{"id":1437,"date":"2026-06-01T16:05:34","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T16:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southfloridamovingguides.com\/?p=1437"},"modified":"2026-06-01T16:05:34","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T16:05:34","slug":"pro-trump-candidate-takes-spotlight-in-colombias-presidential-race-with-vow-of-crime-crackdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southfloridamovingguides.com\/?p=1437","title":{"rendered":"Pro-Trump candidate takes spotlight in Colombia’s presidential race with vow of crime crackdown"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) \u2014 Bombastic pro-Trump lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella pulled ahead in Colombia\u2019s presidential race in the first round of elections over the weekend, capitalizing on a growing appetite for crackdowns on criminal groups across Latin America.<\/p>\n

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Second-place finisher, progressive Sen. Iv\u00e1n Cepeda, and his ally, President Gustavo Petro, have questioned the election results, without providing evidence.<\/p>\n

Cepeda on Monday called on de la Espriella to debate him ahead of their June 21 runoff. De la Espriella replied on X: \u201cAre you ready, coward? \u2026 First, acknowledge the election results and let\u2019s debate right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

De la Espriella rapidly gained traction ahead of Sunday\u2019s election and won nearly 44% of the vote. Cepeda, who had consistently led polling, won less than 41%.<\/p>\n

In the runoff, De la Espriella is expected to scoop up additional votes from Colombians who supported other conservative candidates in the first round.<\/p>\n

Cepeda will face an uphill battle, said Sergio Guzm\u00e1n, a political analyst. De la Espriella’s win is “a shift in public opinion that is very difficult to overcome. So now Abelardo is emerging as the likely favorite to win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Markets in Colombia and the Colombian peso jumped on Monday, likely a product of de la Espriella\u2019s proposal to roll back regulations on businesses and willingness to open the country to fracking \u2014 a sharp turn from Petro\u2019s environmental agenda.<\/p>\n

A political shift in the Americas continues<\/p>\n

The 47-year-old De la Espriella, known as \u201cEl Tigre\u201d or \u201cThe Tiger,\u201d has never held office in Colombia and prided himself on living a luxurious life in Italy before deciding to run for president.<\/p>\n

He pitched himself as an outsider who would cozy up to U.S. President Donald Trump and follow El Salvador President Nayib Bukele’s war on gangs, which has driven down homicide rates but fueled accusations of human rights abuses.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will wipe out narcoterrorism and those who I’ve declared a military target like cockroaches, like rats. I will unleash upon them the wrath of God never seen before,\u201d de la Espriella said in an interview with The Associated Press in the final stretch of the campaign, where he promised to open 10 mega-prisons to fight crime.<\/p>\n

He joins a growing number of leaders across Latin America, from Chile to Honduras, seeking to latch onto the \u201cBukele model\u201d as voters across Latin America are ditching leaders who pitched progressive policies aimed at addressing the root issues of conflict such as lack of opportunities for young people and corruption.<\/p>\n

De la Espriella’s supporters come from a wide range of backgrounds. Yolanda Per\u00e9z, a 64-year-old woman serving coffee in Colombia’s capital, Bogot\u00e1, said with a wink the day before the election: \u201cI’m thinking of voting for El Tigre.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Miguel Maheca, a 20-year-old first-time voter, flashed his ballot to his mother as he strolled out of the polling station on Sunday, saying with a grin, \u201cLove isn’t what’s going to make us safe in Colombia.”<\/p>\n

But experts say El Salvador’s security successes will be nearly impossible to replicate in a country like Colombia, which is more than 50 times larger than the Central American nation and has many more armed groups fighting for territory.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration is playing a more aggressive role in Latin America than any U.S. government in decades, putting mounting pressure on countries like Colombia, Mexico and Ecuador to crack down on crime.<\/p>\n

De la Espriella made a name for himself as a lawyer defending high-profile clients such as former President \u00c1lvaro Uribe as well as controversial figures like Alex Saab, a close ally of Venezuela\u2019s ousted president Nicol\u00e1s Maduro who faces legal issues in the U.S.<\/p>\n

Cepeda had vowed to carry on peace efforts<\/p>\n

The progressive Cepeda has promised to carry on his ally Petro’s fraught plan to achieve \u201ctotal peace\u201d by negotiating peace pacts with guerrillas and criminal gangs.<\/p>\n

Their political movement was born from a rejection by many Colombians of a militarized offensive by Uribe in decades past to beat back guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Thousands of civilians were killed by Colombian forces in a scandal known as \u201cfalse positives.\u201d<\/p>\n

De la Espriella \u201crepresents a return to the paramilitary politics and drug-trafficking \u2014 a mafia-run, plutocratic and corrupt past that the country experienced during \u00c1lvaro Uribe\u2019s two administrations,\u201d Cepeda said on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Petro, a former rebel, won Colombia’s presidency in 2022, ending decades of domination by leaders from Uribe’s political movement. He gained massive support from rural-dwelling, Indigenous and poorer Colombians who felt they had never been directly spoken to by the country’s leaders.<\/p>\n

Now that movement is backed into a corner.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is de la Espriella\u2019s election to lose,\u201d wrote Renata Segura, director of International Crisis Group’s Latin America and the Caribbean Program. \u201cCepeda thought he could win appealing squarely to the left, and that proved to be a massive mistake. How he pivots in the next month will determine if he has any chance to win.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Follow AP\u2019s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/latin-america<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

This version corrects the spelling of the first name of the leading candidate to Abelardo.<\/p>\n

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BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) \u2014 Bombastic pro-Trump lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella pulled ahead in Colombia\u2019s presidential race in the first round of elections over the weekend, capitalizing on a growing appetite for crackdowns on criminal groups across Latin America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1436,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nPro-Trump candidate takes spotlight in Colombia's presidential race with vow of crime crackdown - South Florida Moving Guides<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/southfloridamovingguides.com\/?p=1437\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pro-Trump candidate takes spotlight in Colombia's presidential race with vow of crime crackdown - 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