User:Zombieboii2021/Mario Upegui Hurtado

Mario Upegui Hurtado (Montenegro, Quindío, July 19, 1938-Granada, Meta, April 4, 2012) was a Colombian political leader, one of the founders and leaders of the National Provivienda Central and councilor of Bogotá between 1974 and 2003.

Biography
Son of Roberto Upegui and Angela Hurtado, humble and hardworking peasants, he was born on July 19, 1938 in Montenegro (Quindío). When he began to stand out as a social activist, Camilo Torres Restrepo taught him to read.

Social leader
In 1961 Upegui and other social leaders founded the National Head office Providential (Provenance) to organise to the people without a house, that at present groups 200 neighbourhoods.

On April 8, 1966, based on the events that occurred in the Policarpa Salavarrieta neighborhood of Bogotá, he emerged as a leader in demanding the fight for the right to housing and a decent life. One of the things that worried him the most was the fact of inequitable urban land ownership. For him, a house was the beginning of a dignified life and the gateway to a society of rights, it was part of that vital minimum that a family requires to be able to establish its home and be part of a constructive society. This was what motivated him to support multiple invasions throughout the country through the National Central –Provivienda-, which formed neighborhoods such as Juan XXIII, Bravo Páez, Nuevo Chile, Quindío, Salvador Allende or El Porvenir..

These struggles led him to be imprisoned on more than three occasions, in some of these he was tortured..

Political career
He joined the Colombian Communist Party in 1962, where he held positions in the leadership of Bogotá and the Central Committee. He joined the ranks of the Patriotic Union since 1984, the year of its founding, where he was repeatedly part of its national leadership until 1999, when the last Congress was held and he was elected national president of the UP, a position he held until last day of his life.

In 1974, he was elected for the first time to a seat in the Bogotá Council, an institution to which he belonged until 2003. This seat as Councilor allowed him to lead and support multiple projects, but he also debated the issues that he considered affected to the community, he defended unions such as teachers, street vendors, students, public workers, unions, displaced people and intervened on issues such as health, education, public services, the right to work and of course to housing.

During the administration of Lucho Garzón, he was named Local Mayor of the Town of Sumapaz, town 20 of Bogotá, which is home to one of the largest moors in the world, a water and ecological reserve for the capital, the nation and humanity.

Due to health conditions that afflicted him, his public activity decreased, concentrating on his position as president of the Patriotic Union. In the company of the NGO Reiniciar, he continued to promote the lawsuit for the genocide against the UP, filed against the Colombian State before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights of the OAS, to achieve comprehensive reparation for all victims and the recovery of legal status. from that match.

At the end of 2008, the Cooperative University of Colombia awarded him an "Honoris Causa of the Faculty of Sociology" recognition as a merit to his work and social struggle for the good of the needy classes and for having contributed great efforts to the solution of social problems. These classes faced.

Death
He died in Granada (Meta) on April 4, 2012.