Violence Looms Over Colombia’s Election

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief. The highlights this week: Colombians ready for presidential elections, the United States indicts Cuba’s former president, and Bolivia is rocked by disruptive antigovernment protests. Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief. The highlights this week: Colombians ready for presidential elections, the United States indicts Cuba’s former president, and Bolivia is rocked by disruptive antigovernment protests. As Colombians prepare to vote in first-round presidential elections on May 31, political debate has focused largely on public insecurity. Last week, assailants on motorcycles gunned down two campaign workers for right-wing candidate Abelardo De La Espriella, a gruesome echo of the killing of presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe Turbay last year. Journalist Mateo Pérez Rueda was also killed this month after being detained by a guerilla group. And the International Committee of the Red Cross announced that in 2025 Colombia experienced its worst humanitarian situation in a decade. Outgoing left-wing President Gustavo Petro pledged to reduce violence in Colombia. One of his main campaign promises was to negotiate with armed groups, a strategy he dubbed “total peace.” Petro’s chosen successor, presidential candidate Iván Cepeda, has been reluctant to criticize that approach, even though it has repeatedly broken down. Polls overwhelmingly show Cepeda in first place, followed by De La Espriella and right-wing senator Paloma Valencia, suggesting one of the challengers might proceed to a June 21 runoff alongside Cepeda. Candidates must earn at least 50 percent of the vote to avoid the runoff. De La Espriella and Valencia argue that Cepeda is weak on crime. They have even suggested that he would allow crime groups to kill them, which he denies. Cepeda “is the heir of the government that helped the [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC,] and the guerillas,” De La Espriella told Semana magazine last month. Both right-wing contenders have called for Colombia’s security forces to enter into more frontal combat with armed groups. They say the country should seek assistance from the United States in this effort, calling for a new version of the Plan Colombia bilateral security program of the 2000s and early 2010s. On foreign policy, both candidates have also signaled that they would walk back Petro’s steps toward multi-alignment and reprioritize relations with the United States. They would similarly abandon Petro’s moves to speed Colombia’s transition away from fossil fuel production, which has served as a pillar of the president’s international environmental policy. Valencia, the protégé of former President Álvaro Uribe, has tacked closer to the political center than De La Espriella, choosing a more centrist running mate and pledging to staff her government with some center-left figures. De La Espriella has advocated an austere economic program, saying he will cut government spending by 40 percent. A political outsider, De La Espriella has drawn parallels to Argentine President Javier Milei. His vow to build new large-scale prisons, meanwhile, has invited some comparisons to Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. Cepeda has offered few specifics about his platform other than saying he would build on Petro’s project of social inclusion. As Colombia’s first left-wing president, Petro staffed his government with people from marginalized backgrounds and worked to implement progressive tax and pension reforms, although some were reversed or suspended by the courts. In January, Petro hiked Colombia’s minimum wage by more than 23 percent via presidential decree. Such moves explain many Colombians’ enduring support for Petro, according to local analysts, despite the major shortfalls of his security policies. It is unclear which factor—violence, social reforms, or something else—will win out at the ballot box. A smattering of polls in recent weeks yielded contradictory predictions about who might win in a second-round matchup against Cepeda. Early this month, polls also suggested that around 28 percent of Colombian voters were still undecided, leaving space for last-minute surprises. Friday, May 22: Mexico City hosts a European Union-Mexico summit. Monday, May 25, to Friday, May 29: The United States and Mexico hold a round of negotiations as part of a review of their trilateral trade deal with Canada. Sunday, May 31: Colombians vote in first-round presidential elections. Monday, June 1: Countries sending teams to the World Cup hit a deadline for announcing their full squads. U.S. indicts Raúl Castro. On Wednesday, the U.S. Justice Department announced criminal charges against former Cuban President Raúl Castro. A U.S. aircraft carrier arrived in the Caribbean. And U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio released a Spanish-language video message to Cubans criticizing their government and proposing a “new relationship” with the United States. Tak

Violence Looms Over Colombia’s Election

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Violence Looms Over Colombia’s Election

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