A10 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.THURSDAY, JUNE 9 , 2022
The WorldIRAN
2 monitoring devices at
nuclear site turned off
I ran turned off two surveillance
devices Wednesday used by
United Nations inspectors to
monitor the country’s uranium
enrichment, escalating the crisis
over its atomic program as
Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with
world powers remains in tatters.
The move appeared to be a new
pressure tactic and came just
before the International Atomic
Energy Agency’s board of
governors, meeting in Vienna,
approved a resolution to criticize
Iran put forward by Western
nations. The censure deals with
what the IAEA calls Iran’s failure
to provide “credible information”
over nuclear material found at
undeclared sites.
But Iran’s latest move,
announced by state television,
makes it even more difficult for
inspectors to monitor Tehran’s
atomic program. Nonproliferation
experts have warned that Iran has
enough uranium enriched close to
weapons-grade levels to pursue a
nuclear bomb if it chooses to do so.
The state TV report, later
repeated by other Iranian outlets,
said authorities deactivated the
“beyond-safeguards cameras of
the measuring Online
Enrichment Monitor ... and
flowmeter.” That apparently refers
to the IAEA’s online monitors that
watch the enrichment of uranium
gas through piping at enrichment
facilities.
In 2016, the IAEA said it
installed the device for the first
time in Iran’s underground
Natanz nuclear facility, its main
enrichment site. The device
allowed for “around-the-clock
monitoring” of the facility’s
cascades, centrifuges hooked
together to rapidly spin uraniumgas to enrich it.
Iran is also enriching uranium
at its underground Fordo facility,
though the IAEA is not known to
have installed these devices there.
— Associated PressTrain derailment kills
at least 22, injures 87Nearly half the cars of a
passenger train traveling through
eastern Iran derailed before dawn
Wednesday after the train struck
an excavator, killing at least 22
people and injuring 87, officials
said.
The derailment occurred near
the desert city of Tabas. The train,
operated by the state-run Islamic
Republic Railway, carried about
350 people as it traveled from
Tabas, about 350 miles southeast
of Tehran, to the city of Yazd.
The state-run Islamic Republic
News Agency gave the casualtyfigures, citing emergency officials.
The report said the crash is
under investigation. Initial
reports suggested the train
collided with an excavator near
the track, though it was not clear
why an excavator would have been
close to the train track in the dark.
O n Wednesday night,
authorities ordered the arrest of
six people alleged to have been
involved in the crash, though no
other information was released.
Iran’s worst train disaster
occurred in 2004, when a runaway
train loaded with gasoline,
fertilizer, sulfur and cotton
crashed near the historic city of
Neyshabur, killing about 320
people and injuring 460.
— Associated PressBelgian king expresses ‘deepest
regrets’ to Congolese: Belgium’s
King Philippe expressed his
“deepest regrets” for his nation’s
abuses in its former colony Congo,telling lawmakers on his first
official trip to the country that
Belgian rule was unjustifiable and
racist. The king said the colonial
regime was based on “exploitation
and domination” as he decried its
“paternalism, discrimination and
racism.” His speech reaffirming
his “deepest regrets for these past
wounds” comes two years after
the king made similar comments
on the 60th anniversary of
Congolese independence.Belarus jails Radio Liberty
freelancer for 6 years: A court in
Belarus sentenced a freelance
journalist for the Belarusian
service of Radio Free Europe/
Radio Liberty to six years in jail on
extremism charges, the U.S.-
funded broadcaster and the
Spring-96 human rights group
said. The trial of Andrey
Kuznechik, who was arrested in
November, was closed to the
public. He was accused of creatingan extremist group. Belarus has
labeled Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty and other independent
media outlets extremist groups.Former Chilean priest found
guilty of sex abuse, rape: A
former priest and top aide to
Santiago’s archbishop was found
guilty of repeated sexual abuse
and rape, the result of a 2018
scandal that ensnared high-
ranking members of the Chilean
Catholic Church. The scandal led
to the departure of the
archbishop of Santiago and other
priests accused of carrying out or
covering up abuses against
minors. Oscar Munoz turned
himself in to ecclesiastical
authorities in 2018 and faced
expulsion from clerical life a year
later. He then faced a criminal
investigation. Authorities are
requesting a prison sentence of
30 years and one day.
