profile of one of the most representative leaders of the Liberal party

Horacio Serpa Uribe, one of the country’s most representative leaders in the last three decades, died this Saturday, October 31 in Santander, the land that saw him born and shine in all fields of national politics.

At 77 years of age, the liberal leader said goodbye after several years of fighting against a disease, but he left a very important legacy for many generations that saw him grow up as a leader in the country and move for different positions in national politics .

Serpa was born in Bucaramanga on January 4, 1943 and precisely there, in that city where he grew up, was where he spent his last years of life. The leader graduated as a lawyer from the Universidad del Atlántico and held various positions in the judicial branch in the department of Santander.

He was a civil judge in Barrancabermeja, a municipal criminal judge in San Vicente de Chucurí, a criminal judge in the Barrancabermeja Circuit, as well as a criminal investigator for the department and a superior judge in Barrancabermeja. He was always linked to the Colombian liberal class.

For this reason, during the 1960s, he joined the Liberal Revolutionary Movement, led at the time by Alfonso López Michelsen and rejected by the National Front. When this was dissolved in 1967, Serpa joined the ruling faction of the Liberal Party.

He also served as Mayor of Barrancabermeja in 1970, thanks to the support provided by Álvaro Gómez Gómez, then Governor of Santander. In 1971 he was elected councilor of the oil city and three years later he came to the Congress of the Republic for the Liberal Party.

It was there, where Serpa gave rise to the Authentic Liberal Left Front, Fila, together with Mario Olarte, Rafael Fernández and Arístides Andrade. In 1978, he was elected as a representative, with which he continued to occupy the liberal seat in Congress.

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In 1981, he began his friendship with former president Ernesto Samper, giving him his support so that he would become part of the Liberal Directory.

In 1986 Serpa reached the Senate of the Republic. However, in 1988 he resigned his seat to become a prosecutor, after the assassination of Carlos Mauro Hoyos. It was there that he had to face the kidnapping of Álvaro Gómez Hurtado by the M-19, in addition to the La Rochela massacre, in Santander.

Later, in 1990, President Virgilio Barco appointed him Minister of Government. Shortly after, he became the political boss of Ernesto Samper’s campaign.

Despite his reelection in the Congress of the Republic, in 1991 he resigned his seat to be part of the National Constituent Assembly, along with Verano de la Rosa and Guillermo Perry, for Samper’s list within the Liberal Party.

In 1992, President César Gaviria appointed him peace negotiator with the EPL and other guerrillas in Tlaxcala, Mexico. In 1993 he became head of debate for Ernesto Samper’s campaign. After his victory in 1994, Samper made Serpa Minister of Government. There, he turned the government portfolio into the Ministry of the Interior.

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At the height of the scandal known as ‘Proceso 8,000’, Serpa was a staunch defender of the Presidency of the Republic, arguing that Samper never knew of money from drug trafficking infiltrated in the campaign.

In 1998, Serpa ran for the first time as President of the Republic. Although he won by few votes in the first round, he was defeated in the second by the conservative Andrés Pastrana.

However, in 2000 he announced that he wanted to return to the presidential race, but was defeated in the first round by Álvaro Uribe Vélez in 2002. Uribe appointed Serpa as ambassador to the OAS, where he spent two years.

In 2005, he was elected vice president of the Socialist International and, later, he won the Liberal Consultation and ran again for the presidency, coming in third place, behind Uribe Vélez and Carlos Gaviria.

In 2014, he returned to the Senate, from where he defended the Peace Process with the FARC. Serpa had been struggling with colon cancer, a disease that ended his life on October 31, 2020.