Former Guerrilla-Turned-Senator Wins Colombia Presidential Race

BOGOTÁ, Colombia—Gustavo Petro, as soon as a member of a leftist guerrilla group that fought the Colombian state, was on Sunday elected president after pledging to battle inequality and poverty and insert the state squarely into the economy of a rustic that’s Washington’s closest ally in Latin America.

A 62-year-old senator who within the Nineteen Seventies and ’80s was within the M-19 insurgent group, Mr. Petro is the primary leftist elected president in Colombia, a milestone in a rustic that not too long ago emerged from a protracted guerrilla battle. Francia Márquez, a 40-year-old human-rights activist, will grow to be vp, the primary Afro-Colombian and the second lady to carry that put up.