Abelardo de la Espriella’s unexpected victory over Iván Cepeda on Sunday, in the first round of Colombia’s presidential election, shows that right‑wing voters are now almost entirely united behind the penal lawyer, while left‑wing voters are fully consolidated behind the senator. The 653,000‑vote margin the far-right candidate held over the senator seems small in an election where 24 million people cast a vote and more than 3 million voted for other candidates. The challenge for the runoff would appear to be persuading those voters — but given the candidates’ profiles and recent history, the path necessarily also runs through the mobilization of people who did not go to the polls on Sunday.

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Colombia swung to the far right this Sunday, voting overwhelmingly for a candidate who won the support of 10 million citizens, Abelardo de la Espriella, the top vote-getter in the presidential first round. The criminal defense lawyer, who has never held elected office and once defended Alex Saab, Nicolás Maduro’s alleged front man in Venezuela, promises a shake-up of individual and collective rights: from putting God back into schools to pulling Colombia out of the United Nations. He still needs to mobilize votes for a runoff on June 21 against a left that represents the continuity of Gustavo Petro’s government. De la Espriella will be carried forward by very local banners, such as anti-Petrista sentiment, and by very global ones, like promises already voiced by far-right leaders around the world. Political leaders ranging from President Javier Milei of Argentina to Santiago Abascal, head of the hard-right Vox party in Spain, have already celebrated De la Espriella’s first-round victory.

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Colombia will hold a presidential runoff between two candidates who embody irreconcilable visions for the country. Abelardo de la Espriella, the ultraconservative lawyer who ran as the outsider promising to break with everything, won the first round with 43.7% of the vote, with 99% of polling stations counted. Iván Cepeda, the candidate of the governing left, received 40.9%.

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Organized crime has returned to the Pacific route for drug trafficking. Since the start of 2026, at least eight vessels have been detected on the “maritime bridge” between Guatemala and Chiapas, Mexico with dozens arrested and several tons of cocaine seized. The detection and interdiction of these speedboats at sea is further evidence of the pressure the United States is exerting on the governments of Mexico and Central America.

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