In a country that has endured decades of civil war and unrest, such a threat should not be taken lightly.
On Wednesday evening, just three days before Colombia’s run-off presidential election (on June 21), President Trump posted his second social media endorsement (see below) of Abelardo de la Espriella, a lawyer, businessman, and iron-fisted populist with a dark past. De la Espriella, a naturalised US citizen, has promised to restore the status quo ante that existed before the election of Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first ever left-wing president.
That will no doubt mean reversing the gains Petro has achieved on the economic front, including a sharp drop in poverty, an increase in labour’s share of national income, advances in green energy and the gradual introduction of agrarian reform. In a leaf straight out of Javier Milei’s playbook, De la Espriella’s chief advisor, Daniel Raisbeck, who founded Colombia’s Libertarian Movement, has proposed to eliminate or privatise 13 of the government’s 19 ministries as well as get rid of Colombia’s minimum wage.
A letter signed by prominent progressive economists and public policy figures, including familiar names to regular readers of this site like Yannis Varoufakis, Ann Pettifor, Jayati Ghosh, Ha-Joon Chang, James K. Galbraith, Isabella Weber and Jason Hickel, warns about the stakes at play:
The neoliberal consensus that shaped development policy for more than three decades has fractured. For too long, countries of the Global South have been told that development requires familiar sacrifices: wages held down, labour protections weakened, public investment constrained, extractive industries protected and climate ambition deferred. Colombia has begun to chart another path. It is showing that an emerging economy can raise incomes, reduce poverty, strengthen labour, pursue democratic agrarian reform, recover industrial policy and begin a just energy transition at the same time. Its significance lies not in importing a model from elsewhere, but in building a path aligned with the country’s own realities and the needs of its population…
Latin America’s history is full of reforms interrupted before they could mature, often in the name of “economic responsibility” — a phrase that has frequently concealed the restoration of privilege. Colombia now stands at such a crossroads. To reverse the gains of recent years would mean returning to dependence, exclusion and rent extraction. To carry them forward would mean advancing a different trajectory: prosperity built through dignified work, democratic land reform, diversified production, public capacity and protection of the conditions of life.
The Trump administration has other ideas, however. De La Espriella is important for the US-Colombia relationship, Trump says. De la Espriella has pledged to join Washington’s Shield of the Americas coalition, which was launched on March 7. The initiative’s ostensible goal is to combat transnational drug cartels, dismantle narcoterrorism, and restrict mass migration but it has drawn obvious parallels with the US-led Plan Condor of the late 1970s.
De la Espriella has also promised to restore Colombia’s ties with Israel as well as forge a strategic alliance with the Zionist state. This will presumably mean joining the Isaac Accords, a new strategic framework aimed at strengthening cooperation between Israel and “like-minded” partners in Latin America. As readers may recall, Colombia’s Gustavo Petro administration was one of depressingly few governments to sever relations with Israel over the genocide in Gaza.
Trump’s Truth Social post:
Colombian Presidential Candidate, “El Tigre (THE TIGER),” Abelardo de la Espriella, is a Smart, Strong, and Tough Leader, who fights tirelessly for, and loves, his Great Country and People, just like I do for the United States of America. As President, Abelardo will be… pic.twitter.com/a3AdnpNoYI
— Commentary Donald J. Trump Truth Social Posts On X (@TrumpTruthOnX) June 18, 2026
Key points from the text:
- De la Espriella, if elected, would “have the total support and strength of the United States behind him”, which is perhaps no surprise given Espriella is a naturalised US citizen (more on that later). This sentence is also a barely veiled threat, hinting that Colombia would not enjoy US support if the people voted for Petro’s left-leaning successor, Ivan Cepeda.
- Trump also claims De la Espriella would restore law and order in Colombia, which is unlikely given De la Espriella’s close ties to drug cartels, paramilitary groups and money launderers, including Maduro’s trusted bag man, Alex Saab.
Illinois Congressman Jesús “Chuy” García and 11 other members of the US House of Representatives sent a letter to the Secretaries of the Departments of State, Justice and Treasury warning about the “profoundly troubling record” of the Trump-endorsed far-right candidate Abelardo de la Espriella. The letter also cautions that the administration’s support for the candidate “appears to run counter to U.S. interests and potentially to U.S. laws”:
President Trump and multiple Republican Members of Congress have openly endorsed Mr. De la Espriella. President Trump has also implied that if Mr. De la Espriella loses, Colombia may lose the support of the United States, its most important trade and security partner.3 This direct interference by U.S. officials in another country’s democratic elections is inconsistent with longstanding principles of national sovereignty and non-interference, as well as international law.
