Álvaro Leyva Durán: The Perpetual Conspirator

Inexhaustible, Álvaro Leyva Durán (Bogotá, 82 years old) is always scheming something. He never stays still. The veteran politician of conservative origin prides himself on being involved in practically all efforts to achieve peace with armed groups in Colombia since the 1980s. When the government delegation kept him on the sidelines of the negotiations that led to the 2016 agreement with the FARC guerrilla, he maneuvered to get involved in the talks taking place in Havana. His most recent plan had a different character: it consisted of gathering support in the United States to topple the government of Gustavo Petro, the president of Colombia whom he had previously served as foreign minister, according to audio recordings and testimonies obtained by EL PAÍS.

Chameleon-like, Leyva has been almost everything in Colombian politics. He has gained a reputation as a conspirator throughout his long public life, which began as private secretary to conservative president Misael Pastrana in 1970. Since then, he has been a councilman in Bogotá, a representative to the House, a senator, the Minister of Mines under Belisario Betancur (1982-1986), and a member of the National Constituent Assembly that drafted the 1991 political charter. At that time, he was part of the lists of the Democratic Alliance M-19, the party born out of the guerrilla that Petro belonged to in his youth, which had just signed a historic peace agreement and brought together figures from different sides.

He has also presented himself as a mediator in multiple peace attempts, whether with guerrilla groups or paramilitary organizations. Most of the time, he has done this as a sort of free agent creating alternative communication channels, parallel to the official ones. In the Havana talks, he ended up with a role in transitional justice issues. When discussions reached a deadlock, the parties decided to create a group of jurists to overcome the impasse, three chosen by the government and three by the FARC; among them was Leyva himself. Sources from the government delegation at the time recall him as an advisor to the guerrilla with theories that complicated the agreements, very close to Iván Márquez, the FARC’s chief negotiator who eventually failed to comply with what was signed and returned to arms.

With that history behind him, Leyva began Petro’s term as foreign minister. He was the first appointee in the entire Cabinet. From that position, he restored difficult relations with Nicolas Maduro’s Venezuela and directed Colombian diplomacy towards the total peace policy, aimed at negotiating simultaneously with all armed groups. At that time, he often presented himself as the Minister of Foreign Relations and Peace, a title that was not official. His management faced criticism, among other things, for prioritizing that negotiation agenda over other diplomatic interests of Colombia. He showcased himself as one of the most loyal allies of the leftist president, whom he showered with praise, but fell from grace due to a convoluted process for issuing passports that resulted in a suspension from the Attorney General’s Office in early 2024, and ultimately his dismissal for illegally nullifying the bidding process.

Now without an official position, he maintained influence. The president echoed his suggestions. A year ago, he was dedicated to promoting his contested thesis that a paragraph in the peace agreement referencing a “national political agreement” empowered Petro to call a Constituent Assembly by decree. This idea was widely regarded as nonsense and contradicted by all other negotiators who participated in the Havana talks, including Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018), the president who sealed that pact. The jurists collectively noted that a Constituent Assembly can only be convened using the procedures established in the 1991 political charter. With one notable exception: former prosecutor Eduardo Montealegre, who had just taken office as Petro’s Minister of Justice and was now stirring up his own theories to initiate a constitutional process.

In the meantime, Leyva also unexpectedly appeared alongside Maduro at the Miraflores Palace in Caracas while Colombia was still unsuccessfully trying to mediate in Venezuela’s post-electoral crisis. The visit in August 2024 was “in a personal capacity,” clarified then Colombian foreign minister Luis Gilberto Murillo, although he noted that Bogotá viewed the meeting with “good eyes.” There were no tangible results, but Leyva seemed to have Petro’s favor. However, he was already feeling distant from the president.

The break came with the new year when Leyva began sending messages on social media that seemed like riddles. In one of them, he criticized the way Petro handled the diplomatic crisis with the United States. The former foreign minister became one of the sharpest critics of the government to which he belonged, especially targeting the president, whom he attributed an addiction problem that, he claims, affects his ability to govern. “It was in Paris that I could confirm that you had a drug addiction problem,” he writes in the most explosive paragraph of the two public letters in which he lashes out against Petro, referring to the occasion when he “disappeared for two days” during an official visit in June 2023. The president denied the allegations, branding his former minister a “viper” and claiming that when he was foreign minister, he advised him to seek reelection despite the fact that the Constitution prohibits it. Soon after, he accused Leyva of participating in a plot to overthrow him, details of which are just beginning to emerge.