Colombia and Latin America: A new stage of the struggle

First published at Against The Current.

Sprawling over the southern hills of Bogotá, Ciudad Bolivar is a vast proletarian neighborhood of 700,000 people. On July 20, the first of Colombia’s two Independence days, it was the center of a national celebration of the country’s independence, replete with military ceremony — combined with the start of a mass campaign of resistance against the unprecedented attack against Colombian sovereignty represented by U.S. interference in the presidential election that appears to have placed an extreme rightwing candidate, Abelardo de la Espriella, in the office of the presidency of this country.

More than 100,000 people filled the parking lot of the Gran Plaza El Ensueño shopping mall and all the surrounding streets for blocks, to hear the farewell speech of outgoing President Gustavo Petro, the first ever leftwing president of this country and a central leader of the party known as the Pacto Historico (Historic Pact).

Simultaneously, demonstrations were held in every city of the country and in many small towns.

Colombia remains a key epicenter of the class struggle in Latin America and of the struggle between the United States and Latin America, but following this year’s elections, the conditions of that struggle have radically changed.

Legislative elections on March 8 made the Pacto Historico, the rising leftwing party here, the biggest party in Colombia in almost every respect. However, in the first round of the presidential election on May 31, the extreme rightwing dark horse, Abelardo de la Espriella, came in first with 10,361,499 votes to force a runoff with the Pacto Historico’s Senator Ivan Cepeda, who came in second with 9,688,361 votes.

The official candidate of the rightwing Centro Democratico, the party of former rightwing authoritarian President Alvaro Uribe, came in a distant third with only 1,639,685 votes.

Then in the June 21 runoff, the National Election Council’s official vote count gave Abelardo de la Espriella 12,959,542 votes, less than 1% more than the 12,708,712 votes of Senator Ivan Cepeda. (There were 13 candidates on the ballot.) The voter turnout of 63.6% was a record for this country.

De la Espriella is a lawyer who has specialized in defending corrupt politicians and businessmen, paramilitary leaders and drug dealers. For most of the last 20 years he has lived in Florida and Tuscany; he is a citizen of the United States and Italy as well as of Colombia.

His made-in-Miami candidacy was advised by MAGA senator from Ohio Bernardo Moreno (a dual U.S./Colombian citizen like De la Espriella) and endorsed by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and President Donald J. Trump.

When the election results were announced, Trump tweeted, “He Won, BIG!”

Election fraud

The final official results were announced without addressing the more than 57,000 challenges to irregularities such as vote buying and electronic fraud that had already been filed.

President Gustavo Petro, elected as the candidate of the Pacto Historico in 2022 and the country’s first ever leftwing president, announced that he did not recognize the election as valid.

Petro asserted that it had been marked by fraud at the highest level, and subsequently he and others have sued the National Electoral Council, the Registrar of Voters, and the individuals whom they declared victorious. Altogether more than 30 lawsuits have been filed.

The central lawsuit targets the actions of the Registrar and the private contractor Thoms Greg and Company, which control the election process from the printing of forms to the software used to compile, count, and record votes. The Registrar, and the majority of the National Electoral Council, are members of political parties opposed to the Pacto Historico.

A seemingly mundane change made after the 2022 election of Petro, enlarging the E-14 form used at polling stations to record votes from one to two pages, is at the heart of the lawsuit. The change puts the signatures of witnesses and poll workers on a separate page from the record of votes, which creates the possible of falsifying the vote records scanned into the system’s computers.

That change, combined with the massive last-minute addition of hundreds of thousands of voters to the rolls, were the most important elements of a massive fraud according to the suit. The suit also alleges that the new form has also made it impossible for citizens and independent observers to verify any election results.

The lawsuit asks the Council of State, one of the country’s three Supreme Courts, to nullify the election results, conduct a recount or new election, and order changes to prevent future election fraud.

