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Colombia’s First 'Republican' President Is Going Full MAGA
Abelardo de la Espriella’s young administration has enthusiastically embraced Washington’s interventionist security agenda while, like Trump in the US, advancing its own confrontational eradication campaign against progressive institutions and social movements.
Oct 29, 2026
The empty spaces inside Colombia’s National Museum in Bogotá offer a dramatic, if not painful introduction to its new, right-wing government. Several dozen objects related to the peace process with the M-19 rebel group; the historic 1991 Constitution; and mementos of social movements, LGBTQ rights, and other artifacts of the country’s complex history have disappeared from public view. Those objects included a Carlos Pizarro campaign poster, an armband from the political movement that emerged from the M-19’s demobilization, and the student ballot associated with the constituent process that produced the 1991 Constitution.
These histories record how Colombians previously excluded from national power fought to enter public life in a country governed for generations by a white, economically powerful, and politically exclusionary elite. Critics say removing them from the public view diminishes the evidence of that decades-long struggle. Museum anthropologist Andrés Góngora described it in El País as a “mutilated museum.”
The unexpected decommissioning of these items sparked a spontaneous citizen’s protest outside the museum in mid-October, where hundreds of angry people gathered with signs that read, “Poetry is necessary, military domination is not!” and “We’re artists, not terrorists.”
In both cases, political leaders claim authority to determine which historical interpretations belong in public institutions, a unilateral, authoritarian approach to erasing history.
Not surprisingly, the protesters were quickly confronted by highly armed riot police using heavy-handed tactics to block off the entrance to the museum, a show of force designed to demonstrate who was now in control. Barely three months into Abelardo de la Espriella’s presidency, the fight over who belongs in the country’s history has become a fight over who has the right to openly challenge its current trajectory.
The parallel with Donald Trump’s campaign against the Smithsonian and other cultural institutions is unmistakable. Trump’s March 2025 executive order seeks “to remove improper ideology” from the institution. In both cases, political leaders claim authority to determine which historical interpretations belong in public institutions, a unilateral, authoritarian approach to erasing history.
This is just one of a list of concrete policy decisions made by De la Espriella that indicate that Colombia’s first-ever Republican president is going full-on MAGA as he settles into his new executive office.
Seriously.
Deep Ties to Conservative Leaders in US
De la Espriella’s connections to the US Republican Party are concrete and extensive. A naturalized US citizen since 2023, he has donated to Republican Rep. María Elvira Salazar of Florida and publicly endorsed her reelection. He’s met with Colombian American Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) on several occasions, including when Moreno visited Colombia during the runoff election explicitly to endorse his candidacy, what some critics saw as direct US meddling in the electoral process.
The new president’s social media posts during the campaign included images of him and his family proudly waving the “Stars and Stripes” while sporting MAGA caps. It’s no secret that Colombia’s president has become an active and vocal participant in the partisan politics of his adopted country, while moving his actual homeland ever closer to Trump.
De la Espriella’s young administration has enthusiastically embraced Washington’s interventionist security agenda while, like Trump in the US, advancing its own confrontational eradication campaign against progressive institutions and social movements. His unwavering genuflection to Donald Trump goes far beyond the familiar, decades-long accommodations that Colombian dependence on its more powerful ally has required of its elected leaders. He appears intent on making the MAGA approach to government his own, but with a distinct criollo flavor.
Like Trump, his highly mediated performances invite viewers to mistake that victory for a license to dominate everything.
The danger is that in the Colombian context of generational political violence, the consequences could be pretty severe for those sectors at the receiving end.
De la Espriella’s over-the-top, high-volume theatrical delivery makes the bilateral relationship with the US easier to sell to his enthusiastic followers. The roaring “Tiger” persona he has adopted, the inflated rhetorical threats and melodramatic public scoldings directed at his detractors, resembles the stereotyped performance of a B-list actor playing out strongman omnipotence in a low-budget narco-telenovela. As a former defense attorney of accused drug traffickers and paramilitaries, he’s had ample time to rehearse the part, which today he is playing out on a much grander stage.
He’s done photo ops with corpses in body bags and captured prisoners in handcuffs, trophies of his self-declared war on “narco-terrorists.” On October 22, the presidency released a video showing him authorizing an aerial bombardment against the ELN, one of Colombia’s many armed groups he's declared open war against. Military command becomes an opportunity for content creation, with the president—decked out in army greens and walkie-talkie in hand—cast as its indispensable protagonist.
The circus-like spectacle carries a deliberate political message. More than 12 million Colombians supported his opponent, the left-wing Senator Iván Cepeda, in June’s runoff election. It was the closest election in Colombia’s history. This extremely narrow victory gave De la Espriella the presidency, so, like Trump, his highly mediated performances invite viewers to mistake that victory for a license to dominate everything. Trump’s own campaign endorsement of “el Tigre” promised him the “total support and strength of the United States,” something De la Espriella is quick to remind audiences about regularly on live television and social media posts. For the new president, Washington’s stamp of approval helps project power over a country that remains profoundly divided.
Political Approval Comes With Concrete Material Commitments
In September, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Colombian Foreign Minister Omar Bula signed memorandums in the Caribbean coastal city of Barranquilla covering critical minerals and civil nuclear cooperation. News reports of the encounter situated the initiative within Trump’s competition with China and Washington’s effort to secure strategic mineral supplies, especially through its obedient neighbors to the south.
The documents signed in Barranquilla establish a nonbinding framework for technical cooperation, investment, and processing. While they do not necessarily hand ownership of Colombia’s deposits of rare earth minerals to the United States, their significance lies in the extractive development priorities they encourage: Colombia is positioning its resources within Washington’s strategic supply chains, radically reversing the previous government’s efforts at ecological sustainability and economic diversification. Opposition leaders in the Congress, excluded from any consultation in this process, argue that the public deserves to know how communities near these proposed projects will participate, what environmental protections will apply, and who will capture the benefits. Up to now, it’s anybody’s guess, and De la Espriella is in no rush to explain.
As if the extractive collaboration with Washington weren’t enough, the strategic security alignment between the US and Colombia is even more explicit, and alarming. Speaking in Panama on August 12, the bellicose US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced that Colombia had requested US participation, authorizing “joint military operations to destroy terrorists and terrorist networks.” Colombia also joined the US-led regional counter-cartel coalition, known as the Spear of the Americas. Critics of these announcements—left-wing lawmakers, progressive political analysts, and human rights workers—focused on national sovereignty and the constitutional role of the Senate in authorizing foreign troops.
