The former president of the United States Jimmy Carterelected in 1976 and winner of the Nobel Peace Prizedied this Sunday at the age of 100.
Carter, who was at home in palliative careand voted in the last election, had received treatment for an aggressive form of melanoma skin cancerwith tumors that had spread to the liver and brain.
His death was confirmed by his son without giving more details, according to the Washington Post.
From Baptist preacher to apostle for international peace
The former president entered the history of the United States with his improbable rise from cult from peanut magnate to president of the countrybut his greatest legacy was redefining life after the White House, with tenacious work that left an unprecedented mark on American and world politics.
Carter died after fighting a years-long battle against same disease that defeated his father and three brothers: a melanoma that had spread to the liver and brain.
Considered one of the most progressive leaders the US has ever had.Carter saw his term reduced to four years (1977-1981) due to the American hostage crisis in Iran, an episode that deeply hurt the country’s morale and caused the most conservatives to forever label him as a weak leader.
Time put things in their place and his presidency began to be considered positively, to the point that He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. “My life after the White House has been the most rewarding for me,” Carter admitted at a press conference in August 2015.
Ambitious, competitive and with a strong sense of morality, Carter marked a new standard for life after the presidencyby using their political capital to continue influencing the public life of the country and generating changes in the world.
His inseparable wife Rosalynnto whom he was married for 69 years, remembers that Carter woke her up one night in 1982 and told her: “We have to invent a place like Camp David,” the presidential residence where he negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt in 1978.
A few months later the Carter Center, which fights conflict, poverty, disease and hunger in the world. “What Rosalynn and I wanted to do was fill gaps, solve problems that others didn’t want to or couldn’t deal with,” Carter explained in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine in 2011.
According to one of his advisors in the White House, Stuart EizenstatCarter’s most characteristic trait was his drive to solve intractable challenges without thinking about their duration or political cost.
It was that attribute by which he sealed the most important achievement of his presidency after negotiate for twelve days with Israel and Egypt, and the one that made him bet from the Carter Center for long-term reasons.
Born in 1924 in a town of barely 600 inhabitants called plainsCarter grew up on a peanut and cotton farm in the poorest part of the southern state of Georgia; and his father, Earl, “was a segregationist, like all the other men in the county,” as the former president acknowledged in an interview in July (2015).
The one who most influenced his character was his mother. Lilliana nurse who disdained the racial prejudices of her environment.
In 1946 he graduated from Annapolis Naval Academy (Maryland)married Rosalynn and joined the Marinebut in 1953 he returned to Plains to take over the family farm.
He preached in a Baptist church
There he reinforced his links with the Baptist churchwhere he continued to give sermons until the end of his life and began to become interested in politics, until in 1962 he won a seat in the state Senate.
After a failed first attempt, Carter was chosen as governor of Georgia in 1970after a campaign in which he shook hands with 600,000 people and built the image of a humble and approachable politician who would end up opening the doors of the White House for him.
Carter was little known nationally, but his southern origin, his honest appearance and his luminous smile captivated a disillusioned country with traditional politics and eager to regain self-esteem after the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War.
An international legacy with fruits
His tenure in the White House yielded main fruits in foreign policy: In addition to negotiating the Egyptian-Israeli peace, Carter resumed relations with China in 1979 and signed the treaties that recognized Panama’s sovereignty over the canal.
At the national level, Carter created the Departments of Education and Energy, fought inflation and reduced dependence on foreign oil, but clashed with the 1979 oil crisis and its images of long lines at gas stations.
His presidency was marked by the 444 days of captivity in Iran for 52 American hostagesreleased the same day that Carter handed over power to Republican Ronald Reagan.
But Carter He continued in diplomacy after his defeatspeaking even with enemies of his country such as North Korea or Cuba, and reached an unprecedented stature abroad for a former president.
His efforts often made his successors in the White House uncomfortable and generated a Tense relationship with his Democratic Partyespecially since 2006, when he published a book about Palestine in which he denounced the situation in Gaza and what he considered Israel’s excessive influence in his country’s Congress.
His image improved in the US thanks to the Carter Center achievements in election observation and human rightseven before the former president received the Nobel Peace Prize.
Running was one of Carter’s great hobbies, who also became interested in swimming and painting, and his most stable source of income was in the thirty books he wrote.
His favorite president was Harry Truman (1945-1953) who, like him, was very unpopular when he left the White House and who today often appears on lists of the best leaders in the United States.
Many of his admirers rely on a similar historical claim for Carter, but at the end of his life, he didn’t seem to think about much more than his wife, his 22 grandchildren and great-grandchildren and the Bible that he read every night in the town where he was born.
