Colombia: Gustavo Petro Graces Rolling Stone Magazine Cover

Colombian Presidential hopeful Gustavo Petro has given an exclusive interview to Rolling Stone magazine. He begins by saying that 1973, the year Vietnamese resistance forced U.S. troops from their homeland and the date of the military coup against Chilean President Salvador Allende, marked the beginning of his political consciousness.

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Books he read during his school days informed him that "a new world was possible and that people were fighting for this in all corners of the planet. They were books that generated social criticism." It was during this period that he joined the former guerrilla movement, M-19, which he believed "filled the gap between the need for social justice and the people themselves."

After the group demobilized in the 1990s, Petro moved on to join the political arena where he served as mayor of Bogota from April 2014 to December 2015.

"Colombia has not experienced democracy. It has not been erected as a nation. This is the fundamental reason for all the violence. It's a social pact that defines a nation. Colombia is not a reality because since the War of Independence dozens of other wars have emerged, demonstrating an immense fracture within Colombian society." Those wars, he warns, "emanate from the exclusion of people in rural areas."

Petro's official candidacy, representing a left-wing coalition of parties and movements, will be confirmed following an electoral consultation on March 11. He has already warned of the possibility of "a massive fraud" to elect his coalition's candidate, which could leave him out of the presidential race on May 27.