Clad in a yellow Colombian soccer jersey with “Presidente” written on the back, Abelardo de la Espriella pumped his fist and slammed the podium in a victory speech after his May 31 win in the first round of Colombia’s presidential election. Behind the hardline right-wing candidate flashed giant screens bearing his image; one showed a tiger giving a salute with a human hand. De la Espriella refers to himself as El Tigre.
“I am going to do everything for our country to save our nation. From danger,” de la Espriella yelled at the audience. “And that danger has a name … narcoterrorism!”
He’s expected to defeat Iván Cepeda, the left-wing candidate endorsed by Colombia’s current president, Gustavo Petro, in the June 21 runoff. He also recently received the endorsement of United States President Donald Trump.
“The results of this Election are very important to the future of Colombia and its relationship to the United States,” Trump posted to Truth Social. “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.”
De la Espriella has dual citizenship with the US. He also has a line of somewhat unusual branded products, reminiscent of Trump’s own line of products. He’s marketed rum, menswear products and music albums of him singing hits in “de la Esperiella style.”
While Colombia has collaborated with US efforts to counter the drug trade, President Petro has denounced Trump’s boat strikes in the Caribbean. So far more than 200 people have been killed in the attacks. De la Espriella has promised to add to that number. He’s called Petro a “criminal” and “drug addict.”
His platform is a libertarian economic agenda—he promises to take a “chainsaw” to government spending, except the armed forces—coupled with an aggressive, militarized crackdown on the drug trade. De la Espriella’s ascendance represents yet another instance of right-wing ideology surging in Latin America.
A former defense attorney, de la Espriella once represented wealthy businessmen known for drug trafficking. He’s pledged a range of militarized crackdowns if elected, including a vast expansion of private prisons to hold “cockroaches and rats.”
Trump has called Cepeda a “Radical Left Marxist.”
Inspired by El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, who has dubbed himself “the world’s coolest dictator,” de la Espriella plans to build 10 mega-prisons modeled after El Salvador’s infamous CECOT. He’s also promised to deport immigrants who engage in criminal activity; almost all of the approximately 3 million immigrants living in Colombia are Venezuelan.
“It’s a similar script. A lot of Latin American countries are being overtaken by right-wing forces,” Sanho Tree, director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, told Filter. “He’s very Trumpian. And models himself after Bukele. It’s a return to the bad old days.”
Tree noted a historical parallel with former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe.
“He was a strongman,” Tree said. “In the aughts, the country was dominated by paramilitary narco traffickers. It was a horrible human rights environment.”
In the 2000s, Uribe’s military lured thousands of impoverished young men into remote areas, executed them and dressed them in Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) fatigues to falsely boost their body count. De la Espriella has called the former president a patriot. His father coordinated a regional campaign for Uribe, and the families remain close.
Mass incarceration of people who use or sell drugs has never brought the drug trade to an end. Whenever someone is imprisoned, or killed in government air strikes, someone else will take their place. Taking out leadership of transnational drug-trafficking groups just creates a temporary power vacuum, and increases violence between groups and against civilians.
Left-wing rival Cepeda often speaks of the drug war as a failure, and advocates instead for investment in disenfranchised neighborhoods. Trump has called Cepeda a “Radical Left Marxist.”
Image via Wikipedia/Creative Commons 3.0/Trump White House Archives