De la Espriella’s proposals for more coca eradication, aerial bombing, extraditions, and building enormous prisons, a crackdown The New York Times refers to as the “Bukelization” of Colombia, offer the promise of heavy-handed solutions. But they also risk renewing familiar cycles of violence that have shaped Colombian history since the 1950s.
Hegseth’s announcement does not necessarily mean that US soldiers have already carried out attacks inside Colombia, although that is always hard to determine. It does establish the Colombian government’s willingness to invite a deeper military role for Washington in its internal strategic affairs, a trend we’ve already seen in Ecuador, Peru, and El Salvador.
The designation of the declared enemy as “narco-terrorists” makes that invitation sound straightforward and even justifiable, obscuring complex questions about who they are targeting, civilian protection, and accountability. It’s important to point out that the term “narco-terrorist” has been employed by Colombian security forces and government officials repeatedly for almost 40 years to deliberately target opposition and social movement leaders, human rights defenders, and even independent journalists. The probability of this repressive history repeating itself today is very high, considering the current belligerent leadership in both Washington and Bogotá.
Combined with De la Espriella’s public applause for the illegal bombings of alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific by US forces, attacks which have resulted in over 235 deaths since last October, the current rules of engagement on the ground amount to the worst-case scenario that any of us who have fought against direct US military involvement in Colombia could have imagined.
There’s no question that the security crisis De la Espriella inherited is real, and in many ways led to his narrow election victory in the first place. The policy of “total peace” carried out by former President Gustavo Petro failed to halt the expansion of armed organizations throughout the country. Rural communities continue to endure displacement, extortion, and child recruitment despite Petro’s sincere efforts at negotiating with at least 14 different armed and criminal groups during his mandate, according to the International Crisis Group.
But if history has taught us anything, there are no guarantees that military escalation will work to bring the country security. In the past, the crackdown and capture of leaders of armed groups led to the fragmentation of those organizations, resulting in further, more widespread territorial warfare, while bombardments and sweeping arrests resulted in high levels of civilian casualties and other human rights violations. De la Espriella’s proposals for more coca eradication, aerial bombing, extraditions, and building enormous prisons, a crackdown The New York Times refers to as the “Bukelization” of Colombia, offer the promise of heavy-handed solutions. But they also risk renewing familiar cycles of violence that have shaped Colombian history since the 1950s. People living under armed coercion in high conflict areas need a range of protections and guarantees. And that protection must last beyond the next televised military operation or social media post.
Other MAGA-like Moves by the New Administration
There are other examples of policy decisions that demonstrate how radically De la Espriella has pivoted toward a MAGA agenda. One recent rupture relates to international human rights policy that aligns closely with MAGA’s obsessive anti-wokeism. In mid-September, Colombia withdrew from the Equal Rights Coalition, an intergovernmental alliance which promotes LGBTQ+ rights and which Colombia had been co-chairing with Spain. The Foreign Ministry explained that participation in the coalition “was not a priority.”
The positioning of Colombia as an uncompromising and committed ally of Israel is another stark shift from Petro’s open and vocal criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu for the genocide in Gaza. This pro-Israel stance coincides with an almost fanatical fascination with and embrace of Christian Evangelicals within Colombia, with the formerly self-described atheist president regularly performing the rituals of a true believer in front of the cameras during his first several weeks in office, openly declaring, “Long Live Christ the King!”
De la Espriella’s admirers may enjoy watching the Tiger perform. Colombians, particularly the most vulnerable and traditionally marginalized, will have to live with the policies enacted between those mediated appearances.
It’s hard to understand how any of these policy shifts will materially benefit the Colombian people, including those who voted for him. But there’s no question that these decisions put the new government even further into the good graces of the Rubio-Vance-Trump sphere of influence that the US citizen-turned Colombian president so fondly desires.
Resistance has already complicated the Colombian government’s plans. For example, a judge ordered the removed objects from the National Museum protected and barred further removals pending review.
These kind of decisions give the political opposition compelling reasons to continue to organize and mobilize. On October 14, unions, students, and Indigenous organizations took to the streets in large and small cities all over the country, speaking out against De la Espriella’s authoritarian dictates. It is already clear that popular sectors will not easily abandon their demands because the president commands the cameras. A larger call for a general strike in November is already in the works. Repression could deepen the confrontation, especially if security officials treat resistance to economic, cultural, and social policy as a security problem.
De la Espriella’s admirers may enjoy watching the Tiger perform. Colombians, particularly the most vulnerable and traditionally marginalized, will have to live with the policies enacted between those mediated appearances.
It would be naïve to think they will not stop demanding their rights and livelihoods be protected.
A president who treats those demands as obstacles to his authority is giving the country ample reason to resist.
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Colombians Defy Presidential Decree 'Criminalizing Protest' in Rallies Against Right-Wing Government
Leftist formerde President Gustavo Petro called the nationwide protests "a wake-up call" for Colombia's "tyrannical" government.
Oct 14, 2026
Colombians took to the streets Wednesday to protest the right-wing government of President Abelardo de la Espriella, denouncing austerity measures, renewed ties with Israel amid its genocidal assault on Gaza, and policies protesters fear will roll back hard-won social and worker rights.
The nationwide mobilizations—which are backed by trade unions, Indigenous organizations, students, and political opposition groups—came one day after de la Espriella signed a controversial decree expanding police power to violently quash demonstrations.
Leftist former President Gustavo Petro joined demonstrators in Bogotá, where protesters carried Colombian and Palestinian flags and condemned the government's rapprochement with the United States and Israel.
In a message addressed to Interior Minister Rodrigo Lara, Petro said: “A decree without prior public notice is not valid. Mr. Lara, stop wasting time and study law again.”
De la Espriella's foreign policy has marked a sharp break with Petro's government, which severed diplomatic relations with Israel in 2024 over its assault on Gaza and suspended Israeli arms imports. De la Espriella has restored relations, reopened trade ties, and moved to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the illegally occupied Syrian Golan Heights. On Wednesday, Colombia also opened an embassy in Jerusalem, a deeply controversial move given the city's disputed status, with Palestinians also claiming it as their capital.
The de la Espriella administration's economic policies have also fueled the new demonstrations. Protesters voiced opposition to funding cuts affecting public institutions, including the National Learning Service, the agency responsible for reintegrating former combatants, and electricity subsidies—particularly in the Caribbean region. Labor organizations and student groups are also demanding protections for workers, public education, and university autonomy.
In stark contrast, under Petro—Colombia's first left-wing president—the government expanded access to public universities, increased the minimum wage, and improved labor protections.
The protests are taking place amid growing alarm over de la Espriella's Decree 1525, signed Tuesday, which revises police protocols for responding to demonstrations.
Ana Erazo, a Colombian lawmaker from the leftist Historical Pact party, slammed the decree for "criminalizing protest."
