He worked in politics as a philosopher interested in learning the workings of government and people which led him to run as Senator representing the radical liberal party of the M-19 Democratic Alliance, even though he himself belonged to the Colombian Conservative Party, he said he joined the M-19 in spite of being a conservative because he ""wanted to know how the people who had been in the mountain and had returned to civil life thought. Also because they had Bolivarian roots"", as he himself was a believer of Bolivarianism.