An attack on national sovereignty

At the same time, Ivan Cepeda announced that the Pacto Historico did not recognize the legitimacy of the election of De la Espriella, on the grounds that De la Espriella is a naturalized citizen of the United States who swore an oath to renounce all loyalties to countries other than the United States in order to become a U.S. citizen, thereby making him ineligible to serve as President of Colombia and Commander in Chief of its military forces.

Cepeda announced the beginning of a campaign of peaceful civil disobedience against the election fraud, against the attack on Colombia’s national sovereignty, in defense of the democratic and human rights of Colombians and the people of Latin America, and in defense of the significant gains made by the working class and oppressed of Colombia during Petro’s government.

Despite the official declaration that Abelardo de la Espriella won the presidential election, Colombia is far from being under the control of the United States and Trump’s Viceroy, Secretary of State Rubio.

No return to guerrilla warfare

The Pacto Historico has emphatically rejected the legitimacy of De la Espriella’s election and has begun a campaign of resistance based on mass protests, peaceful civil disobedience, and legal challenges in court. Part of this campaign is a battle to expand the Pacto’s organization through a membership drive and by preparing to run the largest possible number of candidates in next year’s local elections.

Despite the heightened political and social tension within the country, and between Colombia and the United States, what is not in the cards is a return of the left to guerrilla warfare or the preparation of an insurrection.

Colombia’s long history of armed conflict has left the country with a powerful desire for peace, which was the basis of Petro’s policy called Paz Total or Total Peace.

The history of the long series of armed conflicts here began with civil wars between factions of the ruling class organized into the traditional Liberal and Conservative Parties, devolving into local wars for land between poor peasants and large landowners. The peasant forces became part of the organized left, and the landlords’ private armies became rightwing death squads and paramilitaries.

Beginning in the 1970s, the rise of illegal drug production created an intersection between the old conflict and a new conflict for control of drug production and drug shipment routes. Profits from cocaine and other drugs were used to finance an arms race among armed groups which no side could win.

In 1990, M-19 — one of the principal guerrilla groups — made a peace agreement and came in from the cold to participate in that year’s elections. Shortly after the signing, Carlos Pizarro, the presidential candidate of M-19 and father of current Pacto Historico Senator Maria José Pizarro, was assassinated. Nevertheless, that peace agreement led to the constituent assembly which produced the current Colombian Constitution.

It did not lead to peace, however, as the government and the paramilitaries systematically assassinated over 6000 leftwing, social and union leaders, especially members and supporters of the Unión Patriótica, a political party that included supporters of the Communist Party as well as the FARC, the country’s largest guerrilla group.

One of those assassinated was a UP leader Manuel Cepeda, the father of the current Pacto Historico leader Ivan Cepeda. The terror campaign drove the FARC back into the armed struggle and into reliance on the profits of the illegal drug trade to arm itself.

Between 1999 and 2002, the government of President Andres Pastrana negotiated with the FARC while he worked with the United States to reorganize, retrain and rearm the Colombian military for an offensive against the FARC. The joint effort became famous as Bill Clinton’s Plan Colombia.

The military offensive was carried out under the leadership of the next President, Alvaro Uribe, and his Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos. Santos succeeded Uribe as president, and the offensive finally culminated, after the deaths of many FARC leaders and fighters, with a peace agreement in 2016.

Santos won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts and the FARC received various guarantees including seats in the Congress. As a result of the agreement, Colombia established its current system of transitional justice.

Since then, low-level armed conflict has continued with the ELN, with former FARC groups which did not support the peace agreement, and with armed drug gangs descended from the rightwing paramilitary groups, most notably the Clan del Golfo some of whose leaders have been clients of Aberlardo de la Espriella’s law firm.

President Petro’s Paz Total offered peace negotiations with all these groups regardless of whether they have any kind of political orientation or are simply criminal gangs. Despite some agreements which led to demobilizations, and some continuing negotiations, most of these groups continue in the illegal drug business — which is their reason to exist.

Nevertheless, for most Colombians, the armed struggle is just as far away as it is in the United States or western Europe, and that is a reality that they fervently want to continue.

