Colombians went to the polls on Sunday in a first-round presidential election, with thirteen candidates competing to replace outgoing President Gustavo Petro, who is constitutionally barred from seeking a second term. According to NPR, the contest centres on how to address a surge in guerrilla violence, kidnappings, and extortion that has worsened under Petro’s four years in office. The leading candidates are Iván Cepeda, a leftist senator and Petro protégé from the Pacto Histórico coalition, and Abelardo De La Espriella, a flamboyant criminal-defence lawyer with no prior elected office who has modelled himself on El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele. A third candidate, senator Paloma Valencia, ran as a mainstream conservative dark-horse. If no candidate clears fifty percent — almost certain given the fragmented field — a runoff is scheduled for June 21.
The received wisdom
The mainstream reading of this election is a familiar Latin American morality play: a fragile democracy choosing between the further extension of leftist social reform and a dangerous lurch toward authoritarian populism. Cepeda represents continuity with Petro’s vision of expanded indigenous and Afro-Colombian representation, higher wages, and a “Total Peace” dialogue with armed groups. De La Espriella, critics argue, embodies the worst of the regional right: machismo, contempt for the press, and the Bukele model of mass incarceration that has imprisoned more than two percent of El Salvador’s adult population. The received wisdom holds that Colombia’s democratic institutions are strong enough to resist a demagogue, but only if voters resist the seductions of strongman politics in a moment of fear. International observers and human rights organisations have urged Colombians to prioritise inclusive governance and the 2016 peace process, which remains the only durable framework for ending the hemisphere’s longest-running insurgency.
A different read
That framing is not dishonest, but it omits an uncomfortable fact: the left’s peace strategy has failed on its own terms, and the consequences have fallen hardest on rural Colombians with the fewest resources to absorb them.
Under Petro’s “Total Peace” programme, armed criminal groups expanded from roughly 15,000 to approximately 27,000 fighters. Ceasefires negotiated with FARC splinter factions and the ELN were repeatedly exploited to consolidate territorial control, extort local populations, and recruit. This is not a new pathology in Colombian peace talks — the original FARC negotiations under Santos also produced spoiler violence from dissident factions — but the scale under Petro has been striking. Massacres, bombings, and kidnappings proliferated even in areas that had seen relative calm during Uribe-era military pressure.
The historical parallel worth considering is not, as the metropolitan commentariat implies, the rise of fascism, but rather the exhaustion cycle that Colombian voters have run before. In 2002, after years of FARC expansion under Pastrana’s failed peace diplomacy, Álvaro Uribe swept to power on a platform of military confrontation. His seguridad democrática policy reduced violence significantly by conventional metrics — FARC was pushed back, kidnappings fell, the economy grew — though it also produced documented abuses, including the so-called falsos positivos scandal in which soldiers killed civilians and dressed them as guerrillas. The subsequent Santos pivot toward dialogue was a legitimate correction, but Petro then overcorrected again, treating every armed actor as a negotiating partner rather than acknowledging that some groups have no interest in peace and every interest in the institutional vacuum.
De La Espriella is a genuinely alarming candidate — his past clients, his affect, and his taste for theatrical confrontation warrant serious concern. Political analyst Sandra Borda told NPR that his “machismo” and “disdain for journalists” would eventually cost him. But Cepeda’s platform offers no coherent security strategy beyond a continuation of talks that have, by the evidence of the past four years, emboldened rather than pacified the groups at the table.
The rightward shift across Latin America — already visible in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, and now likely Brazil — is not simply populist contagion or Facebook misinformation. It is a rational, if imperfect, response by electorates that have watched progressive governments prioritise ideological signalling over basic public order. Colombians who support De La Espriella are not idiots or fascists. Many of them live in the zones where Petro’s Total Peace has meant more checkpoints run by the FARC, not fewer. Dismissing them as susceptible to demagogic manipulation is precisely the kind of condescension that has made the left’s coalition structurally fragile across the region.
None of this is an endorsement of De La Espriella, whose record as a lawyer — defending a pyramid-scheme founder who defrauded thousands and a Maduro associate convicted of money laundering — does not inspire confidence. A Paloma Valencia second place and runoff, or a Cepeda win that actually confronted criminal actors rather than accommodating them, would be more reassuring outcomes. But the election’s configuration reflects genuine grievances about state failure, not merely the success of authoritarian marketing.
What to watch
- Runoff dynamics on June 21: Whether Valencia or Cepeda finishes second to face De La Espriella will determine the tone of the final campaign. A Valencia runoff positions the contest as competent conservatism versus populism; a Cepeda runoff replays the left-right culture war.
- Armed group behaviour during the electoral period: If guerrilla factions attempt to suppress voting in rural zones — a tactic used in previous cycles — it will clarify how much leverage the Total Peace framework has actually purchased.
- Washington’s posture: The Trump administration has already designated Brazil’s PCC and Red Command as foreign terrorist organisations. A De La Espriella win, if it comes, will test whether Washington treats a Bukele-style Colombia as a security ally or a hemispheric complication.
- Economic signal: Petro’s commodity-heavy budget has left Colombia exposed; any victor will face a fiscal squeeze that limits the promised programme, whether social or punitive.
— J