Colombia’s national government has contracted five parametric agricultural insurance policies covering 14,402 smallholder farmers across Sucre, Córdoba, Cundinamarca, Meta and Chocó, with protection extending to as many as 41,600 people in farming households. The policies provide up to $20.14 million in coverage against drought and excess rainfall as Colombia prepares for the anticipated effects of El Niño in the second half of 2026.

The policies took effect August 1, 2026, giving participating departments a financial mechanism designed to respond more quickly when severe weather thresholds are reached.

“Preparing for El Niño means acting before disasters strike. Through this collaboration between the national government, the five participating departments and international partners, we are providing smallholder farmers with the financial protection they need to manage climate risks and protect their livelihoods.” – Lucy Inés García Montes, Governor of Sucre

The initiative is led by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MADR) and FINAGRO, in coordination with the governments of the five participating departments.

The program was delivered through the Tripartite Agreement Programme, a public-private partnership involving the Insurance Development Forum (IDF), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), with financing channeled through the InsuResilience Solutions Fund (ISF).

How parametric insurance works

Unlike conventional agricultural insurance, which generally requires an assessment of physical losses before a claim can be paid, the policies use a satellite-derived Water Balance Index monitored at the municipal level.

The index compares current conditions with historical data to identify periods of severe drought or excess rainfall. When predetermined thresholds are exceeded, payments are triggered automatically, potentially allowing affected farmers to receive financial support without waiting for individual loss assessments.

The product was co-designed by MADR with an IDF-member consortium comprising Guy Carpenter, Swiss Re, AXA Climate, Munich Re, insurtech company Raincoat and Colombian insurer La Previsora.

The consortium members and ISF co-financed the initiative, while the first-year premium was jointly funded by the Colombian government and ISF.

First departmental use of parametric insurance

The program represents the first use of parametric insurance by departmental governments in Colombia as a tool for agricultural risk management, according to the organizations involved.

For participating departments, the coverage is intended to provide a source of rapid financing following severe climate events while reducing reliance on emergency public funds. The initiative is also designed to establish the technical, legal and financial foundations for expanding parametric agricultural insurance to additional departments.

José Fernando Sánchez, senior vice president of Guy Carpenter Colombia and an IDF member, said the consortium’s participation demonstrated the potential of public-private collaboration to protect livelihoods and strengthen Colombia’s insurance market.

Dr. Annette Detken, head of the InsuResilience Solutions Fund, said climate-risk insurance can help smallholder farmers and rural communities recover more quickly from drought and excess rainfall.

The UNDP worked with MADR and FINAGRO to integrate the insurance policies into Colombia’s broader agricultural risk-management framework. Its work included supporting product development and strengthening the institutional capacity of departmental governments to adopt parametric insurance.

The program comes as Colombia seeks to strengthen financial tools for managing agricultural exposure to increasingly volatile weather conditions. By using predefined climate indicators rather than conventional claims assessments, parametric coverage is designed to provide liquidity soon after a qualifying event and help farmers maintain their livelihoods and productive capacity.

Building a model for climate-risk financing

The five policies cover farmers in departments with different agricultural profiles and climate exposures, creating a multi-region test of how satellite-based insurance can operate within Colombia’s decentralized agricultural risk-management system.

The initiative’s backers say the experience could provide a foundation for scaling parametric insurance to other parts of the country, while building local government capacity to identify, finance and manage climate risks.

For smallholder farmers, the immediate benefit is financial protection against weather events that can damage crops and undermine household income. For governments and insurers, the program offers a way to shift part of the financial burden of climate-related agricultural losses away from emergency response and toward pre-arranged risk financing.

The Insurance Development Forum is a public-private partnership co-chaired by UNDP and the World Bank Group that brings insurance expertise together with public policy and development priorities to strengthen resilience to disasters.

Headline photo by Frank Meriño via Pexels)

More than 600 students from indigenous, Afro-descendant, and campesino communities across Colombia have arrived at the EcoCampus of the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (UPB) in Medellín for the in-person phase of the Licenciatura en Etnoeducación, the university’s ethnoeducation teaching degree.

The residency is run in partnership with the Instituto Misionero de Antropología (IMA). Students come from communities including the Awá, Embera, Kogui, Tikuna, and Wayuu peoples. UPB said more than 26 languages are represented among the participants, who take part in projects that focus on teaching their languages, traditions, cultural practices, and their communities’ own systems of governance.

