Something is changing in Colombia. In nationwide local elections last Sunday, voters sent a message to the two traditional parties - Conservatives and Liberals - that their monopoly on power is fading.
Looking elsewhere for political leadership, voters turned to candidates from a multitude of small, community-based parties.
Independent candidates won an astonishing 10 elections for mayor in Bogota and three of the four largest cities, and captured nine of the 30 governorship races.
Liberals recovered the city of Medellin, and won 19 governorships. The elections confirmed the electorate's disappointment with the performance of President Pastrana, whose approval rating has sunk to a historically-low 30 per cent. His ruling Conservative Party suffered its worst defeat in history, winning only two governorships and holding onto City Hall in just two provincial capitals.
The first indigenous leader made history by winning the governorship of Cauca province. So did a shoeshine man who won a seat on Bogota's city council.
In Tolima province, a strategic battleground in the civil war since the 1950s, a surgeon running for governor defeated the Liberal machine and another independent took City Hall in Tolima's provincial capital.
The campaign took place in a context of increasing lawlessness, war and a surge of kidnappings. In rural municipalities controlled militarily by either FARC or paramilitaries, both groups used intimidation to manipulate the vote in their favour, approving certain candidates, forcing others to withdraw, or killing those they disliked.
The Pastrana government has acknowledged such electoral tampering by rebels and paramilitaries, but claims no more than 6 per cent, or about 55 towns, were affected. Local authorities representing Colombia's mayors say intimidation by FARC seeking control over municipal government and, in particular, over municipal budgets, is the norm in some 600 of Colombia's 1,089 municipalites.
During the recent campaign 27 mayoral candidates were assassinated, about 200 kidnapped, and over 100 candidates withdrew after their campaigns were interfered with by gunmen.