“President Petro, do not punish us for representing the opposition: this is a serious mistake. Medellín and Antioquia are Colombia,” said the mayor of Colombia’s second largest city at the inauguration ceremony this Monday, January 1st. Federico Fico Gutiérrez sent a message that was echoed by the governor who took office on the same day, Andrés Julián Rendón. The new president challenged the national government in his own words: “If they don't support Antioquia, at least let them work.” Thus, from their first moment in power, the new ruling duo made it clear that the richest and most populous department in Colombia or at least those who currently run their governments will represent a counterweight to Gustavo Petro.
The attitude is not surprising. Gutiérrez and Rendón come from the right, while Petro is the first left-wing president of what is now Colombia. Fico, a Medellin politician who had the luxury of being close to former President Álvaro Uribe without ever having joined his party, the Democratic Center, and who won the mayoralty in 2015 from that group's candidate, was the Candidate of the Right. in the 2022 presidential elections. Uribe and his forces supported him, and Gutiérrez appeared in the election campaign, showing himself as an antidote to what seemed to be (and was) a victory for Petro.
His position is radical: he condemned Petro for alleged plots against him in 2022 and for illegal financing of the election campaign in 2023, after the scandal surrounding the president's first-born son, Nicolás Petro. Thanks to strong opposition to the government in his city and the poor image of Daniel Quintero, the local leader who had become estranged from the president, he easily won re-election as mayor last October.
Rendón, a lesser-known figure outside Antioquia, won the governorship with the support of the Democratic Center. He was mayor of Rionegro, a wealthy municipality near Medellín where Uribe lives and where the international airport is located, when Fico was mayor of the capital. They developed a formula for last October's regional elections in which the current governor accused the president of being an enemy of the ministry. “From Antioquia we will face a Petro who hates the people of Antioquia”, “Antioqueños, your love and your voice will help us block Petro”, “It is Petro or it is Antioquia”, were some of the phrases, with whom he campaigned on the streets, social networks and media.
Two themes have emerged in the first days of his term, and in both Rendón has made his demands clear. First, the Ministry wants to be the mining authority in its territory, responsible for granting or withdrawing the titles necessary to open a mine, overseeing an activity deeply rooted in the history of a region that has lived from gold mining for centuries and is the largest Exporter of the metal.
On December 26, the government decided not to extend this delegation, which had been extended since 2013, which caused discontent in the region. “It is a demonstration of revenge against Antioquia,” said outgoing governor Aníbal Gaviria at the time. Rendón went a step further: “I have decided to create a legal team at the highest level to fight for the recovery of the Antioquia mining delegation from an administrative and constitutional point of view,” he announced on the day of his inauguration.
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Petro has supported his decision with legal arguments but also with political positions that deepen the distance between the leaders. “My dear Governor, mining in Antioquia has been largely dominated by armed groups and, on the other hand, has expanded to areas with fertile land and high environmental sensitivity. It doesn't seem like a good balance to me. “I propose to promote a mining model that gives preference to small-scale mining companies and I propose that agricultural areas be respected in their agricultural activity,” he said the day after the debate broke out.
A battle has just begun on the second issue, the work on fourth-generation road concessions or 4G roads. Divided into distinct regions about a decade ago by the government of Juan Manuel Santos, they have special significance in a department so steep that its capital, Medellín, is known as the mountain capital. In fact, 4G was built from a previous project by the Uribe government to build several roads in Antioquia, known as Autopistas de la Montaña. Santos took the idea, changed the name, added roads to other regions and pushed 4G forward with environmental, financial and legal adjustments.
In Antioquia, several of them have sections or works pending and the ministry has asked the government for additional money to finance them. The answer was negative. “We have a financing problem, but not with the 4G in Antioquia, but with the roads in Colombia,” Transport Minister William Camargo told EL PAÍS in October. He explained that these were additional works proposed by the companies responsible for the construction and maintenance of the roads or by the municipalities and that there was no money for them. “It cannot be said that Antioquia has not received resources: of the 50 billion in fourth generation concessions, about 28 billion are realized in concessions that pass through this department and another four pass through a small branch,” argued the manager at that time .
Rendón raised the matter on his inauguration day. “If they don’t want to finish the mountain highways, they should hand them over to us because we will finish them here,” he said at the ceremony. “Petro's hatred for Antioquia knows no bounds: he took money from us to complete the 4G roads,” he said during the election campaign. Although Fico has not commented directly on the two issues, he has accused Petro of punishing a region that did not vote for him in the presidential election and has now been elected as his opponents. “An attack on a region based on political and ideological differences with its leaders is an attack on the unity of the country,” he said on the day the government’s mining decision was announced.
The fight is on. Other problems arise, such as the government's intervention in SaviaSalud, the health promotion facility (EPS) owned by Medellín and Antioquia; Petro's criticism of the Hidroituango hydroelectric power plant, another megaproject of the department and municipality; and the governor and mayor's distancing on key executive branch policies, from health care reform to total peace.
Fico and Rendón are on the ideological opposite sides of Petro and have the necessary resources to carry out their official business largely independently of the government. They are also in the region where the president performs worst in the polls and is a notorious counterbalance to the executive branch. And with an opposition without a visible head, they have room to be noticed.
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