“Through this degree program, the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana generates a real impact in the territories. We are proud to offer professional training to indigenous, Afro-descendant, and campesino teachers who, because of the geographic conditions of their communities, face greater barriers to accessing higher education.” — Olga Lucía Arbeláez Rojas, coordinator of the Licenciatura en Etnoeducación, Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana

Participants come from departments including Cauca, Putumayo, Amazonas, Vichada, Guainía, Chocó, Sucre, Córdoba, and Antioquia, along with students from Venezuela and Kenya.

UPB is marking 53 years of the Licenciatura en Etnoeducación, which it describes as a program that has brought higher education to communities far from major urban centers and now counts more than 5,000 graduates.

The model combines academic work carried out in the students’ home territories with intensive in-person sessions in Medellín. Each semester, students travel to the UPB EcoCampus to strengthen skills, share experiences, and consolidate knowledge they later apply in their communities.

“Through this degree program, the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana generates a real impact in the territories. We are proud to offer professional training to indigenous, Afro-descendant, and campesino teachers who, because of the geographic conditions of their communities, face greater barriers to accessing higher education,” said Olga Lucía Arbeláez Rojas, coordinator of the program.

The degree integrates anthropology, linguistics, pedagogy, and the social sciences, training students to work as promoters of ethnodevelopment and community-led change in their own regions.

According to UPB, graduates of the program work as teachers, cultural managers, farmers, and directors of community organizations, and some serve as mayors, councilmembers, and secretaries of education in different regions of the country.

More information about the program is available on UPB’s ethnoeducation page.

Two men. Both running to be the next president of Colombia. Both swear they are tough, that they are clean, that they are the answer to a country that is exhausted. And both of them have a problem with the company they keep.

One is a defense lawyer who built his career representing mobsters, paramilitaries, and at least one alleged front man for the Maduro regime — and he tells you those relationships were strictly professional. The other fought to spring a FARC commander out of a maximum-security holding cell — and he tells you that relationship was strictly professional too. One says, in effect, “I only knew the narco because I was his attorney.” The other says, “I only knew the guerrilla because I was a peace negotiator.” Same sentence, opposite ends of the political spectrum. It is the strangest mirror in Colombian politics.

This Sunday, June 21, Colombians return to the polls for the runoff. In the first round on May 31, the right’s Abelardo de la Espriella came first with about 43.7 percent. The left’s Iván Cepeda came second with about 40.9 percent. No one else is left. Whoever wins walks into the Casa de Nariño on August 7.

What follows is an analysis, not an endorsement. I am pro-business, anti-crime, and anti-communist, and I am not Colombian, so I will not presume to tell Colombians how to vote. What I can do is lay out who these two men are, where they came from, and the honest pros and cons of each — because both carry serious problems, and readers with capital, operations, or ties in Colombia deserve them laid out straight. Much of the biographical reporting here draws on the long-form profiles published by La Silla Vacía, among the best political journalism in the country, and on Finance Colombia‘s own coverage of the race.

Who is Abelardo de la Espriella?

Start with de la Espriella, since he holds a slight polling lead. His campaign events are not subtle: the lights go yellow, blue, and red, footage of tigers plays on the screens, smoke machines fire, the national anthem swells, and out he comes flanked by bodyguards in a bulletproof vest, declaring, “Here is your tiger, roaring and biting.” The tiger is his symbol — claw, territory, attack — and the crowd chant is ponle la raya al tigre, “put the stripe on the tiger.” It is a show, and he runs it the same way every time, with discipline.

According to La Silla Vacía’s profile, Abelardo was born in Bogotá in 1978 and grew up in Sahagún and Montería, in Córdoba on the Caribbean side. His mother calls the family riquitos de pueblo — “small-town rich.” A respected name and political connections, but not the rosca, the Bogotá elite, and not one of the great national fortunes. His father was a Liberal Party congressman and an early backer of Álvaro Uribe in Córdoba in 2001; when Uribe reached the presidency, he made the elder De la Espriella a notary. That is where the long relationship between the De la Espriella and Uribe families begins.

From childhood, Abelardo wanted to be seen. By his family’s account he sang opera in the bathroom, had a children’s radio program his father arranged, got himself onto regional television as a teenager, and promised his grandmother a limousine in Miami. He studied law at the Sergio Arboleda University in Bogotá — not an academic powerhouse, but a real breeding ground for the Colombian right — and hustled the whole way through, selling whiskey, perfume, clothing, and emeralds on consignment. The man has always been building a legend about himself.

