Schiller Institute on YouTube Schiller Institute on Facebook RSS

Home >

Lessons of Colombia:
Great Projects Win Elections!

November 2007

The World Land-Bridge

The October 28 Mayoral elections in Bogota proved that the Presidential candidate who steps forward to campaign for building rail corridors to connect Colombia with the "World Land-Bridge," will win the elections in 2010, Maximiliano Londono, president of LaRouche Association of Colombia, reports. Everyone acknowledges that the deciding factor in the victory of Samuel Moreno as Mayor of Bogota, the second most important political post in the country, was Moreno's commitment to build a subway in the nation's capital. Moreno received nearly a million votes, whomping his opponent who insisted Colombia couldn't afford anything like a subway.

President Alvaro Uribe heard the voters' message. After having campaigned openly against Moreno, hysterically repeating for months that no money could be found to build any subway, on Nov. 3, the President conceded that the national government could, and would help finance the subway's construction.

Mayor-elect Moreno welcomed the announcement, as an admission that Colombians can think big: "The national government is saying, from the mouth of the President himself, and just as we have said, that there is no reason to fear great projects."

During the campaign, the LaRouche Youth Movement in Colombia mobilized Bogota's citizens, including dozens of youth activists from Moreno's campaign, to demand not only a subway, but for Colombia to join the great project that will define the next 50 years: the global network of railroads running across Eurasia, across the Bering Strait, and down to the tip of South America-the World Land-Bridge.