One good measure of just how far Colombia is from its past of armed conflict is tourism, which has boomed during the Petro years. Domestic vacation trips have skyrocketed. In 2025, they grew 8% to reach a record of 50.8 million vacation trips by Colombians within the country.

Foreign tourist visits have grown from 0.6 million in 2007 to 6.49 million in 2025. This economic sector, which was almost completely moribund for decades, now accounts for almost 2.8% of Colombia’s GDP.

De la Espriella and Trump’s threats

All around the world, rightwing media and political parties continuously spotlight violent crime to gain support for more and more funds for police and military forces, which can then be used to defend private property and the political systems of capitalism.

In Colombia, stoking fears of violent crime in the cities and armed conflict in the countryside is the bread and butter of the mainstream media, despite statistics showing that both have declined in the last four years. What Colombian media outlets like RCN and Caracol produce is then recycled by the international media and press from CNN and The New York Times to Fox and Al Jazeera.

Petro’s Paz Total has successfully isolated the armed groups, dramatically reduced their remaining popular support, and diminished the scope of the armed conflict to a few areas of coca production and drug transportation routes well outside of almost all of the country’s population centers.

Despite these facts the right wing in Colombia, the United States and elsewhere have loudly and falsely portrayed Paz Total as a failure. De la Espriella has just as loudly announced that he plans a military offensive as soon as he is in office.

De la Espriella’s real target is not in the countryside, but rather the vibrant and growing political left in Colombia’s cities: the Pacto Historico and its ally the Alianza Verde (Green Alliance.) They represent the most important obstacle to the plans of U.S. and Colombian big business.

Petro’s government banned fracking and halted exploration and drilling for oil and natural gas, while many strip mining and forestry projects in sensitive environments have been successfully blocked by local activists and indigenous communities.

One of De la Espriella’s first priorities is to follow Donald Trump’s lead, immediately end the ban on fracking, and “drill baby, drill.” At the same time, De la Espriella has vowed to roll back and reverse the gains made by the mass movements during the Petro years.

These included historic increases in the minimum salary, expansion of the pension system to cover most of the population, major improvements in public education, and a labor reform that has reduced the work week and restored rights that had been taken away from workers during the Uribe administration.

The Pacto Historico and the Alianza Verde, the electoral expressions of the mass movements which won those gains, are the main targets of U.S. intervention into Colombia and of De la Espriella’s proposed militarization of Colombian society.

De la Espriella has promised to “gut” the left and has proposed to form urban militias reminiscent of the Convivir movement of the 1990s that served as the legal front of the paramilitary groups. He wants to take an Elon Musk-style ax and a Javier Millie-style chain saw to radically reduce the size of the Colombian state, while simultaneously increasing the size of the police and military.

He proposes to remove all restrictions that currently prevent the military from attacking civilian populations. He has promised a witch hunt against the left, the extradition of President Petro and others to the United States, and has proposed the construction of 10 mega-prisons modeled after Bukele’s infamous CECOT in El Salvador.

The witch hunt began in the United States rather than in Colombia when Secretary of State Marco Rubio personally ordered ICE to arrest a Colombian citizen named Beto Coral.

A former candidate of the Pacto Historico, Coral had been living legally in the United States and participating in the Colombian election as a poll watcher at Colombian consulates there. He has since been deported to Colombia. The arrest was reportedly made at the request of De la Espriella.

As soon as the election results were in, and while the persecution of Beto Coral was underway, the presumptive Vice President elect led a group of Abelardo de la Espriella’s closest collaborators to the United States. There they met with Rubio, Senator Bernardo Moreno, and a subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Despite photographs, handshakes and praise from Rubio, Moreno and others, they flew home almost empty-handed. Rather than hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, all that Rubio and his coterie promised them was that the United States would help establish quasi-military police logistics centers in isolated rural areas to help with the war against drug dealers.

Although the Colombian right wingers’ dreams of a rebirth of Plan Colombia were dashed, their visit has provided the United States with a pretext for any future military intervention it may decide to undertake in the future.

