by Progressive International | June 23, 2026
Colombia — and all of Latin America — braces for darkness. The far-right candidate Abelardo de la Espriella appears to have won Colombia’s presidential election by just 250,000 votes — the slimmest margin in the country’s history — marking the next goosestep in the far-right’s march to power across the continent.
But Abelardo de la Espriella is not a conventional conservative, nor a simple showman like Javier Milei. He represents a far more dangerous ideology of right-wing violence and intimidation. Few understand this threat better than Colombia’s progressive forces, who De la Espriella has promised to “disembowel.”
Just days before Colombia’s presidential runoff on 21 June, Senator Iván Cepeda — the candidate of the Pacto Histórico, a member of the Progressive International — lodged a formal criminal complaint against Abelardo de la Espriella. The complaint, filed with both the Colombian Attorney General’s Office and the International Criminal Court (ICC), alleges crimes including financing paramilitary terrorism and illicit enrichment.
Cepeda’s complaint charges that De la Espriella maintained extensive ties with the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) — a paramilitary group that has terrorized the country for decades, resulting in the murders of nearly 100,000 Colombians. At the center of the accusations is FIPAZ (Fundación Iniciativas por la Paz), an NGO that De la Espriella created in 2004 that Cepeda alleges functioned as a sort of paramilitary front group. According to the denouncement, FIPAZ was both financed by the AUC and served as a vehicle through which De la Espriella channeled resources back to the paramilitary group, effectively playing “the dual role of being financed by and, at the same time, financing paramilitary organizations.”
The evidence of De la Espriella’s paramilitary connections is extensive, compelling, and terrifying. The presumptive president-elect is an enthusiastic advocate for exacting violence against his perceived ‘internal enemies’ — labelling them “rats and cockroaches.” He has even gone so far as to praise Netanyahu and the Zionist genocide in Gaza, claiming that Colombia should adopt the tactics deployed against the Palestinian people to “defend Colombia.”
It is, then, little coincidence that De la Espriella has garnered the forthright endorsements of both the State of Israel and its US backers in Washington. The latter know De la Espriella well: he is a card-carrying member of the Mar-a-Lago set.
According to a recent letter by a group of US Members of Congress, De la Espriella is connected to at least 14 Florida-based shell companies and several multi-million dollar real estate purchases in Florida. Evidence suggests that at least one transaction may have been funded in part by Alex Saab, a Colombian-Venezuelan businessman currently under indictment for money laundering in the United States and De la Espriella’s friend and former client.
Donald Trump was among the first international leaders to congratulate De la Espriella, before the final results are announced later this week, posting on Truth Social that “He Won, BIG!” and calling to congratulate him directly. Regional right-wing leaders including Argentina’s Javier Milei, Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa, and Chile’s José Antonio Kast also extended congratulations.
As President, De la Espriella has promised to dismantle the separation of powers and rule by decree if his agenda is impeded. He has pledged to tear up the peace process and wage war against social movement leaders, Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities, peasants, and trade unionists. He is already aligning with Trump on a security cooperation agenda that will put hundreds of thousands of lives at risk. He is, then, not just Colombia’s problem; he is the hemisphere’s most dangerous expression of the new far right, and he is coming in hot.
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