Colombians will vote on Sunday in what experts say is a crucial test for the Latin American left as right-wing leaders are on the rise across the region, at times helped along by President Trump.
As the campaign comes to a close, polls suggest the contest has boiled down to a stark choice between the left and the far right. On the left is Iván Cepeda, a bookish senator representing continuity with Gustavo Petro, the outspoken president who often clashed with Mr. Trump and is limited to a single term.
Mr. Cepeda’s victory would keep Colombia among major Latin American countries still governed by leftist leaders, like Mexico and Brazil, which also faces a pivotal election this year.
On the right is Abelardo De La Espriella, a fast-talking lawyer who has never held elected office and whose iron-fisted rhetoric, trim dark beard and promises to build 10 mega-prisons have drawn comparisons to Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s divisive leader and a Trump ally.
Trailing the two is Paloma Valencia, a conservative senator who would become Colombia’s first female president. Though backed by an influential former president, Álvaro Uribe, and other powerful politicians, Ms. Valencia, 48, seemed to lose ground to Mr. De La Espriella in the campaign’s final stretch.
Polls indicate that no candidate has the more than 50 percent of the vote needed to win outright, and the election is expected to head to a runoff in June.
The top candidates represent the “dramatically different directions the country could take,” said Michael Shifter, a Latin America expert and former president of Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington research institute. “There is an enormous amount at stake.”
Colombia, Latin America’s third-largest nation and the world’s main cocaine supplier, stands to play a key role in Mr. Trump’s crackdown on drug trafficking.
The election comes as Mr. Trump takes a firmer hand in the region, pledging to eradicate cartels and organized crime as part of a national security strategy aimed at reasserting U.S. dominance in the hemisphere.
He has sought to expand the U.S. military footprint and to secure loyal allies, endorsing candidates from Argentina to Honduras.
It also comes as Colombia has been convulsed by what analysts say is the highest level of violence since the government signed a landmark 2016 peace accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, dismantling Latin America’s largest rebel army.
Amid enormous global demand for cocaine and gold, turf wars have broken out between former FARC combatants, the ELN rebel group, paramilitaries and new groups, displacing thousands and leading to intensifying clashes with Colombia’s military.
The groups have spread into neighboring Venezuela and Ecuador.
Critics of Mr. Petro have blamed him for the crisis, saying his “Total Peace” plan, which paused some military action during talks, allowed armed groups to expand.
Mr. De La Espriella, 47, has capitalized on that criticism, tying both Mr. Petro and Mr. Cepeda, a human rights advocate and peace negotiator, to the surge in violence.
The far-right candidate has gained legions of supporters virtually overnight. They call themselves “Defensores de la Patria,” or defenders of the homeland, dress as tigers — his campaign mascot — and salute him at rallies.
“This is not a candidacy,” Mr. De La Espriella told a Colombian magazine this week. “It’s a popular movement.”
But he faces strong opposition from a formidable, popular movement on the left.
Mr. Petro, whatever his shortcomings as president, is a shrewd political operator, Mr. Shifter said, and has built a broad coalition capable of mobilizing votes for Mr. Cepeda, 63.
In 2022, Mr. Petro traveled to the farthest reaches of Colombia, promising to represent marginalized groups, whom he called “the nobodies” — from Indigenous groups to Black communities on the Pacific.
Despite a term marked by scandals, a troubled health care overhaul and heavy spending, Mr. Petro is his country’s first-ever leftist leader and still commands a loyal base that sees his presidency as the dawn of a progressive era.
“Petro was the drill that began opening that path,” said Jackeline Muñoz, a systems engineer who attended a campaign rally for Mr. Cepeda in Bogotá, the capital. If the right wins, she said she feared the poor would “disappear into anonymity again.”
In the run-up to the election, Mr. Petro substantially raised the minimum wage, bolstering support for Mr. Cepeda’s run.
But violence and lawlessness have overshadowed other issues.
In Chocó, a remote region on the Pacific Coast where support for Mr. Petro has run deep, blockades by armed groups have cut communities off from food for weeks.
Business owners say they have been forced to pay regular fees to the groups, or close.
Urban residents also complain of rampant extortion.
In Medellín, Juan Esteban Vélez said he recently had to move because gang members were demanding pay for “protection” of his parked car.
He called security the election’s central issue.
“Without security,” he said, “there is no economy, no livelihood, no rest.”
Mr. Vélez said he would welcome a crackdown like the one Mr. Bukele carried out on El Salvador’s gangs, even if it meant mass arrests. (Mr. Bukele has detained more than 80,000 people and faces accusations of human rights abuses against prisoners.)
Both Mr. De La Espriella and Ms. Valencia say they would not negotiate with armed groups and would more aggressively deploy Colombia’s military and police. Mr. De La Espriella has pledged to reclaim control over conflict zones within 90 days of taking office.
Some experts say the military is already doing all it can.
“De La Espriella has acted like there’s a knob of military pressure and you can just turn it up,” said Elizabeth Dickinson, the deputy director for Latin America for the International Crisis Group. “The problem is the knob is already all the way up.”
Mr. Cepeda has refused to reject “Total Peace” outright.
“There will be a peace policy,” he said this year. “Will it take the same form it did under this government? Most likely not.”
He has said his government would invest more in conflict zones, creating jobs and supporting schools to stem child recruitment by armed groups.
The presidential campaign has itself been marred by violence, with a senator and presidential hopeful, Miguel Uribe Turbay, fatally shot at a rally last year. Prosecutors say the teenage gunman was hired by a FARC dissident group.
In April, around 20 people were killed and dozens were injured in a bombing on a major highway that was blamed on former FARC combatants.
Two campaign workers for Mr. De La Espriella, including a former mayor, were gunned down this month by masked men on motorcycles.
Candidates reported receiving death threats. Mr. De La Espriella delivered campaign speeches from a bulletproof booth.
He has sought to link Mr. Cepeda to the once-leftist armed group behind many threats and attacks, calling him “the heir to Petro and the FARC.”
Mr. Cepeda’s father was a senator and left-wing party member who was assassinated in 1994. Colombian courts later found evidence of a state-backed effort to exterminate the party.
Mr. Cepeda himself was a communist youth leader and studied in communist Bulgaria, making him an easy target for the right. He has said he saw the pitfalls of Soviet rule.
Mr. De La Espriella, a criminal defense lawyer, has also faced questions about his past.
Before entering politics, he lived in Miami and Florence. He represented wealthy Colombians, including Alex Saab, a billionaire tycoon and fixer for Nicolás Maduro, the former Venezuelan leader. U.S. prosecutors accused Mr. Saab of laundering millions of dollars intended for Venezuela’s poor.
Mr. De La Espriella has dismissed questions about his relationship to Mr. Saab as attacks by “activist” journalists.
As the race heated up, figures on both the right and the left — including Mr. Petro — predicted electoral fraud, without providing evidence.
While Mr. Trump has not endorsed a candidate, Republican lawmakers invested in the right-wing rise in Latin America have urged Colombians to vote out the left.
Establishment figures in Colombia have done the same. Yet according to Mr. Shifter, the analyst, such voices may have little influence.
“This is a populist election on two different sides. This is anger at the establishment” and its failures, he said. “Both sides are tapping into that.”
Luis Ferré-Sadurní and Genevieve Glatsky contributed reporting from Bogotá, Colombia.
