Antonio Navarro Wolff (born July 9, 1948 in Pasto, Nariño) is a Colombian politician and former commander of the 19th of April Movement (M-19) guerrilla group, which demobilized and formed a political party which he also led. Currently, he is governor of the Department of Nariño.
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In 1972, Navarro graduated as a sanitary engineer from the University of Valle, after which he took postgraduate courses and eventually became a professor at the same university. He studied Environmental Engineering at Loughborough University, UK in 1976 on a scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation, the British Council and the International Development Research Center (IDRC) of Canada.
As a sanitary engineer, he was an adviser of the Social Medicine Department of the University of Valle (1972), coordinator of the Multidisciplinary Research Center for Rural Development (CIMDER, 1972-1977), international adviser of the IDRC (1976-1978), Professor at the University of Valle (1972-1978), director of the Curriculum of Sanitary Engineering at the university, and a private consultant.
At the end of the 1970s, he became a part of the guerrilla group M-19. Within the M-19, Navarro ascended to second-in-command of the organization. One of the most controversial episodes of M-19 was the take-over of the Palace of Justice by armed guerrillas. They pretended to demand a trial of President Belisario Betancur for violation of the peace accords. During the operation led by security forces to retake the Palace, a large group of guerrillas, civilians, magistrates and soldiers lost their lives. Although the exact events that occurred will probably never be clear, some unconfirmed versions suggest the guerrillas were financed by the narcotics trafficker Pablo Escobar, in return for the destruction of compromising documents. Nevertheless, these versions have been denied by recent investigations, which conclude that the fire in the archives may have been caused by government troops.
Navarro coordinated peace negotiations for this movement the government of President Betancur in 1984 and 1985. He was named head of the Commission to organize the National Dialogue, along with Vera Grabe, Alfonso Jacquin, Andrés Almarales and Israel Santamaría. Talks were broken off, truces failed and the peace process died. In May 1985, the talks collapsed after an attack in a cafeteria in the city of Cali, when an army man threw a grenade that exploded ten centimeters away from Navarro, who was severely wounded. The facial nerve that controls the left part the jaw was destroyed and he lost his left leg below the knee. M-19 was told that Navarro was to be attacked in the hospital, so he was evacuated to Mexico where the leg was amputated. He received a prosthesis in Cuba.
Later, Carlos Pizarro carried out peace negotiations with the government of President Virgilio Barco. The peace signed 11 March 1990.
After signing the peace accords, M-19 nominated its leader, Carlos Pizarro Leongómez for the presidency of the republic, but he was assassinated on a commercial flight from Bogotá to Barranquilla on 26 April 1990. After the Pizarro's burial, the leaders of M-19 met and decided to continue with the peace process of peace. They nominated Navarro for the Presidency, who came in third in the balloting.
In the 2000s, M-19 entered a leftist coalition of parties called the Alternative Democratic Pole and Navarro became its Secretary General.
Antonio Navarro has been mayor of the city of Pasto, Congressman of Colombia and was one of the three collegiate presidents of the Constituent Assembly of Colombia writing the Colombian Constitution of 1991. He has served as Colombian Minister of Health.
In 2006, he ran for the presidency of Colombia, but lost to Carlos Gaviria in the party primaries. He then ran for the Senate and was elected.
Today he is the governor of Nariño of the PDA.