00:00Antonio Navarro made a promise of peace
00:02Together, we will change the history of Colombia
00:05And she fulfilled it until her death.
00:08I mean it.
00:09A child of the historical period known as La Violencia, Navarro was born on July 9, 1948,
00:15on the day that marked exactly three months since the Bogotazo riots,
00:20unleashed after the assassination of Jorge Eliezer Gaitán
00:23and from which the guerrillas of the second half of the century would emerge in the country.
00:28Navarro died on November 1, 2026, leaving an invaluable legacy as a peacebuilder and promoter of reconciliation.
00:34He was instrumental in the demobilization of the M-19 guerrilla group, to which he belonged.
00:38and he was also co-president of the 1991 National Constituent Assembly.
00:43He served as a congressman, mayor, governor, minister, a true statesman.
00:52Pastuso
00:53But raised in Cali, Navarro always had the best grades in class,
00:57even after graduating as a sanitary engineer from Univalle in 1992
01:01or when he went to study postgraduate studies in England, on a scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation.
01:06In 1974, when the M-19 was born, Navarro was already listening to social protest music.
01:11The revolutionary chants of the urban guerrillas reached the loquacious engineer Pastuso with haste,
01:16who did not like speeches about communism,
01:18but he was seduced by the nationalist, Bolivarian vision
01:21and by the proclamations of participatory democracy of the M-19.
01:29In 1985, Navarro survived a grenade attack in a cafe in Cali.
01:33He was left with 130 shrapnel fragments in his body, and one of them damaged his hypoglossal nerve.
01:37which is why he had speech difficulties for the rest of his life.
01:40He was secretly taken out of the country amid rumors that they wanted to finish him off in the hospital.
01:44Upon arriving in Mexico, his clinical condition worsened and his left leg was amputated.
01:49because the wounds compromised their chances of survival.
01:58A joker at all hours, he laughed at himself, at his leg, at the way he spoke,
02:02of his political defeats and even those brought to him by football.
02:10Even the amputation of his leg didn't make him lose his rhythm in salsa.
02:14The late comedian Jaime Garzón, whom he met many years later,
02:17I would testify without hesitation that Navarro was a full-time dancer
02:21and I would give the award to the most fun-loving neighbor in the building.
02:24Navarro was a music lover at all hours and had a song for every moment of his life.
02:33He listened to Beethoven, but not to boast about his German ancestry,
02:36but to evoke that year of 1991 when, with the Colombian Symphony Orchestra on board,
02:42The Constituent Assembly gave the country the political charter that has governed us ever since.
02:48If the Ninth Symphony was the composer's masterpiece,
02:51Navarro's role was to lead his former guerrilla comrades
02:54and to the tormented country in its search for political reconciliation.
03:03Navarro and Carlos Pizarro were the main promoters of the M-19 peace agreement,
03:07signed in 1990 with the government of Virgilio Barco.
03:11On March 9, 1990, the M-19 signed the peace agreement of contemporary Argentina.
03:19Two months later, Pizarro became the third presidential candidate assassinated in less than a year in Colombia.
03:25Luis Carlos Galán and Bernardo Jaramillo Osa had already fallen.
03:27And the three cases remain unsolved.
03:30Navarro then became the top leader of the nascent political group.
03:33And far from succumbing to hatred or desires for revenge,
03:37He placed his promise of peace above all else,
03:39his ideal of helping to rescue a country that was bleeding dry.
03:42And he ordered Pizarro to be buried in peace.
03:44If the war left him without a leg and almost took his voice,
03:47His unwavering commitment to peace elevated him to a national stature.
03:54Then came the National Constituent Assembly of 1991.
04:03The Assembly's first challenge was to define who would preside over it.
04:07The Liberal Party had the most voted list,
04:09followed by the M-19 and by conservatism.
04:12Navarro and Álvaro Gómez led the formula that would resolve the issue.
04:15A tripartite presidency between them and the liberal Horacio Serpa.
04:19We had, in any case, modern institutions,
04:23a more effective justice system and, above all,
04:25More rights for Colombians, less inequality.
04:29We've made progress, but we still have a long way to go.
04:32I believe that the Constitution, rather than reforming it,
04:35What we need is to apply it properly, to apply it.
