标签： South America

Colombia is entering a critical electoral moment on Sunday, as millions of voters head to the polls to select the country’s next president, wrapping up a campaign defined by deep domestic division and months of tense diplomatic friction between the outgoing left-wing administration and the U.S. government under former President turned incumbent Donald Trump.

Outgoing Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who is term-limited and cannot run for re-election, has spent months locked in public sparring with Trump over a range of divisive issues, from bilateral drug policy to Washington’s long history of intervention in Latin America. Petro has thrown his full political weight behind his preferred successor, Iván Cepeda, who is running against two prominent centre-right challengers: Abelardo de la Espriella and Paloma Valencia. As of pre-election polling, Cepeda holds a narrow lead over de la Espriella, but no candidate is on track to secure the outright majority needed to win the contest outright, making a June 21 run-off vote almost certain.

Voting opened at 8 a.m. local time (1 p.m. GMT) and will conclude at 4 p.m. local time, with results expected to trickle in through the evening. The outcome of this election carries sweeping stakes for both Colombia’s domestic future and its international posture: a win for Cepeda would lock in the Petro administration’s existing progressive agenda, while a centre-right victory would likely trigger a sharp pivot back toward closer security and diplomatic alignment with the United States.

Cepeda has run on a pledge to continue the outgoing government’s flagship “total peace” policy, an initiative that sought to negotiate ceasefires and long-term settlements with the armed insurgent groups and criminal gangs that have long controlled large swathes of Colombia’s territory and dominated the multi-billion dollar cocaine trade. The policy has faced harsh criticism in recent years, however, as many negotiated talks have stalled or collapsed entirely, leading to a sharp resurgence in armed violence across the country. A 2025 report from the International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed that civilian casualties from armed conflict in Colombia reached a 10-year high last year, underscoring the urgency of the next government’s response to security challenges.

By contrast, Cepeda’s centre-right opponents have vowed to abandon the negotiation strategy entirely, promising a full military crackdown on all armed groups and drug trafficking networks if they win power. The campaign has unfolded against a grim backdrop of persistent political violence: one local candidate was fatally shot during the campaign season last summer, and last week de la Espriella was forced to speak from behind bulletproof glass during a public rally in Medellín, a stark reminder of the risks facing political figures in the current climate.

The diplomatic rift between Petro and Trump has dominated the national conversation throughout the campaign. The capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro by U.S. forces in January left Petro as one of the last remaining left-wing leaders in Latin America who openly opposes the Trump administration’s regional agenda. Trump has repeatedly attacked Petro over cocaine production, accusing him of failing to stop the flow of Colombian cocaine into U.S. communities. At one particularly heated moment, Trump called Petro “a sick man who likes selling cocaine to the United States” and implied that Colombia could be targeted for U.S. military intervention next.

Trump’s criticisms are partially backed by data: the 2025 United Nations World Drug Report recorded that cocaine production in Colombia has surged to all-time record highs during Petro’s time in office. Petro has pushed back against these claims, arguing that his government has seized more illicit drugs than any previous Colombian administration, and disputes the United Nations’ methodology for counting production. While the two leaders appeared to repair their public relationship during a White House meeting in February, where Trump referred to Petro as “terrific”, the underlying tensions between the two governments have shaped the campaign’s core ideological divides.

Cepeda has echoed Petro’s core stance on U.S.-Colombia relations, insisting that Colombia must maintain its full sovereignty and refuse to become a “vassal state” to Washington. Even so, regional policy observers note that longstanding anti-drug cooperation between the two countries has continued uninterrupted through even the most heated public disputes. For their part, de la Espriella and Valencia have both promised to immediately restore the close security alliance with the U.S. that they argue the Petro administration has eroded.

As voters cast their ballots on Sunday, the entire world is watching: the result will not only determine how Colombia addresses its ongoing spiraling violence and drug trade, but will also reshape regional geopolitics at a moment of heightened U.S. influence across Latin America.

BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA – On a watershed Sunday for the South American nation, millions of Colombian voters headed to polling stations for the first round of a deeply consequential presidential election, where competing visions for national peace have split the country decades after a brutal, interminable armed conflict.

This contest, widely framed as a public verdict on the policies of departing President Gustavo Petro, arrives exactly one decade after Colombia signed what was billed as a historic peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known as FARC. The 2014 pact once raised bold hopes that Colombia could finally escape its generations-long cycle of clashes between state forces and rebel insurgencies, but widespread violence has reemerged in the years that followed, reaching a fever pitch in the months leading up to this election. Organized criminal factions have stepped up coordinated drone attacks, political campaigning has been repeatedly disrupted by armed assaults, and last June, a 39-year-old sitting politician and presidential aspirant, Miguel Uribe Turbay, was assassinated in a shooting at a public campaign rally.