The president's order establishes a five-stage protest intervention framework, which starts with "preventive engagement" and dialogue and escalates toward use of force. However, it specifies that, under certain circumstances involving violence, officers can skip the dialogue phase before responding with force.
While insisting that the right to peaceful protest is guaranteed by Colombia's Constitution, de la Espriella said Tuesday: “Never again a permanent blockade of a highway. Never again an urban bus lane turned into a trench. Attacking a person, throwing objects to injure someone, detaining someone, or using a child in a protest is not protest; it is a crime and will be treated as such."
In the streets of Colombia's cities, demonstrators decried what they described as an erosion of rights under de la Espriella.
“I feel like we have no guarantees," teacher Ester Guerra told Agence France-Presse in the capital Bogotá, "and that the little we did obtain... we’re about to lose."
Jimena Rodriguez, a 20-year-old student protester, said she believes that de la Espriella “just wants to hand the country over to the United States, to Israel."
"I feel dark times are coming," she added.
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What Progressives Can Learn From Mexico About Avoiding a Right-Wing Backlash
Mexico’s continuity may reflect not only the material results achieved by the government, but also the broader narrative through which those results were understood.
Jun 26, 2026
The recent presidential election in Colombia highlighted a striking political paradox. New data from the country’s national statistics agency shows that the national poverty rate fell to 28% in 2025, the lowest level ever recorded. Nearly 1.8 million Colombians moved out of poverty in a single year, while extreme poverty and income inequality also declined. The figures represent a significant social achievement and continue a multi-year trend of improving living standards.
Yet, despite this advance, Colombians elected right-wing lawyer and businessman Abelardo De La Espriella, whose nationalist and law-and-order platform marks a sharp contrast with the policies of outgoing President Gustavo Petro. The outcome suggests that even significant social and economic progress does not necessarily translate into electoral support for the government that helped produce it.
Nor is Colombia unique. Across the region, electoral cycles have repeatedly shown that social progress does not necessarily produce lasting political loyalty. Similar patterns can be seen in Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, and elsewhere in South America, where periods of progressive governance have often been followed by the election of more conservative leaders or governments with markedly different priorities.
Former Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa offered one explanation for this phenomenon. He argued that when people escape poverty and enter the middle class, many become primarily concerned with preserving their newly acquired status. As a result, they may become less supportive of policies aimed at extending similar benefits to others. Whether or not one accepts this interpretation, it highlights an important political challenge: The very success of progressive social policies may alter the interests, expectations, and priorities of the people they benefit, making long-term political continuity more difficult to sustain.
The very success of progressive social policies may alter the interests, expectations, and priorities of the people they benefit, making long-term political continuity more difficult to sustain.
There is, however, one notable exception: Mexico.
Mexico presents an important counterexample. The presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador was followed by the election of Claudia Sheinbaum, who belongs to the same political movement and has pledged to continue much of the same agenda. Rather than producing a backlash, the governing project maintained broad popular support through a successful leadership transition.
Why Was Mexico different?
Part of the answer may lie not only in policy outcomes but also in political identity. While many progressive governments in South America have defined themselves primarily through ideological labels such as socialism or the left, Mexico’s governing movement increasingly describes itself through the concept of Mexican Humanism. Although its policies share many objectives with progressive governments elsewhere, the language is notably different. Mexican Humanism emphasizes dignity, community, solidarity, and national culture rather than ideological affiliation.
This distinction may matter. Political projects framed primarily in ideological terms can reinforce divisions between supporters and opponents. Projects rooted in shared cultural and ethical values may be better positioned to build identification across traditional political boundaries. From this perspective, Mexico’s continuity may reflect not only the material results achieved by the government, but also the broader narrative through which those results were understood.
The Colombian election therefore raises a broader question for Latin America. If poverty reduction, lower inequality, and improved social indicators are not enough to guarantee political continuity, what is missing? Is the decisive factor economic performance, security, media influence, political organization, or something deeper within a nation’s culture?
Mexico suggests that political durability may depend on more than effective governance alone. It may also require a shared sense of identity and purpose that transcends conventional ideological categories. The most interesting question may not be why some countries move from the left to the right, but why Mexico has not.
This article was first published on Pressenza.
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Colombians Voted Against Their Collective Memory on Sunday
But the support for Ivan Cepeda offers some hope for the country's future.
Jun 23, 2026
It’s still hard to swallow, almost 24-hours after one of the most intense, indeed stressful election days in Colombia that I’ve witnessed, albeit from here in New York.
Colombian right-wing candidate Abelardo de la Espriella does appear to have clinched a very narrow victory in Sunday's presidential election, at least according to the initial ballot count that still needed to be officially verified as of this writing.
De la Espriella had 49.66% of the vote while his rival, Senator Ivan Cepeda, trailed by roughly 250,000 votes at 48.70%, according to the national registrar's tally of just under 100% of ballots in the runoff election.
In trying to make personal sense of the closest presidential elections in recent Colombian history, I can’t help but think that the final results are a reflection of how Colombia has failed to acknowledge its stained history of state-sponsored, politically motivated violence, even ten years after a fragile peace accord was signed that put an end to one aspect of the decades-long conflict.
What we must not take away from this electoral outcome is that de la Espriella is an “outsider” who, by challenging the political status quo in Colombia, will bring something new in his approach to governing the country.
This latest election represents a national rejection—albeit by a very narrow margin—of the policies of “total peace” of the current administration of President Gustavo Petro. The results are an affirmation of and an open call for “total war,” reminiscent of some of the darkest days of the widespread regional violence that occurred throughout the country at the turn of the century and the early stages of this century.
A portion of the Colombian electorate—almost half—continues to view the country’s troubles through a fractured lens of national security, of unrepentant militarism, and of the firm belief in the need to apply the heavy hand of the state to confront criminality. These Colombians have essentially vetoed their collective memory of generational violence, of a civil war whose origins have always been traced back precisely to the lack of a state presence where it is most needed—in a sustainable public health system; in accessible housing and education; in the opportunities that come with equitable distribution of land, the protection of human rights, and universal support for robust democratic participation across the citizenry, regardless of race, class, or political affiliation.
Instead, they’ve voted for a person openly committed to gutting 40% of the already weakened state in all these sectors. De la Espriella has blamed Petro, the former M-19 guerilla leader and outgoing president, for the country's current economic and security troubles. The growth of these armed groups throughout the country in recent years are attributed to Petro’s attempt to negotiate directly an end to the violence during his time in office. Rarely are the policies of Petro’s predecessor, Ivan Duque, mentioned in this context, despite his deliberate efforts to jettison just about every aspect of the 2016 peace accords between FARC and the Colombian government, leading in many ways to the expansion of these groups.