Here is the part he does not lead with on stage. De la Espriella made his name as a defense lawyer, and not for choirboys. His client list reads like a rogues’ gallery: politicians tied to paramilitary groups, the Nule brothers of the carrusel de contratos contracting scandal in Bogotá, the pyramid-scheme operator David Murcia of DMG, the disgraced Constitutional Court magistrate Jorge Pretelt, and — the big one — Álex Saab, the man the United States accused of being a front man for Nicolás Maduro. Early in his career, at 26, he did legal and public-relations work around the paramilitary demobilization at Santa Fe de Ralito through an NGO he ran. His childhood friend from Córdoba is Salvatore Mancuso, the paramilitary chief.

He will tell you — and it is a legitimate argument — that every defendant has a right to counsel, and that defending an unpopular client is not the same as committing the client’s crimes. Fair enough. We will return to it.

After the lawyering came the brand. He launched a rum called Ron Defensor, “the Defender,” with the vallenato star Silvestre Dangond. He launched a clothing line, released music, wrote books, went through an atheist phase, and then, roughly six years ago, underwent a very public religious conversion. Now he is the “God and family” candidate who calls himself “the Cyrus of Colombia.” By his own design he is a sybarite: Italian suits every year, a Miami mansion valued north of $5 million USD, a private plane, the whole production.

Three facts to keep in your carriel for later. First, he has never held elected office; he ran for a Bogotá council seat as a student in the 1990s, lost, and stayed out of electoral politics for nearly thirty years. Second, he holds three citizenships — American, Italian, and Colombian. Third, his running mate is José Manuel Restrepo, a name that returns in a big way when we reach the pros.

“The ‘tough on crime’ candidate has spent his career defending criminals, and the ‘human rights’ candidate stays silent on half the human rights abuses in his own backyard.” — Loren Moss, Finance Colombia

Who is Iván Cepeda?

If de la Espriella’s story is about a man who wanted to be seen, Cepeda’s is about a man shaped by a death.

On August 9, 1994, a young Iván Cepeda took a bus to Javeriana University, where he taught philosophy, after letting his father leave the house first. On the way he came upon ambulances, police cars, and a crowd around a bullet-riddled car. It was his father’s car. Manuel Cepeda, a senator for the Unión Patriótica, had just been assassinated.

The detail that explains Iván Cepeda is what he did next. He did not collapse over the body. He pulled from his jacket a column his father had written about another murdered activist, crossed the street to tell his wife, and then turned and spoke to journalists — composed, on message, calling on the president and the courts to act. “When my father was murdered,” he later said, “I already knew how I should act, what I should say.” He turned private grief into public, political language. La Silla Vacía describes his entire method of politics as organized around the truth of the victims, and that is exactly right.

Cepeda was born in 1962, while his father was in prison for interviewing a survivor of the army’s bombing of Marquetalia, the peasant enclave that became the founding myth of the FARC. His parents, Manuel Cepeda and Yira Castro, were journalists, communists, and revolutionaries; politics was the air the household breathed. At 13 he was in the Communist Youth. At 17, after his mother’s death, his father sent him to study philosophy in Sofia, Bulgaria. He returned in 1987, by his own account disillusioned with Soviet Marxism and the privilege he had seen inside the party there.

Abelardo de la Espriella is a millionaire defense attorney, singer & rum impresario. (photo: Twitter screencapture)

His father’s assassination was the turning point. The Unión Patriótica — a party born of a peace process, a vehicle for the FARC and the Communist Party to enter electoral politics — was then systematically exterminated, with thousands of members killed. Cepeda channeled all of it. He created the Manuel Cepeda Foundation, built memorial galleries with families of the disappeared, and founded MOVICE, the Movement of Victims of State Crimes. He pursued his father’s case until the Colombian state was held responsible and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights condemned the country.

Then he found his great adversary: Álvaro Uribe. For Cepeda, Uribe symbolizes the establishment he believes must confess its responsibility for paramilitarism and the killing of the left. He spent years pursuing Uribe — prison visits to extradited paramilitaries in the United States, the 2014 debate in Congress — and that work ultimately produced the witness-tampering case that put the former president on trial. Cepeda became, as La Silla Vacía puts it, the leftist who managed to put Uribe in the dock. That is the engine of his political career.