For Colombia, where the pursuit of peace has long anchored the national political identity, the core question of how to resolve persistent conflict has once again driven a sharp wedge through the electorate. Though 14 candidates appear on the official ballot, the race has narrowed to a tight three-way contest between three contenders with fundamentally opposing approaches to the nation’s security crisis.

Leading in pre-election opinion polls is Senator Ivan Cepeda, a veteran peace activist and close ally of the outgoing Petro administration. Cepeda has pledged to continue building on Petro’s flagship “total peace” initiative, which seeks to open negotiations with all remaining active rebel and armed criminal groups to negotiate new ceasefires and lasting peace accords that address the roots of the ongoing violence. Critics point out that the existing peace strategy has largely fallen short of its goals: criminal networks have exploited government ceasefires to expand their territorial control and operations. Even so, Cepeda and Petro retain solid support from large swathes of the electorate thanks to progressive domestic reforms enacted under Petro, including a significant increase to the national minimum wage.

Challenging Cepeda from the right are two candidates, Abelardo de la Espriella and Paloma Valencia, both of whom have campaigned on promises of far harsher, military-first crackdowns on armed groups.

De la Espriella, a brash celebrity lawyer known by his nickname “The Tiger,” has seen his support surge in recent weeks. He has positioned himself as a political outsider who aims to replicate the hardline gang crackdown that El Salvador’s government carried out in recent years. That campaign succeeded in sharply lowering gang-related homicide rates but has drawn widespread international condemnation for systematic human rights abuses and extrajudicial detentions.

Valencia, meanwhile, is widely recognized as the political protégé of former Colombian president Álvaro Uribe, the influential hardline leader who held office from 2002 to 2010. Uribe’s government launched a massive military offensive that defeated large swathes of the FARC insurgency, but the campaign also resulted in thousands of civilian casualties. Both de la Espriella and Valencia have openly voiced their admiration for former U.S. President Donald Trump, who has advocated for far more aggressive pressure on Latin American nations to crack down on transnational criminal groups than most modern U.S. administrations.

Under Colombian electoral rules, a candidate must win an absolute majority of 50% of the vote to claim victory in the first round – an outcome that is almost unheard of in the nation’s modern electoral history. If no candidate hits that threshold, the top two finishers will advance to a head-to-head runoff election scheduled for June.

The deep divide over security policy is reflected clearly in the views of ordinary Colombian voters, who carry varying personal experiences of the nation’s long-running conflict. Maria Eugenia, a 57-year-old seamstress working in downtown Bogotá, told reporters she supports a full-scale military offensive against growing criminal groups, even if it comes with human rights tradeoffs. While she applauded Petro’s investments in improving Colombia’s public medical infrastructure, she said she is voting for de la Espriella because violence in rural regions of the country has spun out of control.

“Of course, whenever you take a hard line, there’s always going to be debate,” she said. “But some people are going to have to fall to clean up what needs to be cleaned.”

Just steps from her workshop, 26-year-old Cristian Morales offered a sharply contrasting view. He acknowledged that Petro’s peace plan has fallen short on many of its core promises, but argued that incremental reform of a strategy aimed at ending cycles of violence is far preferable to swinging to the opposite extreme of harsh military confrontation. Morales said he plans to cast his vote for Cepeda, pointing to the candidate’s commitments to protecting Colombia’s unique biodiversity and expanding public access to education as priorities, alongside his peace agenda. He argued that bold promises to fully uproot Colombia’s deeply entrenched conflict in a single four-year presidential term are unrealistic.

“The solution to this conflict isn’t aggressive confrontations. It will only end in more bloodshed,” Morales said. “It’s so difficult because it’s either dialogue or arms, and an internal conflict isn’t good for anyone.”

As Colombia prepares to select a new president in Sunday’s highly contested general election, a major diplomatic dispute has erupted between Bogotá and Quito, after Colombia’s foreign ministry formally accused Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa of deliberate interference in the country’s domestic democratic process.

The controversy centers on a meeting Noboa held Friday with right-wing Colombian presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella, during which Noboa announced he would roll back all tariffs on Colombian imports starting June 1. Noboa framed the conversation as a dialogue with an incoming administration, claiming the pair had secured formal agreements on bilateral trade coordination and cross-border security cooperation, including the repatriation of Ecuadorian fugitives hiding in Colombian territory.