And now, the president-elect has vowed to end all talks with the armed criminal organizations, while boosting the oil and gas sector, lowering taxes for the middle and upper classes, and building massive prisons to detain indefinitely all the criminals they can find in the process, a la strongman Nayib Bukele of El Salvador. He pledges to fortify the military and manage the state security forces with an iron fist, something that will be made much easier by a blank-check insurance policy granted to him by the Trump-Rubio-Hegseth Western Hemisphere doctrine of domination and control.
The opposing candidate of the left-of-center coalition known as Pacto Historico, Senator Ivan Cepeda, 63, had pledged to continue many of the policies of President Petro, the country's first leftist president. Those policies included state pension payments for the poor, union-backed labor reforms, a moratorium on new oil projects, and continued peace talks with armed groups to try to put an end of the ongoing violence. Some analysts think Cepeda should have distanced himself a bit more from Petro on the campaign trail, given how the media openly embraced the Kryptonite narrative that Petro represents for the left in Colombia. Instead, Cepeda, himself the victim of state-sponsored violence, stuck to a set of arguments tied to building peace through social justice, human rights, and most importantly, not returning to the past.
Despite the youthful energy and visible enthusiasm of the very diverse range of supporters who came out for Cepeda’s candidacy, it was not enough to put a pause on the establishment’s profound, almost religious hatred of left-wing leaders with social movement connections, who are almost instantaneously written off as puppets of guerrilla terror, branded threats to the Colombian homeland. In many ways, it’s much like the simplistic MAGA refrain for attacking their opponents as un-American or enemies of the people, except in the Colombian context, it is a recipe for extreme violence, death sentences for many of those on the receiving end.
Over 12 million Colombians did not vote for this reactionary, ahistorical vision for the country. More than 12 million voters placed their bets on a future of peace and dignity for all Colombians.
What we must not take away from this electoral outcome is that de la Espriella is an “outsider” who, by challenging the political status quo in Colombia, will bring something new in his approach to governing the country, a tantalizing myth that somehow caught traction during the campaign in the Colombian corporate press and their counterparts in the US media. De la Espriella may not have the privileged political pedigree of the openly nepotistic tradition that has characterized over a century of Colombian political history, but to call him an outsider in 2026 is to ignore the foundation of his success as a defense attorney, a businessman, and of the fortune that allowed him to fund his campaign independent of the “mainstream” power bosses of the Colombian political elite.
He is an entrenched insider within the right-wing, para-state apparatus that had metastasized like a slow-moving blood cancer into every part of the governing class in Colombia since the early 2000s. This para-state infrastructure was built on the backs of the millions of internally displaced Black, Indigenous, and peasant communities; tens of thousands of forcibly disappeared; and the many innocent civilians murdered in countless massacres that brought fear to the countryside for decades.
While FARC rebels were guilty of much of the violence in Colombia since the mid-1990s, it was the brutal reaction to FARC criminality carried out by the unholy alliance between large landowners, narco-traffickers, and the military that blew the lid open for the widespread terror we saw from 2000 to 2010.
Behind this was a public discourse framed by the term “democratic security,” coined by former two-term President Alvaro Uribe Vélez, and backed wholeheartedly by the US under its Plan Colombia project. It was followed by eventual “negotiations” between the paramilitaries and the Uribe government, as well as a major scandal where it was exposed that almost half of the elected members of Colombia’s Congress had direct ties with the paramilitary organizations that were responsible for the above-mentioned crimes. De la Espriella understood this when he defended many of the paramilitary leaders and narco-traffickers implicated in these crimes. This is an insider who made his mark in this process. There’s no denying this.
The tough-guy approach to national politics that the “Tiger” so openly declared on the campaign trail is the continuation of a long process of authoritarian, right-wing extremism that emerged in the early 1990s, one that sees any opposition to their political, economic, or territorial control of the country as the equivalent of terrorism that must be liquidated militarily. This is the profound danger I see right now in the days, months, and years ahead for Colombia.
Nevertheless, with all these dark clouds on the horizon, for the millions of people who supported Ivan Cepeda in these elections, there is room for some optimism, albeit with considerable caution.
That is the fact that over 12 million Colombians did not vote for this reactionary, ahistorical vision for the country. More than 12 million voters placed their bets on a future of peace and dignity for all Colombians. They hit the streets and attended rallies and posted online videos recalling the darkest days of the war, shouting the names of the victims of this violence, saluting the brave mothers who still demand justice for their sons killed by state security forces.
They did not vote against their collective memory.
They are a very powerful force today, and for the future of Colombia.
They will not be backing down any time soon.
For they’ve faced the barrel of many guns in the past, and they’re still here.
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Petro Demands Release of Colombian Activist Held as 'Political Prisoner' by ICE
Marco Rubio's State Department is trying to deport activist Beto Coral over his public opposition to a far-right presidential candidate supported by Trump in Colombia's upcoming election.
Jun 20, 2026
Colombian President Gustavo Petro on Saturday demanded that US President Donald Trump “tell the people of Colombia” where activist Beto Coral is after he was detained by immigration agents this week following his criticism of Trump’s preferred candidate in Colombia’s presidential election.
Coral, a progressive activist and Petro supporter, was arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents at his Phoenix home on Tuesday, immediately after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a memo claiming that Coral “has used his presence in the United States to conduct political activity in support of the Petro government.”
His family says they now have no idea where he is.
Atención: El activista colombiano @Betocoralg me llamó hace unos minutos para decirme que agentes de inmigración de @ICE lo están arrestando en este momento en Arizona, aparentemente con la intención de deportarlo. Está con su hijo que es menor de edad pic.twitter.com/sjlaGQdc4Y
— Daniel Coronell (@DCoronell) June 17, 2026
Coral is the son of Humberto Coral Caballero, a police captain who was involved in the 1993 operation that located and killed the notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar. His father was murdered just four months later, in a case that remains unsolved.
The younger Coral immigrated to the US in 2015 on a six-month tourist visa. He later applied for asylum in the US, saying he faced danger from drug cartels in Colombia.
Although the US Department of Homeland Security has also accused him of overstaying his visa for 10 years, the State Department memo pointed to his political activity.
“Allowing [Coral] to remain in the United States,” Rubio's memo said, “undermines US foreign policy interests in Colombia’s democratic processes and signals that foreign nationals may use US platforms to conduct politically motivated disinformation campaigns and litigation targeting foreign democratic actors without consequence.”
The memo reflects the State Department policy of seeking to deport foreign nationals explicitly over their expression of political viewpoints at odds with the Trump administration, particularly pro-Palestinian student activists such as Mahmoud Khalil of Columbia University and Rümeysa Öztürk of Tufts University.