— From news servicesDIGESTBY SAMANTHA SCHMIDTbucaramanga, colombia —
The foul-mouthed former mayor
was known for insulting his em-
ployees, calling them fat, lazy and
stupid. He was once suspended
for slapping a city councilman in
the face, was charged with giving
out improper contracts and was
recorded saying he was a follower
of “a great German thinker —
Adolf Hitler.”
Now Rodolfo Hernández is
poised to be Colombia’s next pres-
ident.
As the slight 77-year-old walked
through a convention center he
built here as mayor, the crowd
swarmed. Men elbowed their way
up to take selfies; women pulled
him in for kisses on the cheek.
Less than a week earlier,
Hernández, a political outsider
with little national name recogni-
tion, stunned Colombia with a
second-place finish in the first
round of the country’s presiden-
tial election. Running a self-fund-
ed campaign from this midsize
city nine hours from the capital,
he packed no plazas and partici-
pated in few public debates. And
yet last week he beat out the con-
servative candidate backed by the
political establishment that has
governed the country for genera-
tions.
Now he’s running neck-and-
neck in the second round with
Gustavo Petro, a former guerrilla
who is trying to become the coun-
try’s first leftist president.
The two anti-establishment
candidates have captured a dis-
content that’s roaring across a
region crushed by the pandemic
as voters punish incumbent presi-
dents and demand someone —
anyone — different. Hernández
has campaigned on a single mes-
sage: Kick out the corrupt politi-
cians.
“Almost all of them are robbers,
thieves, scoundrels, delinquents,”
he told the audience.
As a wealthy builder with an
ever-present comb-over, a pen-
chant for populist diatribes and
no filter, Hernández has drawn
comparisons to former president
Donald Trump. But Hernández is
a distinct phenomenon. With the
help of a team of social media
wizards in their 20s, he has made
himself the self-proclaimed “King
of TikTok.” He has charmed young
people with his quirky videos, pos-
ing in sunglasses, doing sit-ups or
dancing to reggaeton remixes. He
comes off as your straight-talking
grandpa with a sailor’s mouth
who can say just about anything —
and get away with it. (He insists
that when he praised Adolf Hitler
he really meant to say Albert Ein-
stein.)
“We’re at a point where it
doesn’t matter what Rodolfo does
or says, the people applaud him,”
said Danovis Lozano, a member of
Bucaramanga’s city council.
“Each scandal catapults him even
more.”
He rarely talks policies or plans.
He admits he doesn’t know the
country well, but he doesn’t think
it matters. Neither, it seems, do his
supporters. Asked during the
campaign to send a message to
Vichada, an eastern department,
he replied that he didn’t know
where or what it was. Yet in the
first round last week, he won the
most votes in Vichada.
Lozano, 28, once admired the
mayor for rooting out corruption
in Bucaramanga and making it
easier for young people like him,
with no political machinery be-
hind him, to serve on the city
council. But last week he became
one of the first council members
to publicly support Petro. “My big-
gest fear with Rodolfo,” he said, “is
we don’t know what he’s going to
do.”
His voters seem willing to take
the gamble.
An internet technician working
in Hernández’s luxury apartment
in Bogotá asked to take a photo
with the candidate. Hernández
asked the man why he was voting
for him. “I’m tired of all the crap,”
he said. “I don’t like politics, but I
see that with this man, things can
really change.”
In an interview with The Wash-
ington Post, Hernández described
his effect on supporters as “messi-
anic.” He then went on to compare
them to the “brainwashed” hi-
jackers of Sept. 11, 2001.
Was comparing his supporters
to terrorists a bit problematic?
“No, no, I’m not comparing
them,” he told The Post. “What I’m
comparing is that after you get
into that state, you don’t change
your position. You don’t change
it.”A powerful matriarch
Drive into Piedecuesta,
Hernández’s hometown in north-
eastern Colombia, and you’re
greeted immediately by a road-
side billboard of the smiling can-
didate, pointing at you.
“Piedecuestans vote Pie-
decuestan,” the advertisement ad-
vises. The town, tucked in a valley
between lush green mountains,
saw some of the bloodiest battles
of the Thousand Days War in the
early 1900s. Its people still boast a
tough, combative way of speak-
ing. “We always sound like we’re
fighting,” one Hernández family
friend said.
