Bogota’s first female mayor challenges Latin America’s political norms
Months before her history-making election, Claudia Lopez was butting heads with a local television anchor over his description of her character.
“You talk sometimes like you’re arguing,” he quipped. “Don’t come at me with that condescending chauvinism,” she shot back.
Now the 49-year-old politician with a doctorate from Northwestern University in Chicago will take her decades-long fight against corruption and inequality to the big stage as the first elected female mayor of Colombia’s largest city.
The analyst-turned-politician’s victory this week is being hailed as an important advancement in a nation where women made up just over 10 per cent of all candidates aspiring to become mayors or governors in last weekend’s regional elections.
“This is a small step for me,” she said before a cheering crowd after her triumph. “But for Colombian women this is a huge step forward.”
Though her headline-making achievement is how many in Latin America will begin to know her, Lopez has been making waves in Colombia for years, starting from her days as an analyst shedding light on corruption in the highest echelons to power. In her personal life, she’s been equally upfront and transparent; an image of her sharing a passionate kiss with her partner as the election results came in has gone viral on social media.
The daughter of a schoolteacher, she is the first openly lesbian mayor of a capital city in Latin America, a region slowly advancing in improving LGBT rights but where long-standing cultural biases and inequality remain barriers.
“It’s a good signal that we’re sending from Bogota to the rest of the nation and Latin America,” said Jorge Gallego, a professor at Colombia’s Rosario University.
The eldest of six children, Lopez likes to remind voters that unlike plenty of Colombian politicians, she bears no famous last name or inherited riches. Through scholarships and loans, she worked her way through college, first studying to become a doctor before discovering a passion for public service.
As a researcher at the Corporacion Nuevo Arco Iris, or New Rainbow Corporation, and a non-profit electoral observation mission, Lopez investigated voting abnormalities that led to the uncovering of the so-called para-politics scandal linking scores of high-profile politicians to violent farright militias.
Lopez’s work was among the pieces of evidence the Supreme Court cited in eventually bringing charges against numerous politicians, a feat that brought her acclaim and death threats, forcing her on at least one occasion to abruptly leave the country.
Renata Segura, a longtime friend and fellow researcher, recalled how Lopez handled the dangers of her work in stride, even finding humour in it.
“She has done all of this at a very high personal cost,” Segura said. “But I never sensed doubt about continuing the investigation or withdrawing from politics.”
In 2009, she was fired from her job as a columnist at El Tiempo after criticising the paper’s coverage of a government loan programme scandal, in what supporters characterise as one more example of her fearlessness in holding the powerful accountable.
Her critics — among them former President Alvaro Uribe — say that she has at times crossed the boundary between free speech and slander.
“Claudia has maintained a critical stance against certain powerful sectors,” said Patricia Munoz Yi, a professor at the Pontifical Xavieran University in Bogota.
“For some that position has exceeded the limits of dialogue. For others, it’s the reflection of an independent personality.”
Throughout her career, Lopez seldom made LGBT or women’s rights her sole or main issue, focusing instead on a wider array of topics from improving public education and transportation to leading the charge against corruption.
But those issues have inevitably come up both in politics and her dayto-day life.
When Lopez became a senator in 2014, Segura recalled how one fellow legislator took to dismissively calling her “Senor Lopez” — or Mr Lopez — a phrase that can still be found in homophobic posts criticising her on social media.
“I think Congress was really difficult for her, having to go there every day and face those people who were really so openly aggressive and unwilling to work with her in any way,” Segura said.
But her victory this week may be a sign that those attitudes are slowly changing.
“The great majority of Bogotanos finally said, ‘We don’t care’,” said Antonio Navarro Wolff, a fellow Green Alliance politician who supported Lopez’s bid for mayor.
Lopez will have her work cut out for her: she won with about 35 per cent of the vote, far less than a majority, meaning she will need to work to unite disparate political sectors and gain the backing of a wider segment of the population.
“That’s not going to be anything easy,” Gallego said.
Several voters who cast ballots for Lopez said this week that they believe she has the best shot at delivering on issues like improving the city’s deteriorating public education system and fulfilling longstanding promises to bring a metro to Bogota.
“Claudia said she’s going to change this city,” said Luis Ramirez, 35, a guard at a private business. “Hopefully she does.”