He reached Congress in 2010, famously arriving with a bucket, broom, and mop, promising to clean up a legislature stained by parapolítica — the scandal of lawmakers who colluded with paramilitary groups. He has been there ever since, four terms, mostly on the Second Committee, which handles military promotions, security, and foreign relations. The crucial point about his experience, and I will come back to it, is that he has never governed anything — no city, department, ministry, or large budget. His arena has been Congress as a moral and judicial forum. He was also the principal intellectual architect of Petro’s Paz Total, “Total Peace”; he coined the term.

His running mate is Aida Quilcué, an indigenous Nasa leader and senator who is herself a victim of state violence — her husband was killed by the military as they returned from a minga. One more thing matters because it is human and real: Cepeda is in fragile health. He has beaten cancer twice — colon cancer in 2018, liver cancer treated in 2022 — and people who have worked with him describe a worn body and an iron will. He is intellectually serious, sober, and predictable, the opposite of Petro’s chaos. Whatever you make of his politics, he is no lightweight.

The case for Abelardo de la Espriella

Let me make the genuine case for de la Espriella, as I see it.

He promises to be tough on crime — on the organized armed groups and on ordinary street crime alike. After four years in which armed groups roughly doubled in size under Total Peace, many Colombians are hungry for exactly that, and I understand why. He is pro-business and pro-investment, foreign and domestic, and he has built his whole pitch on the idea that prosperity comes from the private sector rather than the state. He is pro-US and promises to repair the relationship with Washington that frayed under Petro; he is, in fact, a US citizen himself, which tells you which direction he faces.

On the economy, I think he would restore investor confidence and likely work to repair Colombia’s diminished credit rating, which matters enormously for what the country pays to borrow. He supports lower taxes, which is a good thing when paired with genuine fiscal prudence — that is the caveat, but the instinct is right.

The strongest item on his ticket, for me, is his running mate, José Manuel Restrepo. Restrepo served as both Minister of Commerce and Finance Minister in Iván Duque’s cabinet and did the job well, even when Duque did not. He has few critics and brings a level of intellectual seriousness and economic credibility that the top of the ticket does not project on its own. A credible technocrat one heartbeat from the presidency is a real asset.

He wants to shrink the bureaucracy. Colombia’s is not as bloated as some in Latin America, but it can be streamlined — and the bigger problem than handing out sinecures is mermelada, the practice of spreading money through useless government contracts to friends and supporters. If he genuinely goes after that, good. He is also plainly intelligent; a successful defense attorney knows jurisprudence and procedure cold.

Two of his ideas deserve particular credit. He says he wants to promote home ownership for people of modest means, and El País reports a plan for below-market thirty-year mortgages. If that is real and it works, it is a genuinely good idea. The Peruvian author Hernando de Soto, in The Mystery of Capital, explains how broad asset ownership by ordinary people is what formalizes an economy and drives real progress: when you own assets, you can extract value from them, pass them to your descendants, and build lasting wealth. And on health care, he promises to fix the EPS system with financial oversight to root out corruption, rather than blow it up. That is far better than moving to a single-payer government scheme, which I think would be disastrous. The state has not shown the organizational competence to run one. Consider that Petro placed Daniel Quintero, the indicted former mayor of Medellín, in a role overseeing the EPS — and Quintero is accused of looting the city’s coffers. A couple of insolvent EPS providers is a manageable problem; a national government that cannot pay providers and collapses the whole system is not. Patching beats nationalizing.

He supports performance evaluations for teachers, which is reasonable even if FECODE will oppose it, and he wants to expand internet connectivity into rural and underserved regions, which is critical in a country with such a wide gap between rural and urban, rich and poor. Connectivity means opportunity. That is a real list — a coherent pro-growth, pro-security program. Now the other side.

The case against Abelardo de la Espriella

There is a lot here. Start with the Bukele worship. De la Espriella is an open admirer of El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele. Bukele has unquestionably cut crime, but he also shows clear authoritarian tendencies and no sign of willingly leaving power. More to the point, Bukele is no friend to a free press, and de la Espriella is notoriously thin-skinned: he uses the courts to file SLAPPs — Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation — designed to force critics to burn money and time on their defense. Even meritless, such suits can bankrupt a person or consume so much of their time they cannot do their job. This is not hypothetical. La Silla Vacía documented dozens of civil suits and criminal complaints against journalists, several of whom admit to censoring themselves. That should worry anyone who cares about press freedom.

