President Trump has given his “Full and Complete Endorsement” to the onerous right-wing candidate for president in Colombia, Abelardo de la Espriella, for the second spherical of the presidential election coming Sunday. Greater than expressing his private desire, the U.S. president additionally famous that the “outcomes of this Election are crucial to the way forward for Colombia and its relationship to the USA” and that Abelardo “could have the overall help and power of the USA behind him.”
For a president to intervene on this approach overseas’s election violates worldwide norms. After all there might be some backlash from Colombian voters, who will see it as an assault on democracy and nationwide sovereignty. Particularly as a result of Trump, with essentially the most highly effective armed forces on the earth, threatened army motion in opposition to Colombia lower than 5 months in the past.
“Come get me,” Colombian President Gustavo Petro responded. Whereupon Petro was invited to fulfill Trump on the White Home, the place the U.S. president was decidedly way more pleasant. Till he (or his advisors, led by Marco Rubio) determined to make a play for a right-wing president of Colombia who would do Trump’s bidding.
De la Espriella seems to be up for the job, welcoming an alliance of “two leaders who respect one another and share the identical unshakable values and rules” and pledging to “be part of the Alliance of the Defend of the Americas.” The Defend of the Americas is a Trump-administration led, right-wing coalition of governments within the area formed in March.
Within the first spherical, De la Espriella got here in first by 2.8 share factors in opposition to Iván Cepeda, a senator from the leftist Historic Pact that incumbent Petro leads.
Throughout Petro’s presidency, from 2022 to 2025, the inflation-adjusted minimal wage was increased by 39%. The poverty fee has fallen considerably — by 23.5% since 2022. Greater than 3.9 million folks have been pulled out of poverty. The speed of utmost poverty fell much more in share phrases, by 30%, or 1.9 million folks. Excessive poverty is defined as earnings that’s too low to cowl fundamental wants; Colombia’s excessive poverty line in 2025 was $58 per thirty days, or about $1.90 per day.
Cepeda has pledged to proceed the emphasis on decreasing poverty and growing the earnings per particular person and the social security internet of the bulk.
In contrast, De la Espriella has called for the right-wing “chainsaw” method, together with a 40% discount within the dimension of presidency and reducing 70,000 jobs. This isn’t going to cut back poverty or elevate most Colombians’ residing requirements.
However even worse issues can occur beneath a president like De la Espriella, allied with Trump. Such a presidency would carry a excessive danger of loss of life and destruction, in a rustic that has suffered enormously for many years from violence and armed battle.
This hazard may be seen in De la Espriella’s close and long-standing connections to, and help of, the Self-Protection Forces of Colombia. This was Colombia’s traditionally largest and deadliest paramilitary group, liable for tens of 1000’s of killings, overwhelmingly civilians.
De la Espriella first achieved prominence as a lawyer for the group however has additionally been near its leaders and labored for them in other ways. For instance, he led important efforts to rebrand individuals who dedicated massacres and different crimes in opposition to humanity as political actors who shouldn’t be prosecuted.
Not surprisingly, De la Espriella has advocated in opposition to the 2016 peace accords in Colombia, in addition to their implementation. He favors extra army deployment and “megaprisons” for mass incarceration, on the mannequin of El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele — one other member of Trump’s Defend of the Americas — who has tripled the nation’s jail inhabitants.
These are the “unshakable values and principles” we’re taking a look at. On this mindset, battle is the reply.
Trump shocked a lot of the world when he expressed these values in a risk to the 90 million folks of Iran on April 7: “An entire civilization will die tonight, by no means to be introduced again once more,” he mentioned.
Essentially the most beneficiant approach of describing leaders like Trump and De la Espriella is to say that they’ve misplaced most of their humanity. Therefore the risk to Colombia of becoming a member of their alliance.
Trump’s workforce seems to have gone to nice lengths in in search of violent battle on this hemisphere for the reason that starting of his time period. It started with the designation of “cartels and different organizations” as international terrorist organizations on the first day of his presidency, then bombing and killing tons of of individuals in small helpless boats within the Caribbean after which Western Pacific. That is homicide, in line with consultants on army legislation, as a result of the victims should not combatants. Proof of alleged drug-running was typically not provided. There have been some absurd allegations, reminiscent of transporting fentanyl, which doesn’t even come to the U.S. from South America. It culminated in Trump’s “victory” of capturing Venezuela’s oil and its president.
And now the fixed risk to assault Cuba, which is already struggling enormously from a U.S. blockade that’s, by definition, a war crime beneath the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit collective punishment when there may be armed battle. Even earlier than the blockade this 12 months lower off oil and most of Cuba’s electrical energy, Washington’s tightening of sanctions since 2019 had already increased Cuba’s toddler mortality by 148%.
Trump appears decided to be a battle president, and this hemisphere has been Rubio’s theater of alternative.
De la Espriella has proposed bringing U.S. army bases again to Colombia, creating Plan Colombia 2.0, he says.
He’s reminding the folks of Colombia that he doesn’t care all that a lot concerning the immense human struggling that battle has precipitated and might deliver once more.
Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the writer of “Failed: What the ‘Experts’ Got Wrong About the Global Economy.”