Colombia’s foreign ministry rejected Noboa’s framing of the tariff rollback as a goodwill gesture in a Saturday statement, calling the action blatant meddling that violates core international principles of state sovereignty and non-intervention. “This interference by a foreign leader in the democratic process of another nation is a clear violation of non-intervention norms, a direct threat to our national sovereignty, and an attack on our democratic system,” the statement read.

The origins of the tariff dispute stretch back to January 2026, when Ecuador began progressively implementing import tariffs on Colombian goods, arguing that Bogotá had failed to effectively secure their shared 700-kilometer border. Ecuador’s strategic location, wedged between Colombia and Peru — the world’s two largest cocaine producers — has turned the country into a major transit hub for illicit drug shipments, making cross-border cartel activity a top political priority for Noboa’s administration. The Petro government in Bogotá has denied the border security allegations and previously retaliated with reciprocal economic measures after the tariffs were first imposed.

Sunday’s election comes at a moment of deepening political polarization in Colombia, after the election of left-wing President Gustavo Petro, the first leftist head of state in modern Colombian history, broke decades of dominance by centrist and conservative technocratic leadership. Petro is constitutionally barred from seeking re-election, and the race has narrowed between his chosen successor, left-wing candidate Iván Cepeda, and de la Espriella, the leading right-wing contender. Most pre-election polling puts Cepeda narrowly ahead, but no candidate is projected to win an outright majority on Sunday, forcing a run-off vote scheduled for June 21.

The election outcome is expected to reshape Colombia’s international alliances and its national strategy to combat rising gang-related violence, which has reached multi-decade highs across the country. Cepeda has pledged to continue Petro’s flagship “total peace” policy, which seeks negotiated political settlements with armed insurgent and drug-trafficking groups, though the talks have stalled in recent months as violence has reignited across rural and urban areas. By contrast, de la Espriella and other right-wing candidates have promised a full military crackdown on cartels, mirroring the hardline approach Noboa has adopted in Ecuador. Noboa deployed 75,000 police officers to Ecuador’s four most violence-plagued provinces in March, but the policy has so far coincided with a sharp spike in the country’s national murder rate.

The diplomatic row also lays bare deep ideological divides across Latin America. Noboa is a close ideological and political ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, and has joined the U.S.-led regional alliance targeting transnational drug cartels. Petro, by contrast, has had repeated high-profile clashes with the Trump administration over issues including drug policy and U.S. intervention in the region. Following the U.S. capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January 2026, Petro remains one of the few remaining left-wing leaders in the region unaligned with the Trump administration’s ideological agenda.

Both Trump and Petro have publicly acknowledged the possibility of U.S. military intervention in Colombia after Trump revived the Monroe Doctrine, claiming the U.S. should hold sole decision-making power over Western Hemisphere affairs. Trump has since shifted his focus to Cuba, openly discussing plans to topple the country’s communist government, which he has claimed is “ready to fall”.

Colombia’s election campaign has already been marred by violence: one candidate was assassinated in a shooting last summer, and last week de la Espriella addressed a rally in Medellín while standing behind bulletproof glass, a stark reminder of the security risks facing candidates. While Cepeda has echoed Petro’s stance that Colombia should not become a “vassal state” to the U.S., observers note that long-standing bilateral anti-drug cooperation between the two nations has persisted even through the height of diplomatic tensions between the Petro and Trump administrations.

CARACAS – Five months after Delcy Rodríguez took office as Venezuela’s interim president following a U.S. military intervention that removed longtime leader Nicolás Maduro from power, former opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González has publicly called for the immediate organization of fully free and credible national presidential elections.

The 76-year-old former diplomat, who first entered the national political spotlight as a last-minute replacement for barred opposition leader María Corina Machado in the July 2024 presidential vote, was formally recognized as the legitimate election winner by multiple sovereign nations. The opposition contested the official results of the 2024 vote, leveling widespread allegations of electoral fraud, while independent international observers have verified that unsealed electoral records confirm González won a majority of votes against Maduro.

In a public statement shared across major social media platforms Saturday, González argued that the current moment demands urgent action to lay the groundwork for new presidential elections that give Venezuelan citizens a direct voice in shaping the country’s future. He stressed that such a vote would act as a critical catalyst for restoring stable democratic institutions and establishing a functional, long-term national government.