He may also turn out to be soft on crime — especially organized crime — which sounds backwards for the “iron fist” candidate until you look at his career. He built it defending mobsters, paracos, and the corrupt: the Nule family, Álex Saab. He is childhood friends with the paramilitary chief Salvatore Mancuso. And he has been linked to a paramilitary known as “Boliche,” Jorge Luís Hernández Villazón, on trial in the United States for narcotrafficking. De la Espriella denies any connection with Boliche and says he knows him only through his work as a defense attorney. Fine — but it is a fair question how tough he will really be on his friends and former clients. That is not a cheap shot; it is a reasonable thing to want answered.

I also do not see a plan for the poor. I have looked, and I find nothing in his platform that signals a comprehensive plan — or much compassion — for the underprivileged and those without access to opportunity in the remote areas: the Pacific coast, the rural zones, the Atlantic coast. Perhaps one exists and I have missed it, but if so, where is it?

He seems inconsistent. This is a man who craves attention — a recording artist, a clothing line, a rum called “Defensor” — who then suddenly finds Jesus and becomes the “God and family” candidate. Maybe it is sincere. Forgive me for being skeptical of a conversion that lines up so neatly with a presidential run.

On the peace process, he has pledged not to implement the 2016 accords that won former President Juan Manuel Santos the Nobel Peace Prize. To be fair, the last two administrations did a poor job implementing them too. But my concern is simple: the people who genuinely laid down their arms need protection. You do not want to teach the next generation that demobilizing gets you killed. He also wants to end the Jurisdicción Especial de Paz, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, arguing it is a political tool that does not deliver real justice. I do not know the JEP well enough to rule on that flatly, but I am skeptical of the claim; my sense is that it is doing some genuine good and should be reformed rather than scrapped.

Colombia 2026 1st round top two (Graphic: Sofi Imfeld for Finance Colombia)

Then there is the absence of a track record. He has never held any office, so there is nothing to go on. Does he become a statesman or a caudillo wannabe? We do not know, and that uncertainty is itself a cost. Finally, the persona. His public identity strikes me as a bit of a gomelo — Colombian slang for a stuck-up rich kid. People often cultivate a public character that has little to do with who they really are, so perhaps the private Abelardo is a prince. But he is asking voters to choose the public one, and the public one rubs me the wrong way.

The case for Iván Cepeda

Now the honest case for Cepeda. He will very likely put real attention on the marginalized and the forgotten parts of the country, and the map backs this up: in the first round he carried the entire Pacific coast, the forested borders with Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil, and most of the Atlantic provinces — the exception being Antioquia, whose population concentrates far to the south around Medellín. Much of that Atlantic coast, outside Barranquilla and the touristy parts of Cartagena, has suffered generations of corruption and chronic underinvestment. Someone paying attention to those places is not a bad thing.

He is consistent and predictable. He has a long career and a coherent, stable ideology. I may disagree with that ideology — you will hear about it in the cons — but no one can call the man unpredictable. You know what you are getting, and in politics that is worth something.

He would try to actually implement Santos’s 2016 peace accords. The pact has real flaws and lacked genuine commitment from the current and previous administrations, but it did demobilize thousands of fighters who are no longer in the bush kidnapping and bombing people. Pushing to finish that work honestly has value.

And to be fair, he is clearly more competent than the ally currently in office. He is more intelligent and more disciplined than Gustavo Petro. Consider how Petro has governed: unable to push through much of his agenda, running the Casa de Nariño like a reality show, cycling more than sixty ministers through nineteen ministries in under four years. How do you accomplish anything while swapping in a new minister roughly every three weeks? I do not think a Cepeda administration would bring the same chaos and palace intrigue. And he would command the largest bloc of support in Congress, so he would be more effective at moving his agenda; he knows how the machinery works. Credit where it is due — he does not stand up in cabinet meetings inventing his own physics. That is a low bar, but Petro keeps walking under it and Cepeda clears it.

Finally, he has a real, lifelong commitment to the victims of violence in Colombia. Whatever else you say about him, that commitment is genuine and it is the through-line of his entire life. That counts.

The case against Iván Cepeda

Iván Cepeda is a senator, former member of the Communist Youth, educated in Bulgaria during the Soviet era, and key player in the negotiation with armed guerilla groups. (photo: Colombian Senate)