Rubio’s memo also noted that Coral had opposed the right-wing presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella, a former criminal defense lawyer supported by Trump, who has pledged to “disembowel the left” if he takes power in Colombia’s presidential runoff on Sunday.
Petro has accused De la Espriella of being a “defender of narcoparamilitaries,” citing his legal defense of armed right-wing groups tied to massacres, assassinations, forced displacement, and drug trafficking.
In a message from detention, Coral said that his arrest "is a sign of what can happen" if De la Espriella, whom he described as a "defender of mobsters and criminals," becomes president of Colombia.
According to The New York Times, Coral’s arrest is the first known instance in which Rubio has targeted an immigrant in the US over their advocacy in a foreign election.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, called it an example of "free speech under attack" by the Trump administration.
"Marco Rubio just had a man arrested and jailed, and is seeking to deport him, because he publicly criticized a presidential candidate in Colombia that Donald Trump would prefer to be elected," he said, adding that Coral "committed no crimes and had an asylum application pending."
Beto Coral fue nuevamente trasladado este día por las autoridades migratorias estadounidenses. Su familia asegura que desconoce su ubicación actual y advierte que su nombre ya no aparece en el sistema oficial ICE Locator, situación que ha incrementado la preocupación y la… pic.twitter.com/cNh4qYy0fI
— Beto Coral (@Betocoralg) June 19, 2026
The 40-year-old Coral was arrested after returning to his Phoenix home with his 12-year-old son. Coral had recently been in Miami, where he said he'd filed a lawsuit against De la Espriella, whom he'd previously accused of illegally recording phone calls between the two.
Coral's former partner, Tatiana Camacho, told the Times that De la Espriella had contacted Coral multiple times "so he would retract his statements.”
US Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) said Tuesday that Coral’s detention pointed to “coordination between American officials and Colombian political actors in this arrest—that would amount to our government aiding and abetting transnational repression.”
McGovern noted that he had helped lead legislation cosponsored by Rubio in 2023 to counter transnational political repression while Rubio was still a senator.
"Now he’s abetting it himself," McGovern said, "by weaponizing the law to punish free speech and help Trump’s right-wing buddies."
A Friday post from Coral’s X account stated that he had recently been transferred between facilities by immigration authorities, that his family does not know his current whereabouts, as his name no longer appears in the official ICE locator system.
Alberto Coral hijo del oficial de policía, capitán Humberto Coral Caballero, que fué asesinado en el operativo policial contra Pablo Escobar, es ahora, un preso político en EEUU.
Solo por el apoyo político que el secretario de estado de los EEUU Marcos Rubio dió al defensor de…
— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) June 20, 2026
On Saturday, Petro said he “demands” that Trump “tell the people of Colombia where [Beto] Coral is,” referring to him in another post as a “political prisoner.”
“Solely because of the political support that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave to Abelardo de la Espriella, a defender of the genocidal narcoparamilitary forces against the Colombian people, who suggested his capture, he has been detained and beaten by the US government, separating him from his family,” Petro said. “[Beto] Coral sought asylum in the US because drug trafficking mafias could have murdered him 10 years ago, and the anti-migrant attitude toward South Americans has not even allowed for his authorization.”
“What will the members of Colombia’s Public Force—which carries out the world’s largest cocaine seizures—think if the states that benefit from them reject and torture even the sons of those fallen in combat against drug trafficking?” Petro asked.
He continued: “I request the solidarity of the governments of the world and the world’s human rights organizations to free the prisoner of conscience [Beto] Coral.”
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Democratic Lawmakers Condemn Trump Effort to 'Tip the Scales' in Colombia Election
"The future of Colombia must be decided by the Colombian people—not American politicians with their own agenda."
Jun 13, 2026
A group of Democratic members of the US Congress on Friday condemned President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers' attempts to influence the results of Colombia's upcoming presidential runoff, calling it an "insult" to the Colombian people's sovereignty.
"We see actions by US President Donald Trump and other members of Congress to endorse, advocate for, or otherwise tip the scales to a particular candidate as detrimental to the democratic rights of the Colombian people," said the lawmakers, led by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.). "The future of Colombia must be decided by the Colombian people—not American politicians with their own agenda."
The statement came days after Trump publicly injected himself into Colombia's presidential contest by endorsing far-right candidate Abelardo De La Espriella, a 47-year-old defense lawyer who has pledged to "disembowel the left."
“The results of this Election are very important to the future of Colombia and its relationship to the United States,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post earlier this month. “Because of his tremendous accomplishments in life, and his political support for me, personally, it is my Honor to give Abelardo my Complete and Total Endorsement.”
The US president said that if De la Espriella wins, he "will have the total support and strength of the United States behind him."
The Center for Economic and Policy Research noted that "the implicit threat in Trump’s endorsement of De la Espriella is that Colombians will be punished—through reduced aid, tariffs, sanctions, etc.—if they vote for a political leader not backed by the United States."
Two Republican lawmakers, Rep. María Salazar of Florida and Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio, have also endorsed De la Espriella. The New York Times reported that "before Mr. Trump posted his full-throated endorsement of Mr. De La Espriella, Mr. Moreno held a call with reporters in which he said US officials had 'vetted' Mr. De La Espriella and found him to be 'impeccable.'"
De la Espriella will face leftist Sen. Iván Cepeda, an ally of incumbent President Gustavo Petro, in the June 21 presidential runoff.
Petro has criticized his US counterpart for meddling in Colombia's presidential race, urging Trump in a recent social media post to "not intervene in the campaign and allow the people of Colombia to decide freely."
"Whoever wins will maintain the friendship of more than two centuries between Colombia and the US," Petro added.
Earlier this week, Petro planned to meet with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani during the Colombian leader's trip to the US, but "the Trump administration effectively nixed it in a behind-the-scenes effort," The Washington Post reported.
"The Colombian government quietly called off the event following a meeting between US and Colombian officials in Bogotá in which State Department officials made clear that this week’s engagement was unacceptable, a move Colombian officials interpreted as a threat to arrest Petro on site if he proceeded," the newspaper revealed. "A State Department official told The Washington Post that the visit would violate visa restrictions the US imposed against Petro following his comments last year criticizing US support of Israel’s war in Gaza and imploring US soldiers to disobey presidential orders to kill."
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Far-Right Upstart de la Espriella Advances to Runoff in Colombia's Presidential Election
Leftist Colombian President Gustavo Petro has refused to accept the preliminary results, claiming there were 800,000 or more additional voter IDs in the nation's election system than in the electoral census.
