Claudia López facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Her Grace
Claudia López
|
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| 799th Mayor of Bogotá | |
| Assumed office 1 January 2020 |
|
| Preceded by | Enrique Peñalosa |
| Senator of Colombia | |
| In office 20 July 2014 – 20 July 2018 |
|
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Claudia Nayibe López Hernández
9 March 1970 Bogotá, Colombia |
| Political party | Green Alliance |
| Spouse |
Angélica Lozano Correa
(m. 2019) |
| Alma mater | Universidad Externado, Columbia University, Northwestern University |
| Occupation | Senator, political scientist |
Claudia Nayibe López Hernández (born 9 March 1970) is a Colombian politician. She was a Senator of the Republic of Colombia and was the vice-presidential candidate in the 2018 presidential election for the Green Alliance party. In October 2019, she was elected mayor of Bogotá, the first woman and as well the first openly LGBT person to be elected to this position.
Contents
Biography
Claudia Nayibe López Hernández, the daughter of Elías López Reyes and María del Carmen Hernández Ruiz, is the oldest of six siblings.
Education
She graduated in Finance, Government, and International Relations from the Universidad Externado de Colombia. She has a master's degree in Public Administration and Urban Politics from Columbia University in New York, and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
Career
López's appearance in public life is linked to the student movement of the Seventh Ballot, which between 1989 and 1990 was what gave impulse to the 1991 Constituent Assembly of Colombia.
She has been a consultant to the United Nations and has written for several media outlets in the country such as the Caracol Radio program Hora 20, the portal La Silla Vacía, the newspaper El Tiempo, and the magazine Semana.
As a researcher for the Arcoiris Corporation and the Electoral Observation Mission (Misión de Observación Electoral; MOE), López was recognized for her work on the atypical polls which were the starting point for uncovering the parapolitics scandal. Her critical views on the government of ex-president Álvaro Uribe and his political allies were equally contentious. Controversy was stirred by her public firing from El Tiempo in October 2009 due to an opinion column she published there which criticized the paper's coverage of certain news.
López was the Secretary of Social Action of Bogotá during the first mayoral term of Enrique Peñalosa. She is also a member of the Washington, D.C. based think tank, the Inter-American Dialogue.
Senator of the Republic
In 2014, Claudia López was elected to the Senate with 81,125 votes as a candidate for the Green Alliance party.
Presidential candidacy
On 27 December 2016, Senator López formally announced her intention to become president of Colombia in the 2018 elections, thus becoming the first pre-candidate of the Green Alliance party. Later, Antonio Navarro Wolff announced that he would also be presented as a pre-candidate. On 14 September 2017, the national congress of the Green Alliance was held to announce the results of a nationwide poll to elect the party's presidential candidate, with Claudia López winning.
Mayor of Bogota
On 27 October 2019, López was elected mayor of Bogota after leading a strong campaign against corruption. She was then sworn in on 1 January 2020 and became the city's first openly gay Mayor and the first woman elected for that position in Bogota. (Three women had previously held the position of Mayor of Bogotá, but they were all Acting Mayors who were filling in for elected mayors.)
Awards
She was on the list of the BBC's 100 Women announced on 23 November 2020.
Writings
Claudia López stood out as a columnist for Semana, El Tiempo, and La Silla Vacía. Her investigations into parapolitics were published in the books Parapolítica: la ruta de la expansión paramilitar y los acuerdos políticos and Y refundaron la patria: de cómo mafiosos y políticos reconfiguraron el Estado colombiano. In mid-2016 she presented her vision on how to end the armed conflict with the FARC in her book ¡Adiós A Las Farc! ¿Y ahora qué?.
Personal life
On 2 September 2014, an attorney sued Senator López for having a relationship with Representative Angélica Lozano Correa, because the law prohibits two Congress members who have a de facto marital union from being members of the same political party. However, López and Lozano have argued that this prohibition does not apply to them since they maintain an engagement and not a marital union. López and Lozano married in December 2019.
See also
In Spanish: Claudia López Hernández para niños
