the Colombian center, today temporarily scattered, can stand on its own and grow.
By Ibsen Martínez
An academic topic that entered journalism around the end of the last century held that one of Colombia’s singularities was a so-called “immunity to populism.”
The two-headed hegemony of liberals and conservatives lasted so long that it seemed enough to look at a list of presidents from, say, the mid-19th to the early 21st centuries to become convinced that the country was a rare species.