BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) 鈥 Piedad C贸rdoba, an outspoken Colombian lawmaker who for decades championed the rights of her fellow Afro-Colombians while undertaking huge risks as a go-between to leftist rebel groups, has died. She was 68.
The senator's death was confirmed Saturday by President Gustavo Petro, who praised C贸rdoba as a true liberal who 鈥渇ought all her mature life for a more democratic society.鈥
No cause of death was given but Colombian media reported she was found dead Saturday by her bodyguards at her home in Medellin from an apparent heart attack.
Known throughout Colombia for her colorful turbans evoking her African heritage, C贸rdoba stood out as a leftist stalwart in and paid dearly for her vociferous defense of some of the country's most dispossessed.
Whether kidnapped by right-wing paramilitary groups, or expelled from Congress for promoting the country's last remaining rebel army, C贸rdoba never shied away from conflict and frequently bounced back from adversity in remarkable ways. A trusted ally of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Ch谩vez, C贸rdoba played a key behind-the-scenes role in bringing leaders of the , to the negotiating table that resulted in a historic 2016 peace deal ending a half century of guerrilla conflict.
However, her final political battle was an almost impossible fight 鈥 one that complicated her comeback on the coattails of former rebel Petro's historic election as Colombia's first leftist president.
In 2022, her brother, Alvaro C贸rdoba, was to the U.S. by her ally Petro to face drug trafficking charges in New York. Although C贸rdoba herself was not charged, her brother's lawyers claimed she was the intended target of a sting orchestrated by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Informants posing as Mexican drug buyers sought contact with dissident guerrillas who could help smuggle huge quantities of cocaine to the U.S. Earlier this month, Alvaro C贸rdoba pleaded guilty.
C贸rdoba was the oldest of 12 children raised in Medellin by two teachers. Her father was Black and her mother white.
Colombia has the second largest population of people of African descent in Latin America, making up around 10% of the population. But traditionally they have been among the most marginalized politically and economically, lagging far behind in almost every socio-economic indicator.
鈥淓ven as a little girl she was a leader,鈥 said Armanda Arboleda, a childhood friend. 鈥淪he was the one who talked the most, always fighting and never giving up entirely.鈥
After earning a law degree, she initiated her political career in the hillside slums of Medellin as a member of the Liberal Party, once the country's largest political grouping. By the 1990s, she made her way to Congress and in one of Colombia's darkest periods 鈥 with rebels and paramilitaries, both armed to the teeth by the country's drug cartels, fighting each other for territorial control 鈥 she dared to speak up for minorities who were among the bloody conflict's biggest victims.
For her open defiance of Colombia's treacherous ideological divide, she was kidnapped in 1999 for two weeks on the orders of Carlos Casta帽o, then the top right-wing warlord. Upon her release, she and her family briefly went into exile in Canada.
But Cordoba never remained silent for long. During the 2002-2010 government of President Alvaro Uribe she helped spearhead a campaign uncovering ties between the president's conservative allies in Congress and the bloodthirsty paramilitaries. In 2007, she called on leftist governments in the region to break diplomatic relations with Colombia over what she claimed were Uribe's ties to Colombia's extensive criminal underworld.
Despite their ideological differences and bitter feuds, Uribe relied on C贸rdoba and Ch谩vez to secure the release of several politicians and soldiers held captive for the years by the FARC. For her humanitarian efforts in the deeply polarized country, she was lionized by the left but scorned by conservatives, who would frequently heckle her in public as a 鈥渢raitor鈥 and guerrilla sympathizer.
In 2010, she was expelled from Congress and banned from holding office for 18 years for allegedly promoting the FARC. But the decision was later overturned and C贸rdoba regained her Senate seat last year on the coattails of Petro's historic victory.
