In Colombia and elsewhere in the region, the United States is trying to shape election outcomes—but at what cost?
On Sunday, Colombian voters chose far-right lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella over leftist Senator Iván Cepeda in the country’s presidential runoff. The result ends Colombia’s first-ever experiment with leftist rule under outgoing President Gustavo Petro, but de la Espriella represents less a restoration of the country’s conservative establishment and more the arrival of a bombastic new populist right.
Petro endorsed Cepeda as his chosen successor; both are longtime figures of the progressive Pacto Histórico coalition that launched Petro to power four years ago. De la Espriella also enjoyed presidential backing—albeit from farther afield.
On June 2, U.S. President Donald Trump used Truth Social to give de la Espriella his “complete and total endorsement,” promising—or perhaps threatening—that the runoff results would be “very important to the future of Colombia and its relationship to the United States.” Trump’s post came days after de la Espriella won the most votes in the first-round election and followed months of on-again, off-again hostility with the United States and the Petro administration that ultimately saw the Colombian president sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department.