A frightened new president

Abelardo de la Espriella’s campaign nickname was the tiger, but despite his nickname and war-like rhetoric, he has consistently exhibited extreme fearfulness of being in Colombia, and particularly of being in public in Colombia.

During the campaign, he also spoke behind a curtain of bullet-proof glass. As soon as the election campaign ended, he disappeared from public view, and his place in the public eye was taken over by his presumptive Vice-President elect, Jose Manuel Restrepo. Now, “the tiger” refuses to have his inauguration in the Colombian Congress where such events are traditionally held but instead wants to be inaugurated within the safety of a military base.

The transitional handoff of government between the outgoing administration and the incoming one is governed by law, but De la Espriella has not only boycotted the proceedings, he has ordered his minions to boycott them as well.

This led to the surreal spectacle of transition events in every ministry of the government, televised live on national TV, which feature presentations by the outgoing ministers and vice ministers, chairs reserved for other outgoing appointees full — and a row of empty seats at the table reserved for representative of the incoming De la Espriella government.

To mask the public impression of the effects, De la Espriella has organized a series of meetings with Governors of Departments and Mayors outside Bogotá under the name of a regional transition. Part of his attack on the central government involves plans to move government ministries and agencies out of Bogotá and to relocate them in cities such as Medellin and Barranquilla, where the local governments are run by his political allies.

Part of De la Espriella’s fear is undoubtedly related to his record of routinely betraying his friends and allies. As a lawyer representing Colombian drug dealers, he gained a reputation for betraying them to the DEA.

Leading up to the election campaign, he infuriated his ally former President Alvaro Uribe by opening the door to Ivan Cepeda gaining evidence that helped prosecute Uribe and resulted in the conviction of Uribe’s brother who is now facing a very long prison term.

His political position is precarious. His own political party has only four seats in the Senate, and none in the chamber of deputies. His supporters have put together a rag-tag coalition of rightwing parties divided by personal hatreds and jealousies, but united by fear of the rising tide of the Pacto Historico.

The largest of the rightwing parties, Uribe’s Centro-Democratico, has already defected on the first important vote in the new Senate, election of its presiding officer.

De la Espriella’s legislative coalition nominated a member of the Partido de la U who is well known for two things: extreme corruption and enmity towards Alvaro Uribe. The Centro Democratico balked, nominating one of its own who was surprisingly elected.

The entire bloc of the Pacto Historico along with 13 others, voted for Uribe’s candidate. Although many people on the left were outraged, the result is likely to be that the Senate is going to be even more chaotic and unmanageable than it already appeared to be.

Los que Nunca y Los que Siempre (Those who have never, and those who have always)

In keeping with his reputation for betraying his friends and allies, De la Espriella has already betrayed the people who voted for him. He campaigned as a political outsider, using as his templates the campaigns of Donald Trump in the USA, Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, Javier Milei in Argentina, and Rodolfo Hernandez here in Colombia (the candidate of the Colombian right who lost the 2022 presidential election).

His campaign was built on lies. Knowing that the conservative petty bourgeoisie of the country had turned their backs on the traditional rightwing leadership, he promised to make no deals with the traditional political parties and form a government of “los que nunca” (‘Those who never’ which means something like “the have nots” in English.)

The slogan was a promise to rid the country of the corrupt rightwing politicians while remaining true to conservative values.

His choice of a vice president should have told his voters that this was a lie. The new Vice President, Jose Manuel Restrepo, is a Colombian blue blood who is the descendant of three presidents and was Minister of Finance in the scandal-ridden government of Ivan Duque.

Restrepo appears to be the de facto leader of the new government. Since the election, de la Espriella has disappeared from public view while Restrepo is constantly in the news and is leading the transition team of the new government.

If the choice of Restrepo did not alert de la Espriella’s voter base to his bait and switch game, his cabinet appointments have.

The Cabinet of Los que Siempre (Those who have always)

*These cabinet members were longstanding leaders of traditional parties but switched party affiliations to join one of the two tiny extremist parties controlled by De la Espriella, the National Salvation Movement and Defenders of the Homeland.