This interference is particularly alarming given Mr. De la Espriella’s background. A criminal
defense lawyer and businessman, he has come under scrutiny over the source of his fortune and his links to Colombian clients, including Alex Saab, an ultra-wealthy fixer for Nicolás Maduro who is currently under federal criminal indictment in the Southern District of Florida for allegedly laundering millions of dollars.Mr. De la Espriella has also maintained close relations with multiple leaders from the
paramilitary drug-trafficking organization known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). The AUC, which the U.S. government designated as a foreign terrorist organization in 2001, was responsible for numerous massacres, assassinations and forced disappearances, as well as torture, forced displacement, sexual violence, collusion with state/security and political actors, and large-scale drug trafficking to the U.S. and other countries.
More alarming still is a recent statement by De la Espriella in which the Trump-endorsed candidate describes all supporters of Gustavo Petro’s government — that is, more than 12 million Colombian citizens — as “enemies of the Republic” that need to be defeated.
“I’m not interested in convincing Petristas,” said De la Espriella. “They are enemies of the Republic and must be treated as such. To defeat them in all ways and on all fronts”.
De la Espriella has also launched a volley of threats against Colombia’s press, including journalists investigating his ties to Saab. Also, it’s not just De la Espriella who is using this kind of incendiary language. The far-right journalist Felipe Zuleta Llera, a strong supporter of De la Espriella’s candidacy, has spoken of the “need to defend oue country with blood and fire”. He also warned left-wing voters to “hide” after June 21.
Such statements are reminiscent of the language used by Argentina’s faux libertarian President Javier Milei, who has spoken of left-wing politics as a “disease of the mind and soul”. Before his election in late 2023, Milei spoke of launching a “cultural battle” to ensure “lefties” and socialists — the so-called “zurdos de mierda” — cannot regain power.
But there’s a key difference between Argentina and Colombia. Argentina has not suffered through decades of civil war. Although a peace agreement was signed between Colombia’s Military Forces and the insurgent’s group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (People’s Army or FARC) in 2016, bringing the 50-year armed civil war to an end, the resulting peace is exceedingly fragile and is regularly punctuated with explosions of violence.
Threats of violence against left-wing politicians and activists in Colombia carry serious weight. In the 1980s, then-President Virgilio Barco (1986-90) hired Rafi Eitan, a former Mossad chief who had courted fame for leading the operation to capture Adolf Eichmann, to help end the guerrilla conflict in the country. Eitan’s recommendation, which was enthusiastically embraced by Barco, was to exterminate the political leaders of the Patriotic Union (UP), the left-wing party that emerged from a peace agreement with the FARC guerrilla group.
What followed was a brutal years-long assassination campaign that took the lives of 3,122 members of UP, including two presidential candidates, five sitting congressmen, 11 deputies, 109 councilors, several former councilors, 8 current mayors, 8 former mayors and thousands of other activists. According to data presented to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the total number of victims is more than 6,000, including murders, disappearances, torture, forced displacements and other human rights violations.
The renowned veteran journalist Gustavo Guillen has warned that De la Espriella represents an even greater threat than former President Alvaro Uribe, who, like De la Espriella, had close ties to paramilitary groups and was once listed among “important Colombian narco-traffickers” by a a 1991 intelligence report from U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) officials in Colombia:
Abelardo de la Espriella has never done anything beneficial for this country… On the contrary, he is a swindler and fraudster — like no one else in Colombia. He even surpasses Alvaro Uribe and Nestor Humberto Martínez…
De la Espriella has robbed and defrauded the Colombian state, and even his own people, including some of Colombia and Venezuela’s most dangerous criminals. He refused to show this country his income tax returns as well as those he should disclose in the United States, of which he is a citizen by choice. And in his oath of allegiance to the United States, he swore to betray Colombia.
This is a serious cause for Colombia right now. Guillen is referring to the first three lines of the naturalisation oath of allegiance to the United States of America (emphasis my own):
“I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen.