Jun 02, 2026
Abelardo de la Espriella—a far-right political upstart who promises to wield an "iron fist" against criminals and who emulates right-wing presidents, including Donald Trump in the United States—secured the most votes in the first round of Colombia's presidential election and will advance to a second-round runoff, the country's electoral authorities announced over the weekend.
Leftist Sen. Iván Cepeda, the handpicked successor of outgoing President Gustavo Petro, had been expected to win the first-round contest, based on voter surveys. However, de la Espriella and his running mate, former Finance Minister José Manuel Restrepo Abondano, won 43.74% of the vote, with Cepeda and Aida Marina Quilcué Vivas, a senator and Indigenous leader, garnering 40.9%, according to preliminary results published by the National Electoral Council.
Addressing a jubilant crowd in Barronanquilla—a city he lost—de la Espriella, who represents the Defensores de la Patria (Defenders of the Homeland) party, triumphantly declared, "We will punish the enemies of Colombia!"
"Today, the people spoke," said the 47-year-old attorney, who is also known as the Tiger. "For the first time in political history, an independent man, without silencers and with the necessary character, has won."
“Gustavo Petro, do not dare to ignore the results of the elections because the people are going to rise up and they will punish you," he added.
Petro has refused to acknowledge Sunday's preliminary results due to alleged irregularities, claiming there were roughly 800,000–885,000 additional voter IDs in the election system compared with the official electoral census.
Cepeda, 63, addressed the discrepancy during a speech to supporters in Bogotá, saying that "there is a gap we want to verify... We are talking about 885,000 people."
People rallied in Bogotá and elsewhere in Colombia on Sunday in support of Cepeda and the incumbent Pacto Histórico (Historic Pact) party.
LAS CALLES DE BOGOTÁ ESTALLAN CONTRA ABELARDO DE LA ESPRIELLA pic.twitter.com/AmVvaOSIYw
— Julian D. Martinez (@jumartinezp) June 2, 2026
The global leftist coalition Progressive International (PI) issued an urgent alert "regarding conduct by US Sen. Bernie Moreno that appears to constitute a direct violation of Colombia’s electoral law" amid reporting that the Ohio Republican traveled to Colombia to try to facilitate an alliance between de la Espriella and establishment conservative candidate Sen. Paloma Valencia with the goal of defeating Cepeda. Moreno and the candidates denied that any such meetings were planned.
David Adler, PI's co-general coordinator, told Colombian National Radio that US corporate media are "orchestrating a smear campaign" looking "for new ways to defame the candidate Iván Cepeda, alleging links to drug trafficking, just as they did" with Petro.
Adler also reported police officers conducting entry checks at polling places, telling voters to "stand at attention for the homeland"—one of de la Espriella's campaign slogans.
De la Espriella—a criminal defense attorney who has represented mass murderers, drug traffickers, money launderers, paramilitary militiamen, and others—ran on a "law and order" platform and promised to wield an "iron fist" against criminals. He has pledged to build megaprisons like the violence-plagued Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) built under Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, whom he once called "the best example in the world of what a country must do."
“The 'Total Peace' policy ends with me," de la Espriella previously said, referring to Petro's effort to end Colombia’s long-running internal conflict through a broad, multi-track approach.
"Total Security will begin," he said. "The public [security] forces... must be strengthened through an agreement with the United States. We want to be part of the Shield of the Americas, and we want to build a major policy with the United States to end drug trafficking."
De la Espriella has said he wants to withdraw Colombia from the United Nations and forge closer ties with the United States and Trump, one of the right-wing leaders for whom he has expressed admiration. He has also repeatedly praised Bukele and Argentinian President Javier Milei.
According to El País, American flags and "Make America Great Again" hats were seen at Sunday's victory rally in Barranquilla. Israeli flags were also spotted; de la Espriella has vowed to restore ties with Israel, which Petro severed in 2024 due to the country's annihilation of Gaza. Under Petro, Colombia also formally intervened in South Africa's genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
De la Espriella's desire for closer cooperation with Washington comes as the Trump administration illegally bombs boats in the Caribbean Sea, including off the Colombian coast, and Pacific Ocean, claiming—without providing evidence—that the vessels were smuggling drugs.
Trump also ordered an invasion of Venezuela to abduct President Nicolás Maduro on dubious narco-terrorism charges, and the US is taking part in military operations against alleged drug cartels in Ecuador, where civilians have reportedly been killed and tortured during the campaign.
The US Department of Justice is now reportedly investigating whether Petro has any links to narco-traffickers—a claim that the president vehemently denies.
On the domestic front, de la Espriella has vowed to "put God back in the classrooms" as part of a revival of Christian conservatism. He has also been accused of misogyny for comments—including telling female journalists that he gained many women's votes due to the size of his genitals—and of homophobic harassment of Valencia's running mate, Juan David Oviedo.
In an incident that alarmed many Colombians, de la Espriella laughingly boasted on national television about how, in his youth, he tortured and killed cats by blowing them up with fireworks.
The second round runoff between de la Espriella and Cepeda is scheduled for June 21. Valencia has thrown her support behind de la Espriella, but having won less than 7% of the first-round vote, and with centrist candidate Sergio Fajardo's 1 million votes up for grabs, observers say it's anyone's race to win—or lose.
“As the saying goes," Colombian political strategist Miguel Jaramillo Luján told Al Jazeera on Monday, "whoever makes fewer mistakes will be the winner.”
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Will Colombia Be the Next Country to Embrace Right-Wing Authoritarianism?
The pattern set by Trump in the US, Milei in Argentina, Bukele in El Salvador, Noboa in Ecuador, and now Asfura in Honduras, seeks to replicate itself with Abelardo de la Espriella in Colombia.
Jun 01, 2026
The results that began to surface around 5:30 pm Sunday May 31 of this year in the first round of the Colombian presidential elections left many perplexed, as Abelardo “El Tigre” de la Espriella, won an uncanny number of votes, 10,359,902 as of this writing, over 670,000 votes above the front-runner Ivan Cepeda and his vice-presidential partner Aida Quilcué, with 9,687,508 votes. Paloma Valencia and her running mate Daniel Oviedo came in a distant third, much weaker than expected with 1,639,421 votes. Sergio Fajardo, the perennial symbolic centrist candidate, came in with 1,008,864 votes. The blank vote came in fifth with 406,955 votes, while Claudia Lopez, the neoliberal former Bogotá mayor, scrounged 225,480 votes, just above Santiago Botero’s 206,128. Mauricio Lizcano came in eigth with a handsome 53,839 votes. The remaining 50,000 votes were shared among a handful of remaining candidates.