Challenges and opportunities for the left

The struggle against the new government began almost as soon as the election results were announced and will continue on August 7, the day that Abelardo de la Espriella is scheduled to take office and the second of Colombia’s two independence days.

It will be a day of protests announced by the Pacto Historico, starting with civil disobedience in the city of Barranquilla led by Senator Ivan Cepeda.

De la Espriella has threatened a military offensive that is likely to be the way he brings U.S. military into Colombia. He also says he will eliminate corruption from the government by firing and prosecuting every corrupt government official during the same period of time. This will be the cover for his attack on government social services and against unionized government employees.

The threats are likely to be difficult to carry out because the new government will start in a very weak position.

• It has no clear legislative majority, and its base of rightwing parties is fragmented and divided. There are currently 28 parties represented in either the Senate or Chamber or both. The largest is the Pacto Historico which with its allies, the Green Alliance and representatives of smaller parties, is likely to be able to block Se la Espriella’s legislative initiatives as shown by the vote on the new President of the Senate.

• De la Espriella lacks full control of any of the institutions of the state including the military and judiciary.

• There is still a potential that the Constitutional Court will nullify his election.

• There is a growing sense of betrayal by De la Espriella among those who voted for him.

• De la Espriella is unlikely to receive any significant help from his mentors and handlers in the United States.

The first 100 days will be the first test of the left under the new government. Defending itself against repression, legal and illegal, up to and including the possible arrest and deportation of President Petro, will be the first, but not the only priority. The defensive struggle will require a combination of action by the Pacto and its allies in the Senate and the Chamber of Representative with the ongoing fight in the judicial system, but the most important ingredients will be the mobilization on the streets in demonstrations and strike action.

The Pacto Historico and the rest of the left are in a strong position to fight back if they can mobilize those who voted for the Pacto. In the legislative elections held on March 21, the candidates of the Pacto Historico received 4,471,238 votes (21.4%) out of the total of 20,900,614 total cast.

In the first round of presidential voting, the Pacto’s candidate Ivan Cepeda received 9,688,361 votes (31.2%) out of a total of 23,978,304, and in the second round, Cepeda, received 12,708,312 out of a total of 26,344,960 votes cast.

The social base of the Pacto Historico is the urban working class, especially the organized labor movement. While the combined membership of the three union federations, the CUT, CGT and CTC, amounts to only about 850,000 workers out of a working-age population of about 35,000,000, the unions have a huge following beyond their membership because the unions negotiate with the government every year to determine the next year’s annual minimum salary.

Both within and beyond the working class, the Pacto has also grown through the rise of the self-conscious mass movements of Afro-Colombianos, the Indigenous Minga, and the feminist, LGBTQ+ and environmentalist movements.

A good approximation of the ascendant growth curve of the left in Colombia is found in its presidential election results. Over the course of the last seven presidential elections from 2002 to 2026, the left’s candidates progressively increased their vote totals from 680,000 votes (6.6%) to 12,708,712 votes (48.70%).

Beyond surviving threatened repression and defending the gains made during the Petro years, the Pacto faces the challenge of continuing to grow. Its greatest weaknesses lie in its failure to build a membership party, and its failure to develop broad new layers of leaders.

The Pacto is now addressing both of these issues with a membership drive and a drive to recruit candidates to run for local offices from city council seats to the offices of mayors and governors.

To get some idea of the size of this challenge, you only have to look at the fact that currently 142 members of the Pacto serve as city council members out of a total of 12,072 city council members in the country. Their allies, the Greens, have only 10 city council members.

Meanwhile the parties of the right all have hundreds or thousands of council members: the Centro Democratic has 1876; Cambio Radical has 1243; the Partido de la U has 1246; the Liberals have 1834¸the Conservatives have 1710.

Colombia’s left has enormous experience fighting under adverse conditions of violent repression, and it has not only survived but grown to become the most significant political force in this country. Now, the next year will be a serious test of its resilience.