Navarro Wolff, Antonio

Antonio Navarro Wolff (b. ca 1948), Colombian political leader. After training as a sanitary engineer at the Universidad del Valle in Cali, Navarro joined the M-19 guerrilla movement, participating in a number of its operations against government and private targets over the next dozen years. In May 1985, Navarro was badly wounded, losing his left leg and suffering some speech impairment. Following Carlos Pizarro Leongómez's assassination in April 1990, leadership of the M-19 passed to Navarro, who brought it into open political participation. He was the Left's presidential choice in the 1990 elections and won 700,000 votes, better than 10 percent of the total. Navarro served for a few months as President César Gaviría's health minister before resigning to enter the Constituent Assembly elections of December 1990. M-19 garnered 27 percent of the vote, and Navarro became a major force in the Assembly, helping to shape the constitution adopted in July 1991. His party did not fare well in the October 1991 congressional elections, but Navarro returned as a presidential candidate in 1994. After losing this election, Navarro went onto become mayor of Pasto (1995–1997), then a federal representative (1998–2002) and finally a senator (2002–2006). M-19 began loosing power in the 1990s but much of its membership, including Navarro, formed the Alternative Democratic Pole. In the party's internal election, Navarro ran to be the party's presidential candidate in 2006 but lost this campaign. The party's nominee, Carlos Gaviria, came in second in the presidential race.

See alsoBetancur Cuartas, Belisario; Colombia, Revolutionary Movements: M-19; Gaviria Trujillo, César Augusto.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Patricia Lara, Siembra vientos y recogerás tempestades (1982), pp. 215-247.

Phil Gunson, Andrew Thompson, and Greg Chamberlain, The Dictionary of Contemporary Politics of South America, (1989), 172-173, 248-249.

Jenny Pearse, Colombia: Inside the Labyrinth (1990), pp. 170-182.

Additional Bibliography

Cárdenas Rivera, Miguel E. La construcción del posconflicto en Colombia enfoques desde la pluralidad. Bogotá: FESCOL, 2003.

Livingstone, Grace. Inside Colombia: Drugs, Democracy, and War. London: Latin America Bureau, 2003.

                                     J. LeÓn Helguera