A Major Earthquake Challenges Colombia’s New Right-Wing President

**Travis Waldron** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

**David Gura** (0:09)
The race to find survivors of a 7.4 magnitude earthquake continues across western Colombia. Rescue workers called for silence as they picked through rubble, listening for signs of life.
Hundreds of people are dead, and thousands more are injured or missing.

**Oscar Medina** (0:24)
The problem is not just the physical damage.

**David Gura** (0:27)
Bloomberg's Oscar Medina is based in Bogota.

**Oscar Medina** (0:29)
We don't really understand the magnitude of the impact, because a lot of roads are blocked. There is no phone or internet signal.

**David Gura** (0:41)
Oscar says rescue efforts have varied from one state to another, and they've been complicated by difficult terrain, limited power and internet infrastructure, years of poverty, and civil conflict in the hardest hit areas. Choco, the epicenter of the quake, is one of the poorest states in the country.

**Oscar Medina** (0:58)
Some people have to sleep outside their homes because their houses are destroyed, so that's a challenge for the government because they have to find ways to finance food, shelter, rescue, temporary housing.

**David Gura** (1:16)
The task of overseeing all of that falls to Colombia's president, Abelardo de la Espriella, someone who hadn't held public office before. The earthquake happened just after he was inaugurated.

**Travis Waldron** (1:27)
I mean, Monday was the first business day of his presidency.

**David Gura** (1:32)
Travis Waldron helps edit Bloomberg's coverage of Latin America from Brasilia.

**Travis Waldron** (1:36)
And at 7.3 in the morning, there's this massive earthquake that demands all of his attention.

**David Gura** (1:44)
De la Espriella, a right-wing candidate who ran on an austerity platform, had promised to cut as much as 40 percent of Colombia's budget. But this national tragedy threatens to upend his plans for the country.

**Travis Waldron** (1:56)
There's a real chance for substantial impact here. And we'll have to see in the coming days what it proves to be.

**David Gura** (2:09)
I'm David Gura, and this is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. Today on the show, Colombia grapples with the fallout from a major disaster during its new president's first week on the job.
When a massive earthquake struck Colombia on Monday, it hit one of the country's main economic engines, one of its lucrative coffee growing regions. It's a multi-billion dollar industry, which exports roughly a million 60 kilogram bags of coffee every month. Bloomberg's Oscar Medina says the earthquake caused significant damage and shut down the Buenaventura port. It started restoring some of its operations on Thursday.

**Oscar Medina** (2:51)
We spoke to the head of a coffee exporter organization that said that actually exports are largely halted. So we don't have estimates yet about the economic costs.
But in 1999, there was a similar earthquake. That earthquake had an economic impact of 2.2 percentage points of GDP.
So if we bring that to today's prices, that could be something more than $10 billion.

**David Gura** (3:27)
And Oscar, if that wasn't complicated enough, Columbia has this new president who is now in charge of overseeing the rescue and recovery efforts. What's his background?

**Oscar Medina** (3:35)
Abelardo de la Espriella was a trial lawyer. And he was a business man. And nobody thought he was going to make it to the presidency because he's an outsider in Colombian politics. He hasn't held any public office. I mean, he's a showman. He used to be like a political commentator, but he was controversial. One of the most interesting things of the campaign, he saw himself as the tiger.
It's funny. El tigre. I mean, like with the tiger's claw, we're going to destroy the left.
When he won and he beat the ally of former president Gustavo Petro, who was very strong at the moment, it was a complete surprise and he pledged to break ties of traditional politics and political parties.

**David Gura** (4:33)
During his inauguration address, he said, quote, the time for restoring order, authority and freedom has begun. What did he mean by that?

**Oscar Medina** (4:41)
Former president Petro had a policy of negotiating with armed groups. So you wouldn't see like large military operations against a criminal groups or guerrilla organizations.
And that was one of the biggest promises of President de la Espriella, that he was going to end those peace processes and would use the force of the state. And actually on Monday, there were some news about some camps of an illegal group, the ELN, that's Colombia's oldest guerrilla. It was bombed by the army. So that's his tough line on security.

**David Gura** (5:27)
You mentioned Colombia's former president, Gustavo Petro. He was a left-wing president.
How big a shift has this been from Petro to de la Espriella?