Hernández’s grandmother,
who became a widow at a young
age, built her wealth from a cigar
factory and a sideline in contra-
band, smuggling radios and other
electronics across the border from
Venezuela and bribing officials to
stay quiet. Her daughter, Cecilia,
inherited the factory and helped
run a sugar cane mill on her prop-
erty. She could be seen driving a
large tractor around town.
Cecilia’s husband called her the
“iron lady.” Once, after a fight, she
says, she grabbed her revolver and
fired two shots at him. The house-
keeper screamed, asking if she
had killed him. “Well, if he’s dead,
we’ll bury him,” she said. (She had
missed.)She was a fiercely strict mother,
encouraging her four sons to go to
college, work hard and save mon-
ey. When Hernández was around
12 and causing trouble at a school
ceremony, she says, she slapped
his mouth so hard it bled all over
his uniform.
As a developer, Hernández
would amass a fortune reported at
$100 million, constructing at least
a third of the houses in Piedecues-
ta. Many were small homes for
lower-income families in densely
packed neighborhoods with only
pedestrian paths, a design that
some say led to a lack of privacy
and safety.
“He got rich off of the poor,” said
Edson Velandia, a well-known
musician from Piedecuesta who
grew up in a small home built by
Hernández’s firm.
As his wealth grew, his family
became a target of armed rebels in
Colombia’s long conflict. His fa-
ther was kidnapped and held for
months until Hernández paid a
ransom. When his daughter was
abducted, Hernández decided not
to pay the kidnappers, fearing it
would put the rest of the family at
greater risk. She was never found.A mayor with a temper
In 2013, an idea was born:
While drinking coffee with his
brother and a group of friends,
Hernández railed against the po-
litical elites running the city. The
brother, Gabriel, asked: Why
don’t you run for mayor?
Gabriel became the architect
behind Hernández’s surprise win
in 2015. His platform focused on a
core message: logic, ethics and
aesthetic. “When you don’t steal,
there’s more money to go around,”
said Rodrigo Fernández, an advis-
er to Hernández when he was
mayor.
Hernández managed to trim a
budget deficit in Bucaramanga, at
times through extreme cost -
cutting. He limited toilet paper in
city offices and once removed the
chairs from the cafeteria so his
staff would take fewer breaks, for-
mer employees said.
Hernández was charged by Co-
lombia’s attorney general’s office
with improperly giving out con-
tracts for waste management to
benefit his son. (He denies the
accusations; a trial is scheduled
for July.)
As mayor, he became known for
his temper, vulgar language and
insults to staff. He used a deroga-
tory word to describe an employee
who used a wheelchair, and he
referred to city councilwomen as
“whores,” according to people
who were in those conversations.
One former contractor with the
mayor’s office, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity out of fear
of retribution, said she worked for
three months without pay. One
day, she and a group of other
female employees met with him to
ask for a contract. “I’ll give you pay
for only three months to see if you
can go a little hungry and shrink
those cheeks a bit,” Hernández
allegedly said to one of them.
Hernández was so popular that
his handpicked successor won in a
landslide. But some supporters
felt betrayed by his leadership.
During Hernández’s time as
mayor, Gabriel stopped talking to
his brother, infuriated by some of
his appointments, relatives and
family friends said.
One of Hernández’s key mayor-
al campaign promises was to pro-
vide “20,000 Happy Homes” to
lower-income residents of the city.
He gave out individual letters to
his supporters pledging to give
them each one. But he never fol-
lowed through.
“He took advantage of us, the
poor,” said Luz Dary Rivera, a
campaign volunteer who now
sells cookies on city buses to make
money. She eventually ripped
Hernández’s letter into pieces.
“He tricked us.”The Trump-like TikTok star whocould be Colombia’s next presidentOutsider who admits he doesn’t know the country well is in a tight race to be its leaderPHOTOS BY FERNANDA PINEDA FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTTOP: Rodolfo Hernández appears at a meeting of palm oil growers in Bucaramanga on June3. He is running his self-funded campaign from the midsize city, which is nine hours from the
capital. MIDDLE: A smiling Hernández on a billboard in Piedecuesta, his hometown.
BOTTOM: Cecilia Suarez de Hernández, 97, the candidate’s mother, encouraged her four
sons to work hard and save money. She recalls that when he was about 12 and acting up
during a ceremony at school, she slapped his mouth so hard it bled all over his uniform.