Colombia Election Defined by Surging Armed Violence
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- Colombia's illegal armed groups — FARC dissident factions, the National Liberation Army (ELN), and the Clan del Golfo — have roughly doubled their membership in five years, with a brutal ELN-FARC dissident offensive near the Venezuela border last year displacing tens of thousands.
- Forced displacement in Colombia rose 300% between 2024 and 2025, according to Bogotá government peace advisor Isabelita Mercado Pineda, marking the worst displacement in two decades.
- Left-wing senator Iván Cepeda, architect of President Petro's "total peace" negotiation strategy and a key player in the 2016 FARC peace deal, leads among younger voters with a platform combining state coercion against armed groups with social programs.
- Conservative Abelardo de la Espriella — nicknamed "El Tigre," a US citizen, and endorsed by Donald Trump — is campaigning on 10 mega-prisons, a military crackdown, and an end to negotiations with armed groups, pledging to "take down" any criminal who doesn't surrender.
- The campaign has been marred by the assassination of a presidential candidate alongside ongoing homicides, kidnappings, and bombings, with armed groups expanding control of rural areas tied to drug trafficking and illegal mining.
- Donald Trump endorsed de la Espriella, saying the election would determine Colombia's relationship with the US, calling Cepeda a "radical left Marxist" — an endorsement the left has criticized as foreign interference.
Why it matters: The election will determine whether Colombia continues Petro's negotiation-based "total peace" strategy, which critics say allowed armed groups to expand, or pivots to de la Espriella's hardline military crackdown backed by Trump. The outcome directly affects record-high displacement victims, the future of the 2016 FARC peace deal, and the US-Colombia security relationship Trump has explicitly tied to the result.
