Bogota, Colombia – He looks like a middle-aged teacher: slightly stooped, wearing a gray sweater, glasses perched on his nose. But as Ivan Cepeda threaded through the crowd at an impromptu rally in downtown Bogota on June 3, young people swarmed to meet him.
“Se vive, se siente, Cepeda presidente!” they chanted. “We live, we feel, Cepeda for president!”
At 63, the soft-spoken, cautious senator might seem an unlikely candidate for Colombia’s highest office. But since declaring his candidacy last August, Cepeda has become the new face of the country’s resurgent left.
“Cepeda is a candidate who never set out to be president,” said political analyst Leon Valencia, author of the biography “Ivan Cepeda: A Life Against Oblivion.”
Even he showed hesitation. In a July interview with El Espectador, as rumors of his candidacy swirled, Cepeda said: “Unlike others, this was never my calling. I never thought about running for president because I respect the office and recognize it is a huge responsibility.”
Cepeda’s presidential campaign is the latest turn in a life intertwined with politics and violence, thrusting him to the center of one of Colombia’s most intractable issues: the six-decade armed conflict.
