On Sunday night, Claudia López became the first openly LGBTQ+ mayor of a major Latin American capital city after winning her election in Bogotá, Colombia. Representing the Green Alliance party, López received some 1.1 million votes, or 35.2% of the electorate, enough to clear her nearest challenger, Carlos Galán, by nearly 3 percentage points. The 49-year-old former journalist is also the first woman elected to be the city’s mayor.
Moments after her historic win, López addressed a crowd of adoring supporters. “This is the day of the woman,” she proclaimed. “We knew that only by uniting could we win. We did that. We united, we won, and we made history.”
Beyond advocating for the equal rights of LGBTQ+ Colombians, López’s campaign mainly focused on countering the corruption of the city and nation’s political system — a subject the former investigative reporter knows inside and out. As a journalist, López is best known for uncovering rampant connections between Colombian politicians and paramilitary groups. She began publishing her findings in 2005 while a columnist at Semana. Her reporting would coalesce into the book that helped catalyze investigations into 126 members of Colombia’s Congress and the prosecution and conviction of 42 politicians (one of the sentences was later revoked).
Facing death threats for her work, the journalist fled Colombia in October 2013. She proved her dedication to progressive politics in no uncertain terms by returning to Bogotá, the city where she grew up, just two months later in order to launch her career in electoral politics. She did so with a bang, successfully campaigning for a seat in the Colombian Senate for the Green Alliance party. López represented her party in the Senate until 2016, when she began an unsuccessful campaign to become Colombia’s President during the 2018 election.
López ran on a number of left-leaning policy proposals during her mayoral campaign, including the creation of more robust educational opportunity for people over 45, a redoubled focus on reducing child labor, and the implementation of an increased police presence in the city.
López’s victory no doubt reflects great strides where queer visibility is concerned. Still, Lopez’s vision for improving the lives of her queer constituents appears to lack specificity. Her 60-page policy proposal document refers to the city’s “LGBTI” community just twice, and does so mainly to underscore her administration’s objection to discrimination. The closest the incoming administration comes to articulating concrete policies is describing how it intends to work with companies and schools to provide increased access to education regarding LGBTQ+ issues. One wonders if more pointed reforms might be necessary to address issues such as the country’s concerningly high murder rates of LGBTQ+ individuals. According to a 2018 Reuters report, over 100 LGBTQ+ Colombians have been killed in each of the last three years.
For Eduardo Ramos, a Bogotá-based LGBTQ+ advocate, the symbolic significance of López’s election outweighs any perceived lack of particular policy proposals. “Beyond specific actions, we believe that the very good government represented by this candidate can demonstrate that differences unite us and that one’s sexual orientation, skin color, or religion does not matter; Anyone can be a very good leader,” Ramos told them.
Nevertheless, the activist did point to one aspect of LGBTQ+ life to which Bogotá’s new mayor could pay some extra attention: “Although same-sex marriage and the adoption of children by same-sex couples are legal in our country, in practice there are many cultural difficulties…For example, a large part of the [LGBTQ+] community does not have jobs. In particular, the unemployment rate of transgender people reaches 40%,” Ramos said. “We hope to have greater opportunities for employment with Claudia López as Mayor.”
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