Colombia’s president-elect, Abelardo de la Espriella, has yet to take office but already his election has produced a surge in far-right mobilisation and concerns about human rights. Recent incidents have emphasised why the progressive and pro-peace movement is deeply alarmed at what Colombia’s next government could be planning, and how the election has empowered right-wing extremism in the country.
Curtailed under the Petro government, Colombia’s far right – whether in electoral politics or on the streets – is openly relishing what lies ahead. Given the country’s history of intense repression of social activism, trade unions and the political left, many fear a violent rollback of the gains made through the 2016 peace agreement, the 2022 election of the Historic Pact and other achievements of social struggle.
The far right’s empowerment was clearly expressed by Medellin councillor Andrés Felipe Rodríguez Puerta, who belongs to the establishment Democratic Centre party. In a city council session on 23 June, two days after De la Espriella’s victory, Rodríguez Puerta called for the armed forces to bomb municipalities that voted strongly in favour of progressive candidate Iván Cepeda, whose vote was over 80 per cent in some zones historically impacted by conflict and state neglect. Rodríguez Puerta’s justification? That here is where ‘this country’s bandits’ can be found. He did not produce any evidence to back his claim and is now under investigation for the comments.
On 8 July, President Petro shared a video on social media which showed the occupants of a jeep flying a nazi flag while driving through the city of Valledupar. ‘No police stopped them, when Nazi symbols are banned worldwide,’ the president wrote. Such fascistic symbols and tendencies have become more prominent since the election. Aware of the implications of De la Espriella’s election, the CUT trade union federation swiftly declared itself in opposition to the ‘fascist and neoliberal’ incoming government.
Meanwhile, a return to authoritarian and repressive forms of social control appears on the cards, after De la Espriella’s appointed Defence Minister, retired general Jorge Mora López, announced that the riot police unit, the Mobile Anti-Disturbance Squadron (ESMAD), would be reconstituted after the Petro government changed its name and refocused its duties as the Unit for Dialogue and Maintenance of Order (UNDMO). The ESMAD has long been notorious for human rights abuses, with human rights groups and progressive politicians calling for its disbandment over the intense police violence during protests in 2021. Under Petro, state human rights violations fell significantly as agents were no longer guaranteed impunity if they committed abuses.
Prior to Petro’s election, ESMAD units were routinely deployed during protests to suppress civil unrest, often with ‘excessive use of force’. Emblematic cases of ESMAD violence include the 2005 killings of 15-year-old Nicolás Neira and university student Jhony Silva, that of another student, Óscar Salas, the following year, and the high-profile killing of 18-year-old Dilan Cruz as he ran from police during National Strike protests in Bogota in November 2019. This week, the Cundinamarca Administrative Court found the ESMAD responsible for Dilan’s death, with ESMAD agent Manuel Cubillos having fired the projectile that impacted the teenager’s head.
The De la Espriella administration is taking steps to fortify the repressive policing apparatus, likely in preparation of social resistance generated by its hardline policies. The 2018-22 government of Iván Duque – who belonged to the same Democratic Centre party as Medellin councilman Rodríguez Puerta – repeatedly smeared legitimate protest as ‘vandalism’ or ‘terrorism’, facilitating the conditions for police to commit abuses. After four years of relative police restraint under Petro, we can now anticipate an increase in state violence towards civil society mobilisation.