González laid out non-negotiable preconditions for any legitimate electoral process: the vote must be overseen by independent electoral regulators, include both national and independent international observation missions, guarantee participation for all political factions, release all citizens detained for political reasons, and put a permanent end to targeted political persecution of opposition figures.

The former candidate framed himself as the committed guardian of the 2024 electoral mandate, through which Venezuelan voters chose freedom for their nation. Since September 2024, González has lived in exile in Spain, after Maduro’s ousted administration issued an arrest warrant accusing him of conspiracy, falsification of public documents and usurpation of power – all charges he has repeatedly and emphatically denied.

González’s call for new elections comes just days before the five-month anniversary of Rodríguez assuming the interim presidency on January 5. Rodríguez, who was once a political ally of Maduro, took power after Maduro and his wife were arrested and transported to the U.S. to face ongoing criminal prosecution. The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump formally recognized Rodríguez as Venezuela’s only legitimate head of state, and since her appointment, the two nations have made significant progress on a range of bilateral agreements. These include the full lifting of longstanding U.S. economic sanctions, new negotiations on expanded cooperation in the oil and energy sectors, and the full normalization of diplomatic relations between Caracas and Washington.

U.S. recognition of Rodríguez has allowed her administration to reconnect with major Western financial institutions and open the country back up to U.S. investors. As of yet, neither the Venezuelan interim government nor U.S. officials have signaled that new presidential elections will be held in the near future.

Machado, the original opposition candidate who was barred from running in 2024, recently gathered with other prominent opposition leaders in Panama to push for a full democratic transition in Venezuela. She has publicly confirmed her plan to return to Venezuela before the end of 2025 to run in the presidential election González is calling for.

BOGOTA – A sharp diplomatic dispute has erupted between neighboring Andean nations Colombia and Ecuador just 24 hours before Colombians head to the polls to choose their next president, with Bogota formally rejecting Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa’s recent pledge to scrap tariffs on Colombian imports as a blatant violation of international sovereignty.

Amid a sharp escalation of U.S. pressure on Cuba’s socialist government, the highest-ranking U.S. military commander for Latin America has held an in-person meeting with Cuban military leaders near the long-contested U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, marking another high-level encounter between the two adversarial nations amid shifting regional tensions.

The Friday meeting, described by U.S. Southern Command as a “brief exchange on operational security matters,” comes as the Trump administration ramps up coercive action against Cuban leaders, just weeks after U.S. forces captured Venezuelan autocratic leader Nicolás Maduro in a January raid that reshuffled power dynamics across the Caribbean. Speaking shortly after that operation, Trump issued a stark warning that Cuba would be “next” if its ruling government did not make sweeping concessions to U.S. demands.

In the months following Maduro’s capture, the Trump administration has layered on escalating punitive measures against Havana. A full oil blockade has cut off the island’s primary source of export revenue and energy supplies, while U.S. warships have maintained a persistent presence in Caribbean waters to underscore Washington’s military leverage. Most recently, federal prosecutors unsealed criminal indictments against a former top Cuban leader on multiple federal charges, a move that further escalated diplomatic friction between the two nations.

In a marked contradiction to its hard-line public stance, the Trump administration has quietly pursued exploratory diplomatic outreach to Cuban officials in recent months. Top administration figures, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, have both held closed-door talks with Cuban representatives to discuss potential avenues for improved bilateral relations. According to insiders familiar with the discussions, however, U.S. negotiators have left these meetings unsatisfied with the concessions offered by Havana, prompting the White House to approve additional rounds of economic sanctions targeting senior Cuban government officials and state-owned entities.

Beyond the rare security exchange with Cuban military leaders, U.S. Gen. Francis L. Donovan, the top U.S. commander for the region, also used his visit to the Guantanamo Bay base to conduct a security review of the installation. In a public post on the social platform X, U.S. Southern Command noted that Donovan discussed base security, the well-being of deployed service members and their families, and overall operational readiness with base leadership during his trip.

The U.S. has maintained a naval presence at Guantanamo Bay for more than a century, a presence that has been a constant source of friction between Washington and Havana ever since Cuba’s 1959 socialist revolution. Trump has repeatedly made clear that one of his core regional policy goals is removing Cuba’s current socialist leadership from power, even as he has kept the base operational amid escalating tensions.

Currently, the U.S. maintains a small contingent of naval vessels in the Caribbean, including at least one large amphibious assault ship. This force is significantly smaller than the deployment that was in place in the lead-up to the January raid that captured Maduro, reflecting a gradual drawdown of major combat assets in the region following that operation. To maintain a consistent security posture, the Pentagon announced Friday that a new rotation of 1,300 sailors and Marines will deploy to the region to replace the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, which first deployed to the Caribbean last summer.