Ivan Cepeda questioned the results shortly after the first round was called: “There is a discrepancy that we want to verify with respect to the electoral results. This isn’t just any old discrepancy. We are talking about 885,000 people or ID numbers.” He added, “There is information that indicates atypical votes from an undetermined number of tables. [...] Let us emphasize that only when the commission analysts clarify this discrepancy clearly and rigorously, will we share our conclusions on the results of this election.”
The electoral commission is required to clarify the situation within 72 hours. Similar concerns were raised after the March primaries and congressional elections, when 600,000 votes were recovered by Cepeda's party after they flagged irregularities, leading to 20 additional congressional seats.
Out of approximately 24,000,000 votes cast in the first round, the challenge will be how to get the 3 million or so votes in play, while also mobilizing new voters for the second round. Paloma Valencia, formerly the chosen successor of Alvaro Uribe, has already endorsed Uribe’s new horse (tiger?) Abelardo de la Espriella for the second round of the race, presumably giving him close to 11,000,000 votes for the second round. However, Valencia’s running mate, Daniel Oviedo, has indicated he will not support de la Espriella. Where his nearly 1,000,000 voters from the march primaries will align remains uncertain. He was a kind of neoliberal semi-progressive centrist before aligning with the heiress of the paramilitary political tradition in Colombia. Ironically, Valencia, in her attempt to appear centrist, seems to have lost more votes to de la Espriella than she gained from Oviedo. In the immediate aftermath of the first round results, Sergio Fajardo was coy about where he would try to direct his million-plus votes. If they were to go to Cepeda, he would be in striking distance of de la Espriella. Claudia Lopez’s votes would be an additional boost to whomever she endorses, while Santiago Botero’s 200,000 votes will likely go to de la Espriella, due to his narrow political profile as a businessman accused of domestic violence.
In the background, questions lurk about US intrusion, after threats made by President Trump and Colombian-born Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) toward Colombia as a whole if they vote the left back into office.
In 2022 Gustavo Petro won 8,542,000 votes in the first round, more than 2,000,000 votes behind the combined right-wing frontrunners, Rodolfo Hernández and Federico Gutiérrez. In the second round, he increased his vote count to 11,281,013, an increase of more than 2,700,000 votes from the first round. This means the focus over the next three weeks will be on turnout, beyond the jostling and backroom negotiations for support from the rest of the first-round candidates. Whoever can increase their turnout more dramatically will be the victor, assuming a clean election.
Abelardo de la Espriella is a Jekyll and Hyde character construction: imagine Alan Dershowitz wrapped up in the Batman comic book version of The Joker, in a bipolar bind with billionaire Bruce Wayne.
Of the current right-wing authoritarian archetypes, de la Espriella fits neatly between the evil clown, represented by President Donald Trump and Argentinian President Javier Milei, and the sadistic heir represented by presidents Nayib Bukele and Daniel Noboa (and Trump) in El Salvador and Ecuador (and the US), respectively. You could also say he is a non-senile version of Rodolfo Hernandez, the “outsider” right-wing real estate tycoon candidate who “surprised” the right-wing establishment by coming in second for the first round of the 2022 elections, which Petro ultimately won.
De la Espriella became wealthy while representing the dregs of Colombian high society, paramilitaries, cocaine capos, money launderers, pyramid schemers, mass murderers, and the like. In the carefully produced image de la Espriella has cultivated over the course of the campaign, he flaunts his lavish lifestyle, always with a twist of misogyny, while promising Nayeb Bukele-style policies, including persecution of the left, 10 new maximum security prisons, and Mileiean cuts of 40% of the public sector.
The pattern set by Trump in the US, Milei in Argentina, Bukele in El Salvador, Noboa in Ecuador, and now Asfura in Honduras, seeks to replicate itself with de la Espriella in Colombia.
Ivan Cepeda is a philosopher and politician, whose father was assassinated in 1994 as a senator for the Union Patriotica during a genocidal purge of the left-leaning political party by the same mafia elite that de la Espriella made his name defending. Cepeda has spent much of his time as a congressman, revealing the crimes of de la Espriella’s forebear, ex-president and paramilitary boss Alvaro Uribe, and aligning with popular President Gustavo Petro’s political economic program, which has initiated the process of land restitution to victims of Colombia’s decades-long civil war, and raised minimum wages in a country with the fifth most extreme wealth disparity on the planet. That is down from the third most extreme wealth disparity Colombia claimed leading out of the previous (Uribista) Duque administration into the Petro administration.
Cepeda recognizes that the road out of extreme wealth inequality requires the long-term continuity of a political project that makes solving this most fundamental of socioeconomic problems its top priority. Cepeda’s proposals build on the groundwork laid by the Petro coalition, seeking to expand public education and healthcare, while continuing the redistribution of land to millions of Colombians displaced by decades of the armed conflict promoted for so many years by Uribe and his mafia.
In the background, questions lurk about US intrusion, after threats made by President Trump and Colombian-born Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) toward Colombia as a whole if they vote the left back into office. The recordings released by HONDURASGATE and Red Diario of former Honduran president and convicted drug and weapons trafficker, Juan Orlando Hernandez, paint a picture of a US-Israel backed plan to topple left-wing governments in the region, with a particular focus on Colombia and Mexico, to pave the way for mafia states to ensure easy access by US and Israeli multinational corporations to oil and gas and key minerals for the construction of their rapidly expanding techno-fascist infrastructure.
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'Only the Beginning': Santa Marta Summit Heralded as New Dawn in Fight to End Fossil Fuel Era
“Amid a tense geopolitical context and worsening climate extremes, Santa Marta helped spark a feeling of renewed energy, but delegates must now follow through to deliver action, not just words," said a senior climate adviser at Greenpeace.
Apr 30, 2026
Environmental activists are hopeful after a six-day climate summit in Colombia resulted in a coalition of more than 50 countries agreeing to start developing plans to move away from planet-heating fossil fuels. But they say action must now follow talk.
In marked contrast to the annual United Nations climate summits, which have been routinely overrun by oil and gas industry lobbyists and concluded with agreements that largely ignore the imperative to divest from fossil fuels, Shiva Gounden, the head of Greenpeace's delegation this week in Santa Marta, said the conference that concluded Wednesday "was a breath of fresh air, a real sign that the wind is finally shifting."
The 59 nations that attended the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels did not ultimately end with a binding agreement to transition away from fossil fuels within a specific timeframe, which activists say is urgently necessary as global heating rapidly approaches 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.
Many of the world's biggest polluters—including the United States, China, and India, as well as petrostates like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates—were also absent.
However, the summit did end with attendees, nearly half of whom are fossil fuel producers and who represent more than half of global gross domestic product, agreeing to form tangible "frameworks" for how they plan to transition away from a fossil-fueled model of capitalism that Colombian President Gustavo Petro decried as "suicidal."
