Rodolfo Hernández, an engineer turned politician who was nicknamed the Colombian “Trump” and who lost the second round of the 2022 presidential election to current President Gustavo Petro, died Monday at the age of 79 from terminal cancer.
Hernández, who had countless unusual outings for politicians, populist proposals especially in the fight against corruption and episodes of verbal and even physical attacks against other politicians, died in Piedecuesta, in the department of Santander.
His name began to be heard in Colombian politics since he was mayor of Bucaramanga, the capital of Santander, but at the national level his face was almost unknown until he gave the surprise in 2022 and with great exposure on the networks, a speech that resonated Those who were dissatisfied with traditional politics managed to access the second round and remained only 680,000 votes from victory in the presidency against Petro.
Hernández founded the Anti-Corruption Rulers League movement, from where he participated in an atypical campaign in which his main allies were social networks from which he mercilessly attacked the corrupt, his main message.
The successful construction magnate, far from traditional politics and what he calls “the castes” of power, was born in 1945 in Piedecuesta, a city in the department of Santander, and began his career in Bucaramanga, the regional capital, where he became a millionaire in the social housing construction sector.
“The engineer”
Raised in a working-class family, he was married to Socorro Oliveros and had four children: Juliana – who disappeared after being kidnapped by the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas in 2004 -, Luis Carlos, Mauricio and Rodolfo José.
During his political career, he made the title “engineer” an inseparable part of his name, in order to give the idea that, being rich, he did not need to “rob the public coffers”.
Hernández marked a before and after in politics. He managed to appear as a person with a strong character, with a tendency towards the picturesque and the sordid, and without fear of confrontation.
One of his proposals as a candidate was that if he became president of Colombia he would end corruption and waste of public resources and to this end he proposed selling the Cartagena guesthouse, which belongs to the nation, and reducing the number of people in the air fleet and even presidential security.
Hernandez’s political strength allowed him to obtain 10,580,412 votes against the 11,281,013 obtained by Petro.
After this defeat, Hernández recognized the results and obtained a seat in the Senate thanks to the Opposition Statute, created after the signing of the peace agreement between the government of Juan Manuel Santos and the demobilized FARC guerrillas. However, he only remained in the Legislative Assembly for a few months and resigned.
That’s where a free fall began, after losing the governorship of Santander last year, he was sentenced last June to 64 months in prison for corruption in the awarding of contracts when he was mayor of Bucaramanga. It was during the same trial in which he revealed, in tears, that he suffered from colorectal cancer.
“I regret the death of Rodolfo Hernández after a long fight against cancer, a hug to his family,” was Petro’s farewell to his rival in the last elections.