On Thursday, the U.S. State Department announced plans to formally label two of Brazil’s largest and most violent criminal syndicates — the First Command of the Capital (PCC) and Red Command (CV) — as official Foreign Terrorist Organizations, a decision that has ignited immediate accusations of foreign political meddling in Brazil’s upcoming October presidential election. The designation, scheduled to take full effect on June 5, reclassifies the gangs as Specially Designated Global Terrorists until the formal designation enters into force. The move aligns with an aggressive counter-narcotics strategy first popularized by the Trump administration, which has prioritized military tactics including lethal boat strikes against groups labeled “narcoterrorists” across the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean. This approach carries forward a policy that has previously resulted in 199 recorded fatalities, with multiple survivors still unaccounted for in recent strike operations.

In a formal statement announcing the decision, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio emphasized the security threat posed by the two organizations. “CV and PCC are two of the most violent criminal organizations in Brazil. Together, they command thousands of members and have orchestrated brutal attacks against Brazilian police officers, public officials, and civilians,” Rubio said. “Their influence and illicit networks extend far beyond Brazil’s borders, across our region and into our country.” He added that the designation underscores the Trump administration’s “unwavering commitment to dismantling cartels and criminal organizations in our region and ensuring the safety of the American people.”

Industry experts estimate the two criminal groups have a combined membership of more than 50,000 people, with most of their transnational criminal connections rooted in Europe rather than North America. Despite their well-documented status as major players in international drug trafficking and organized crime, the timing of the U.S. announcement has become the center of a heated political firestorm in Brazil, where incumbent president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — who is running for reelection — has repeatedly warned that any such designation would be interpreted as outside interference designed to boost his far-right opponent, Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro.

Flávio Bolsonaro, handpicked by his father as the family’s political heir in this year’s race, and his political allies have spent months lobbying U.S. officials for the terrorist designation, claiming Lula has failed to take aggressive action against the two gangs. Former President Jair Bolsonaro is ineligible to run for office this cycle, as he is currently serving a 27-year prison sentence for convictions related to orchestrating a coup attempt following Brazil’s 2022 general election.

The controversy comes as Brazilian law enforcement is already ramping up its own crackdown on the criminal syndicates. Earlier on the same day as the U.S. announcement, Brazilian federal prosecutors launched a large-scale operation targeting fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion tied to both the PCC and CV as part of an ongoing multi-year investigation. Brazilian officials notched a major victory against the PCC in August last year, when they dismantled a sprawling money laundering network fronted by legitimate businesses including gas stations, perfume retail shops, and a registered financial services firm located on one of São Paulo’s busiest commercial corridors. The operation, codenamed Hidden Carbon, uncovered that the network had laundered at least 6 billion Brazilian reals, equal to roughly $1.1 billion, over the course of its operation.

Brazilian officials have pushed back against the U.S. move, affirming support for cross-border cooperation to combat organized crime while rejecting any framing of the decision as legitimate intervention in Brazil’s domestic affairs. “Public security is a key topic for social economic development. Organized crime is an evil that must be fought. International cooperation is welcome, especially in matters of money laundering and arms trade,” said Celso Amorim, Lula’s top foreign policy advisor and former Brazilian foreign minister, in his immediate response to Rubio’s announcement. “(But) pretext for intervention is unacceptable.”

Independent political analysts agree that the timing is no coincidence, arguing that the designation is a direct response to lobbying from Flávio Bolsonaro during a recent trip to Washington D.C. “Flávio Bolsonaro’s campaign was hit by his problematic businesses with a corrupted banker, he came to the Trump administration to ask for some help and he got this one,” said Thomas Traumann, a leading Brazilian political analyst. Traumann noted that Lula previously saw a significant boost in polling after the Trump administration imposed tariffs on Brazilian exports, which allowed Lula to rally voters around a narrative defending national sovereignty. “It is likely he will do it again,” Traumann added.

Experts have noted that neither Lula’s administration nor the previous Bolsonaro government can claim major success in dismantling the two long-standing criminal groups, despite repeated law enforcement raids and operations targeting their networks over recent years. As of Thursday evening, Lula had not responded to requests for comment from the Associated Press, and Flávio Bolsonaro had not issued any public statement on the U.S. decision. Public security policy is widely expected to emerge as a defining wedge issue that separates the two leading candidates in the coming election cycle.