A group of 20 former magistrates of the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court of Justice and the Council of State have even argued that Aspriella’s US nationality should disqualify him from the presidency of Colombia. The commitments and duties he pledged to the US government, they say, are incompatible with the obligations that the president of Colombia must undertake. Colombia’s Supreme Court has ruled otherwise.
Guillen is not the only prominent figure to have warned about the threat Aspriella poses to Colombia’s fragile peace. Former presidential candidate Gustavo Bolivar described Aspriella’s recent threat against Colombia’s 12 million Petristas as “a declaration of war”:
When this hate-filled person says that he will finish off 12 million Petristas “in all ways and from all fronts”, [he] is calling for a civil war.
Let the businessmen of this country who have done well under Petro know that if this guy wins, Colombia will be set alight. No one will allow themselves to be taken to the woodshed without a fight. On the other hand, when they lose [the elections], we guarantee that everyone will form part of this country and that Senator Abelardo will have all necessary guarantees to exercise political opposition.
With the stakes so high Sunday’s election expected to be tight amid accusations from both sides of vote buying and other forms of election rigging, including, of course, Trump’s endorsement of De la Espriella, the risk of tensions boiling over is high.
In another sign of the times, ICE agents have detained Colombian lawyer and US asylum seeker Beto Coral in Phoenix, Arizona, who now faces deportation. Coral is a prominent critic of De la Espriella and had just filed a lawsuit against the candidate, whom he accuses of having recorded him without his consent during a lawsuit filed against him by former President Álvaro Uribe.
Coral had also participated in a political demonstration against De la Espriella in Miami. It would be perfectly normal behaviour for the Trump administration appears to target Coral for deportation for having publicly attacked the Trump-endorsed candidate. Coral himself told Colombian media that an agent had informed him that the order for his detention had come from Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
More details from CEPR’s Latin American updates:
In a short video that Coral recorded as he was being detained, he hugged his son and said:
At this moment ICE is at my house — federal agents. They are taking me away. A hug to everyone… I knew this could happen at any moment, and we cannot back down, under any circumstances, absolutely not. We are not going to back down, ever.
Hours before the detention, De la Espriella posted a message on X that appeared to suggest he had prior knowledge of the detention:
Good news for Colombia and for patriotic Colombians abroad. Dura lex, sed lex… Coming soon. (A.D.L.E).
In response to the news of the detention, Senator Bernie Moreno, who has repeatedly endorsed De la Espriella, alleged on X that Coral was operating as a “foreign agent” and therefore deserved to be removed from the US.
In the broader context, the signs of conflict and war are growing throughout the region. This is all the US Empire has to offer.
In Bolivia, the general strike is now in its second month The protests, fuelled by grievances over inflation, cost-of-living pressures and the new Rodrigo Paz government’s land reform policies that threaten collective land rights and small farmer protections, are being met with increasing force by the US-backed government. Political fractures are growing.
As CEPR notes, the United States has consistently echoed the Bolivian government’s framing of the unrest as being driven by organised crime and so-called “narcoterrorism.” Earlier this month, on X, Secretary Pete Hegseth stated:
The Department of War and the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition (A3C) reject all attempts to overthrow the legitimate government of President @Rodrigo_PazP in Bolivia.
The United States is watching. Bolivia must not allow itself to fall prey to the old status quo of narco-terrorist dominance in the region.
We will continue to support our A3C partners like Bolivia to ensure that narco-terrorists are deterred from profiting on death and destruction in our hemisphere.
As we have been warning since 2023, the US’ war on the drug cartels is merely a pretext for military intervention throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. The primary goal is resource control, just as it was back in General Major Smedley D. Butler’s day. It is also increasingly clear that many of the US’ partners in that war, including Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa, Argentina’s Javier Milei and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, are themselves deeply compromised.
At a gathering of military leaders in Latin America and the Caribbean at US Southern Command HQ in March, Stephen Miller, who is broadly seen as one of the chief architects of the Trump administration’s so-called “war on narco-terror”, said that drug-trafficking organizations are “the ISIS and the al-Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere” and “should be treated just as brutally and just as ruthlessly.”
Miller also told the military leaders that these groups can “only be defeated with military power” and that they had his “permission not to listen to” their lawyers as they pursued these groups. In other words, the dirty wars are coming back. As is growing increasingly clear, the only chance the US has of regaining (but perhaps not maintaining) strategic control over its so-called “backyard” is through blood and fire.
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