.png)
5 hours ago
7
Abelardo de la Espriella, the far-right lawyer who is leading the polls ahead of Colombia’s presidential runoff election, has marketed his rum, wine and menswear brands – as well as his novels and albums on which he croons popular classics – under the label “De la Espriella Style”.
His shift from business suits to T-shirts, baseball caps and a meticulously trimmed beard suggest the influence of El Salvador’s populist autocrat Nayib Bukele.
But the similarities go further than just appearances. Like many far-right politicians in Latin America, De la Espriella has also vowed to follow Bukele’s mano dura (iron fist) approach against crime: the Salvadorian leader has imprisoned at least 2% of the adult population in his country as part of a controversial crackdown on gangs.
De la Espriella has promised to end Colombia’s decades-long armed conflict in just 90 days, building private “mega prisons” and “wiping out” criminals “like cockroaches and rats”.
On 21 June, he will face the leftwing senator Iván Cepeda in the runoff. Backed by the current president, Gustavo Petro, Cepeda advocates continuing the government’s “total peace” plan of negotiating the dismantling of all criminal groups, which has so far failed to stem rising levels of violence.
De la Espriella is a criminal lawyer with a lavish lifestyle who has never held public office, gives military salutes despite never having served in the armed forces and has filed more than 100 lawsuits against journalists. Analysts interpret his lead in the polls as the latest example of a wave of far-right admirers of Bukele and Donald Trump who have been winning elections across Latin America in recent years.
While comparisons to Bukele are the most obvious, De la Espriella appears to have taken notes from each of his neighbours’ playbooks.
Following Trump, who this week granted him his “complete and total endorsement”, the lawyer delivers speeches exclusively behind bulletproof glass and has promised to sink vessels suspected of being used for drug trafficking – echoing the US airstrikes that have recently killed more than 200 people in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.
Echoing Argentina’s Javier Milei, De la Espriella has promised to adopt a “chainsaw” austerity plan of deep cuts to federal spending (although not to military spending); copying Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa, he intends to embrace the use of states of emergency to crack down on gangs; and, inspired by Brazil’s Bolsonaro family, he has turned Colombia’s national football shirt into a symbol of the far right.
But according to Tiziano Breda, a senior analyst for Latin America and the Caribbean at the NGO Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (Acled), De la Espriella has clearly modelled himself on El Salvador’s self-styled “world’s coolest dictator”. “He wants to be a Bukele,” said the analyst.
But hoping to become Bukele and actually becoming him are two different things, Breda said, noting that, unlike the Salvadorian autocrat, who has a grip on his congress, De la Espriella – whose party will hold only four of the Colombian Senate’s 108 seats and just one of the lower house’s 188 seats – “would not have the legislative majority that allowed Bukele to dismantle the rule of law and concentrate power in the executive”.
Even so, Breda believes the lawyer’s election could pose risks to Colombian democracy, as he has shown little regard for democratic checks and balances – or for human rights in general.
“I fear that security operations could become more lethal, with little impact on armed groups but serious consequences in terms of retaliation and civilian exposure to the conflict,” said the analyst, who recently published a report showing that US pressure on Latin American and Caribbean countries to embrace the “war on drugs” drove an 18% increase in clashes between security forces and armed groups in 2025 – something he believes could intensify under De la Espriella.
Breda said De la Espriella’s lead, more than a far-right groundswell, was part of an “anti-incumbent wave” that is removing from power leftwing presidents who, when elected four or five years ago, were seen as part of a leftist “pink tide”.
There is also, he added, a “general dissatisfaction towards the political party system”, which tends to favour candidates who present themselves as “outsiders”, as well as increasing pressure from the US, which is “making clear that closer ideological alignment to Washington comes with rewards, such as economic assistance in Argentina or security cooperation in Ecuador”.
Colombia is one of the few Latin American countries still governed by the left, alongside Mexico, Uruguay and Brazil.
Peru, now under an interim president, will hold its runoff on Sunday between the far-right Keiko Fujimori and the leftwing Roberto Sánchez. Brazil will hold elections in October, in which the incumbent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, will face the far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of the former president Jair Bolsonaro. Last week, Flávio held a video call with De la Espriella.
The lawyer has secured the endorsement of the third-place candidate, Paloma Valencia, as well as Trump.
In Argentina, the US president’s endorsement – and his threat to withdraw a promised bailout – were seen as decisive in securing a win for Milei’s party in Argentina’s midterm elections last year, although the White House’s backing recently failed to help Viktor Orbán secure re-election in Hungary.
Meanwhile, Cepeda’s first steps towards winning over voters were to initially amplify Petro’s allegations of electoral fraud, which have already been widely debunked, and to criticise De la Espriella’s use of the national football shirt.
The political analyst Gabriel Cifuentes said Petro was “doing considerable damage to Cepeda” by acting as “his campaign chief”, even though electoral law prohibits a sitting president from openly participating in campaigns.
“Cepeda’s campaign has made clear that it will not challenge Petro, but by failing to distance itself from him, they’re alienating important centrist sectors that see each of the president’s interventions as an authoritarian gesture,” he said.
