“Gentlemen of the left, in me you will have a staunch enemy who will do everything possible to gut you and confront you.” The phrase of Abelardo de La Espriella, the far-right candidate to assume the presidency of Colombia, resonates to this day. That same man – criminal lawyer, Italian opera singer, wine and rum businessman, defender of paramilitaries and drug traffickers and US citizen since 2023 – arrives as a favorite in the second round of the presidential elections. He is the leader in a country in which the left has already been literally gutted, with the extermination of more than 6,000 militants of the Patriotic Union, among them the father of , his opponent in the presidential race.
Colombians go to the polls this Sunday with two emotions running through their bodies: fear and anger. The race between two antagonistic candidates has divided and polarized the country and, beyond the proposals, the two sides fear or hate each other.
He is the latest exponent of the Latin American far-right phenomenon that, inspired by Donald Trump, has installed presidents in El Salvador, Argentina, Chile and Ecuador. A candidate who and? promises to break with traditional politics and end the country’s violence problems with an iron fist and in record time. In front is Iván Cepeda, philosopher, senator, a man with a slow tone and collarless shirts who embodies the continuity of the project of , the first left-wing president in the modern history of Colombia.
This fertile ground for insults is what two candidates who have not shared a single debate have covered. That they have not shaken hands in the campaign. that turns the adversary into a criminal: “narcoterrorist” and “bandit,” he snaps at Cepeda. “Drug addict and miserable,” to the president. The senator, much slower, has only raised his tone in the final stretch: “Banal”, “dangerous”, “unscrupulous”, he said of his opponent.
They fear or despise each other, and they transmit that fear and contempt to their constituents. The historian Daniel Gutiérrez describes this electoral battle as a new version of an old sectarian drive: the same one that led Colombia to the civil wars of the 19th century, the Violence of the mid-20th century, the paramilitary massacres and the guerrilla takeovers. Not because the country will necessarily fall into civil war, but because the campaign has left an internal rift that may be difficult to overcome later.
De la Espriella arrives with an advantage on this election day. , but he avoids triumphalism. It is a vote-by-vote battle, in a country with 17 million voters who abstained or who lived in remote areas and could not go to vote in the first round. The Tigeras the right-wing candidate calls himself, surprised the first round on May 31. He was the candidate with the most votes with 43.7% and more than 10.3 million votes, almost three points above the 9.7 support for Cepeda, who until that same week was the great favorite.
The leftist candidate, with the Government machinery in his favor, was confident and even believed that he would win in the first round. The crash left shock to his team, who came to recognize that the results had caught them with “their pants down.” They didn’t have plan b. Fear of defeat spread.
. The sober and boring candidate of the first round went online, surrounded himself with young people and sought the closeness he lacked to compete with the . His team has seen him take off, although it may be late.
In any case, the campaign remains entrenched in fear, in mobilizing the anti vote—anti-Petro on one side, anti-fascist on the other, anti-system in both. Those from Cepeda warn that De la Espriella will not respect human rights, nor minorities, nor women and that his cuts will fall on the poorest. Those from El Tigre paint Cepeda—a defender of negotiation with armed groups—as a guerrilla and, above all, as Petro’s replacement, a seven-headed monster for the Colombian right.
“Although it sounds strong, it is real,” warns Luis Duque, campaign strategist for Paloma Valencia, the candidate of former President Álvaro Uribe who was left out of the race. “Abelardo, if he is president, it is thanks to the rage against Petro.” Juan Mesa, political advisor and general secretary of the Presidency with Juan Manuel Santos, agrees: “What has the most impact on this vote is called Gustavo Petro and his Government.” Half the country, he claims, votes against the current president. “For months, that vote was divided between Paloma Valencia and Abelardo, but he was gaining ground with something that she did not have: a style of outsider that connected with a popular electorate that did not feel represented by either the usual left or right. When it became clear that he was the one who could beat Cepeda, the useful vote did the rest.
During his four years in power, Petro has also fueled that fear and anger. Elected after strong social upheavals and with the historic demand that a former leftist guerrilla arrive at the Casa de Nariño, he has dedicated a good part of his effort to galvanizing his bases by pointing out the opposition. He has divided the country between those who defend “the politics of life,” like him, and those who represent “the politics of death.” “Coup plotters”, to the judges or magistrates who rule against them. “Thief”, to a union leader who refuted one of his reforms.
Colombia today represents something similar to what sociologist Manuel Castells described, who assures that fear and anger are the emotions that most drive political behavior. When they appear, he says, “the other ceases to exist in itself and becomes a threat that must be protected from and, if possible, destroyed to be safe.”
Duque agrees that appealing to fear and anger is in “the campaign strategy manual for dummies“.” Cepeda’s voters feel two things,” explains Duque. “The anger of those who have never had anything and the fear that De la Espriella will return to the 7,837 cases of false positives [asesinatos de civiles por militares, que hicieron pasar por guerrilleros]or become a Trump because he is going to reprimand everyone.”
De la Espriella himself is a candidate who aroused fear among his opponents. Valencia avoided attacking him until the last minute and began to do so when it was too late, and Cepeda’s campaign has been fearful of the missiles that the rival could launch at him. De la Espriella not only has an army in networks, but also has the favor of the magazine Weekone of the most read media in the country. “The key to Abelardo is that he has nothing to lose and, if you attack him, he can become a kamikaze,” explains a strategist. “A cat upside down that killed anyone in front of it.”