04:37The Constituent Assembly changed the country,
04:39It opened spaces for political forces other than the liberal-conservative two-party system,
04:43recognized the ethnic and cultural diversity of Colombia
04:45and created the Constitutional Court,
04:48the guardianship, the Attorney General's Office and the Ombudsman's Office
04:51They are also a result of the 1991 Constitution.
04:54What did he need?
04:55It needed more decentralization.
04:59Navarro himself summed it up on the day the constituents finished their work.
05:02Furthermore, let us achieve and consolidate peace.
05:08May it be a real, dignified, just and lasting peace for all Colombians.
05:14We, the constituents, did our part.
05:18Now it is up to all Colombians to develop the presented Charter.
05:25And, oh paradoxes, Navarro, Serpa and Gómez Hurtado became the greatest symbols of their political groups
05:31They aspired to the presidency of the Republic several times, but none achieved this honor.
05:36Serpa died on October 31, 2020, Navarro on November 1, 2026, and Gómez was murdered on
05:42November 2, 1995.
05:44Different years, but consecutive days.
05:47Thanks to life, thanks to God, thanks to history, for having been able to be part of that constituent process
05:54from '91.
05:55The most important role I have had in my life has been as co-president of the Constituent Assembly.
06:01Navarro's political life was built on a foundation of defeats.
06:07Navarro was also a representative in the House, a senator, mayor of Pasto, governor, and Minister of Health.
06:12More than president, his great dream was the mayoralty of Bogotá, and it slipped through his fingers because just when he was in
06:18his political peak,
06:20when he had record votes and when he was chosen as the best mayor in the country for his work in Pasto,
06:25The Council of State ruled that he could not run in Bogotá precisely because he was a few weeks short of fulfilling the
06:32minimum residency requirement in the capital.
06:35It couldn't be done, he said resignedly while listening to his favorite piece, in Mozart's Viramádigan or on some trip through
06:40Europe,
06:41where he was frequently invited to explain the political situation in Colombia.
06:49Many people don't remember, but it was with Navarro's help that Gustavo Petro obtained a seat in the House of Representatives
06:54of Representatives
06:55to become, like him, an electoral phenomenon and promoter of debates of great interest.
07:00Petro went to Congress in 1991 and lost the 1994 elections.
07:05For the 1998 elections, he registered as Navarro's second name on the alternative route list to the Chamber.
07:11via Bogotá.
07:12It was the most successful, with 117,000 votes.
07:16Four years later, Petro led the list for the House of Representatives and Navarro made the leap to the Senate.
07:20where he surprised everyone with more than 215,000 votes.
07:23And the siren songs returned, urging him to run for president of the Republic.
07:28Five months ago, some problems arose in Antonio's personal life.
07:35We gave ourselves some time to see, because obviously we didn't want him to leave the cabinet.
07:43That was not possible and then something happened that I find regrettable, undoubtedly.
07:52Navarro continued to support every peace initiative undertaken by the Colombian government.
07:56In 2016, exactly 10 years before he died, he actively campaigned in favor of the plebiscite.
08:01to ratify the peace agreement between the Santos government and the FARC.
08:05He did not win in the plebiscite called by the government of Juan Manuel Santos.
08:10to ratify the Havana peace agreements.
08:12The "no" vote won 62,000 votes; I think that's an insurmountable difference for the "yes" vote.
08:17And he launched once again his conciliatory formula, which began with the need to accept the result.
08:22We will have to face this new moment in national life with a great deal of creativity.
08:28because it's also a super tight decision.
08:31Among 13 million voters, a difference of only 60,000 votes is a minimal margin.
08:37The death of Antonio Navarro deprived the country of one of the most ardent leaders of the left,
08:41an architect of the process that first brought progressivism to power,
08:45a man who worked for the institutional and democratic opening of the country,
08:49a tireless worker for peace.
08:51We're still in the mess and trying to solve the problem of a senseless armed struggle in the country.
08:55this moment.
08:56He once reviewed the Stasi files,
08:59the secret police of the former East Germany.
09:01He visited prisons and torture centers and concluded that violence is not worth it.
09:06Actually, I had discovered it before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
09:09and he reaffirmed it until the last day of his life.
09:12Yes, I swear.
09:21Thanks for watching the video.
09:22Thank you.
