Colombia has elected Abelardo de la Espriella, a Trump-endorsed millionaire and right-leaning populist, as its next president, defeating the left-wing candidate Ivan Cepeda and effectively ending the Petro era’s political project. De la Espriella ran on a platform of restoring diplomatic relations with Israel — severed by outgoing President Gustavo Petro — reversing drug-policy experiments, and reining in the social-spending expansion that characterised the Petro government. Cepeda conceded defeat on June 24, marking the clearest right-wing national victory in Colombia in over a decade. International observers noted high turnout in urban business districts and the rural south alike, suggesting the result was not merely a metropolitan backlash but a broad rejection of the Petrista political experiment after three years in power.
The received wisdom
The mainstream reading is straightforward and not without merit: Petro inherited a country with deep structural inequalities, and the right’s victory reflects the cynical power of money in Colombian politics more than any genuine popular mandate for reform reversal. Cepeda, the argument goes, represented a continuation of the serious policy work begun under Petro — addressing coca dependency, land reform, and indigenous rights — while De la Espriella is a wealthy establishment figure who will restore the pre-2022 status quo of elite accommodation, cartel-adjacent security bargains, and deference to Washington. On this reading, Colombia’s poor voted against their own interests, manipulated by a well-funded propaganda machine and endorsements from foreign right-wing politicians including Donald Trump. The concerns about democratic backsliding under a government that may deprioritise accountability are real and should be taken seriously.
A different read
And yet the received wisdom has a long habit of explaining away Latin American electoral results it dislikes as false consciousness rather than genuine preferences. Colombia’s three years under Petro were not a gentle social-democratic experiment rudely interrupted by plutocratic reaction. They were, by any honest accounting, a turbulent and frequently chaotic period: diplomatic ruptures, Colombia’s left-wing presidential candidate concedes defeat abroad, collapsing security agreements with armed groups, and an economic management that alarmed even center-left economists.
The deeper pattern here is one Latin America has repeated since the early 2000s. The Pink Tide governments of the Chávez-Lula era promised structural transformation and delivered, in many cases, commodity-boom prosperity that obscured rather than resolved underlying governance problems. When commodity prices fell and the patronage networks frayed, voters turned — often sharply — back to the right. Petro’s Colombia followed this rhythm: the left won in 2022 on the promise of something new; it is losing in 2025 because the something new proved more disruptive than transformative.
De la Espriella’s pledge to restore relations with Israel — noted prominently by Al Jazeera’s coverage of the election — is telling. Petro’s severing of ties with Israel was a performative gesture that cost Colombia real diplomatic and trade relationships for zero material benefit to Palestinians or to Colombians. De la Espriella’s reversal is not moral cowardice; it is a return to the basic Westphalian calculus that small states cannot afford to make foreign policy as ideological theatre.
There is a broader hemispheric lesson here. The Latin American right is not monolithic — De la Espriella is not Milei, not Bolsonaro, not even Duque — but the common thread is electoral accountability for left-wing governance that overreached. Argentina’s Milei came to power after Kirchnerism destroyed the peso. Brazil’s Lula won back power, but only after Bolsonaro exposed the limits of the far right’s management. Colombia’s swing is more moderate, more institutional, and perhaps more durable for it. A center-right government that restores investor confidence, rebuilds security partnerships, and does not torch its diplomatic relationships for ideological points is not a disaster for Colombia’s poor. It may, in fact, be the boring pragmatism the country needs after three years of high-concept politics.
The Trump endorsement will be wielded by critics as damning evidence of De la Espriella’s character. It is worth asking whether that framing gives Trump too much credit — treating his endorsement as ideologically decisive when it may simply reflect basic geopolitical alignment — and too little credit to the millions of Colombians who voted based on their lived experience of inflation, insecurity, and diplomatic isolation.
What to watch
Watch whether De la Espriella moves swiftly on the Israel restoration or uses it as a slow-burn diplomatic olive branch — the pace will signal how much of his campaign was substance versus signalling. Observe the FARC and ELN peace process: Petro’s “total peace” strategy will now be renegotiated, and whether armed groups return to violence or accept modified terms will define the security outlook for years. Track coca eradication policy — De la Espriella has signalled a return to aerial spraying, which Washington favours and which the rural communities most affected by drug violence have complex feelings about. Finally, watch whether the Latin American left draws any lessons from this loss, or simply attributes it to interference and moves on unchanged.
— J