Perhaps the single biggest breakthrough at the conference was France's unveiling of a national roadmap to phase out fossil fuels in the coming decades. It became the first developed nation to lay out such a plan, with the goals of removing coal from its national grid by 2027, phasing out oil by 2045, and fossil gas by 2050.
The French climate envoy, Benoit Faraco, described it not only as an obligation but an opportunity: “This process has made us realise we want to be an electro-superpower,” he said, according to The Guardian. “We want to be the electricity Saudi Arabia of Europe, selling green electrons to the UK, Ireland, Germany, and other countries.”
Many attendees also agreed that any collective movement away from fossil fuels would require addressing the debt crisis in the Global South, which many countries—especially those in Africa, where national debts have doubled in the past five years—have found themselves cranking up fossil fuel production to cope with.
While the conference concluded without any binding plan for debt forgiveness, which many delegates from developing countries had proposed, the participants agreed that poorer countries would need support to move out of debt and finance a green transition.
"Fossil fuel dependency deepens economic instability, fuels conflict, and traps countries in cycles of debt," said Bronwen Tucker, public finance lead for Oil Change International. "As long as Global South countries remain locked in this system, while Global North governments write the financial rules, public resources will continue to flow away from people and toward the systems driving crisis."
Laura Caicedo, the campaigns coordinator at Greenpeace Colombia, described the conference as "an important space to put the just energy transition on the agenda ahead of the Climate COP," which will take place in Turkey this coming November.
"There is willingness and a sense of fresh momentum that is worth celebrating," she said. "But this is only the beginning: more time is needed for this process to mature into a true platform for dialogue that can inform decision-making in this and other cooperation spaces on key energy issues."
The next conference on Transitioning Away From Fossil Fuels is set to occur early next year in Tuvalu, a low-lying Pacific island nation that is at risk of becoming uninhabitable within decades due to sea-level rise.
While climate activists were heartened by the progress made in Santa Marta, Gounden said countries need to come to Tuvalu with concrete plans.
“When we get to Tuvalu, the conversation has to change," she said. "We can’t just bring more ambition; we have to bring proof of implementation."
This week's conference took place against the backdrop of the US and Israel's war in Iran, where US President Donald Trump has suggested a key goal is to "take the oil" controlled by Iran. The obstruction of oil shipments has become a critical piece of strategic and economic leverage and simultaneously inflicted chaos upon the global economy, disrupting humanitarian aid for some of the world's poorest and most vulnerable people.
"Amid a tense geopolitical context and worsening climate extremes," said Rodrigo Estrada, Greenpeace International's senior climate adviser, "Santa Marta helped spark a feeling of renewed energy, but delegates must now follow through to deliver action, not just words."
While the war has sent energy companies' profits soaring, the climate advocacy group 350.org estimated this week that the continued blockade of the Strait of Hormuz could cost households and businesses an additional $600 billion to $1 trillion.
"It’s never been clearer that fossil fuel phase-out is imperative for stability and peace," Tucker said. "Every step away from fossil fuels weakens the outsized power and wealth that allows the US to wage illegal wars in the name of energy dominance."
At the next conference, she added, "The richest polluting countries must show they are serious. Canada, Norway, the UK, and the EU must make real plans to accelerate their fossil fuel phaseout at home and come to the table with real economic collaboration."
Mariana Paoli, the climate policy lead for Oxfam, said the lack of action by rich countries was "disappointing" and needed to change.
"Wealthy governments have still not stepped up to provide sufficient climate financing for poorer countries, which face the brunt of the impacts of the climate crisis," she said. "Rich countries hold the historical responsibility for the climate crisis, therefore they must not only move first and faster but also provide finance at scale for others to follow them."
"A just transition," she said, "must make rich polluters pay for the crisis they have caused."
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Colombian President Warns ‘Suicidal’ Fossil-Fueled Capitalism Is Leading World to ‘Barbarism’
“There is inertia in the power and the economy of this archaic form of energy—fossil fuels—that lead to death."
Apr 29, 2026
Colombian President Gustavo Petro warned on Tuesday that the current model of fossil fuel-driven capitalism was leading the world into "barbarism" and "fascism."
According to a Wednesday report from The Guardian, Petro told attendees of the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels being held in Santa Marta, Colombia that capitalism's insistence on continued fossil fuel dependence was "suicidal" and driving the world toward more conflict.
"There is inertia in the power and the economy of this archaic form of energy—fossil fuels—that lead to death," said Petro. "Undoubtedly, that form of capital can commit suicide, taking with it humanity and [other] life... The question that needs to be asked is whether capitalism can truly adapt to a non-fossil energy model.”
Petro also warned that the consequences of sticking with a model of capitalism that centers fossil fuel energy won't be merely economic but also political.
"We are heading towards barbarism," he said. "And barbarism is the prelude to, or the very essence of, fascism."
As reported by Common Dreams last week, the conference in Colombia, which wraps up Wednesday, has featured more than 50 nations discussing strategies to phase out energy based on coal, oil, and gas.
Ralph Regenvanu, minister for climate change of the island nation of Vanuatu, told NPR on Wednesday that his country has been seeing the impacts of the climate crisis up close in the form of rising sea levels and spiraling energy costs.
Because of this, Regenvanu said his government has accelerated plans to begin solar energy and electric vehicle projects, telling NPR that "the decision on EVs was directly stimulated by the crisis."
France was also a major presence at the conference, reported The Guardian, as French climate envoy Benoit Faraco outlined an ambitious plan to make his country a major renewable energy producer.
"This process has made us realize we want to be an electro-superpower," said Faraco. "We want to be the electricity Saudi Arabia of Europe, selling green electrons to the UK, Ireland, Germany, and other countries."
But Tzeporah Berman, founder and chair of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, told The Guardian that the ability to transition away from fossil fuels will be much harder for many developing nations, even though these nations are the ones most adversely impacted by the climate emergency.
"There are many fossil-fuel producing countries in the Global South that are being pushed into expanding fossil fuel production just to feed their debt," Berman explained. "There is an expanding debt crisis in the Global South. It is impossible for countries to even imagine a fossil fuel transition with such limited fiscal space."
Advocates warned that the conference did not appear set to produce new commitments to fund climate action in the Global South, but discussions were taking place about tackling massive subsidies that have been granted annually to fossil fuel giants.
"It is a space where conversations can take place about, for instance, subsidy reform," Leo Roberts of the think tank E3G told The Guardian, "to take the $1.5 trillion in [annual] fossil fuel subsidies and repurpose them to somewhere else.”
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