And there are many cons. The first is the mirror I opened with: he has shady friends too. He was close to the Chavista senator Piedad Córdoba. Just as de la Espriella calls his contacts with Boliche purely professional, Cepeda says his ties to the FARC commander Raúl Reyes were purely those of a peace negotiator. But Cepeda went further. When the FARC commander Jesús Santrich was locked up and ready to be extradited to the United States on drug-trafficking charges, Cepeda worked fiercely to get him released from the Fiscalía‘s Bunker. Once out, Santrich fled into Venezuela and restarted the Segunda Marquetalia, a FARC dissident network. And here is the part that lands like a gut punch a year later: that same Segunda Marquetalia is the group Colombian prosecutors have now linked to the assassination of presidential candidate and senator Miguel Uribe Turbay, who was shot in Bogotá in June 2025 and died that August. I want to be careful and fair — that is an attribution by the Fiscalía, and serious analysts at Insight Crime have noted the public evidence is thin, so it should not be treated as settled fact. But the chain — Cepeda helps free Santrich, Santrich restarts the Segunda Marquetalia, the Segunda Marquetalia is tied to a magnicidio — is a heavy thing to carry into a presidential race.

Second, he is soft on the guerrillas, broadly. He has a proven record of leniency toward the FARC, the ELN, and armed groups generally, and he is an architect of Petro’s failed Total Peace. Under that nurturing approach those groups have flourished, and I think they would keep flourishing under a Cepeda administration. He seems to see them more as victims of state violence than as the kidnappers, narcotraffickers, extortionists, and terrorists that they are. La Silla Vacía’s own reporting — and they are not a right-wing outlet — concluded that Cepeda bears real political responsibility for the failure of Total Peace, having pushed a negotiation model that was too ambitious, legally ambiguous, and weak before armed groups. When the violence comes from the state, Cepeda sees structure and systemic responsibility; when it comes from the guerrillas, he tends to see context and a chance for peace. That blind spot defines him.

Former 2022 presidential candidate Rodolfo Hernandez (photo: candidate’s website)

Third is his health and his running mate, which is delicate but real. Cepeda has had cancer twice. The late Rodolfo Hernández, who lost to Petro in 2022, died in 2024 of cancer after also having had liver and colon cancer, so the risk is not hypothetical. If Cepeda did not finish his term, Aida Quilcué would take over, and her career — as an indigenous Nasa leader, minga organizer, and senator — has centered on those issues rather than monetary policy, foreign affairs, or national security, which makes her approach to them a genuine unknown. People also doubted Francia Márquez, and she turned out to be the articulate, level-headed one beside Petro’s wilder talk, so I will say nothing against Quilcué as a person. But a possible succession to a medically fragile president is an inarguable risk, and it would be foolish to pretend otherwise.

Fourth, I cannot imagine investor confidence improving under a Cepeda presidency. A data point worth chewing on: the peso is currently strong. Part of that is the dollar’s broad global weakness, but part of it, in my read, is the market reacting to the strong polling of Cepeda’s opponent. Markets vote too, and they are nervous about the left.

Fifth, the father — and I want to be fair here. You cannot reliably judge a son by his father; my own father was a politician, and as an adult I spent most of my life in the party opposite his, with a great relationship and very different philosophies. So I will not convict Iván Cepeda for his father’s beliefs. The difference is that Cepeda does seem broadly aligned with them. His father was secretary general of the Colombian Communist Party, Iván studied in Soviet Bulgaria, and though he says he grew disillusioned with the hypocrisy of Soviet communism, he still appears committed to a far-left ideology. If that is your cup of tea, count it a plus; I have never been fond of Marx or Engels.

Sixth is crop substitution, and this one deserves a direct conversation. On paper it sounds marvelous: rather than spray coca with herbicides that wreck the environment and people’s health, offer farmers a legal alternative and a path out. If it worked the way it is drawn up, I would back it one hundred percent. The problem is the gap between the brochure and the dirt road — and that gap is built on a premise that simply is not true on the ground: the premise that the campesino is a free actor who chooses to grow coca and could, if persuaded, choose to grow something else.

In much of rural Colombia, the small farmer does not get to volunteer. Where the FARC dissidents and the ELN hold territory, the armed group tells the farmer he will cultivate coca, do the manual labor of harvesting it, and sell the leaf or paste to the group at a price the group sets — under penalty of death. Refuse, and the farmer is driven off his land or simply killed. This is not a lifestyle preference; it is coercion at gunpoint. The reporting bears out the broader pattern. Finance Colombia’s coverage, drawn from InSight Crime, documents how the power vacuum left by the FARC’s 2016 demobilization was filled by the ELN, the Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces, and FARC dissidents fighting for control of coca zones, and how the state’s failure to deliver on substitution let armed groups fill the vacuum and tighten their grip. The human cost is staggering: after families signed substitution agreements, the murder rate of supportive social leaders rose by 546 percent, according to a study cited by InSight Crime, and only about 5 percent of the program’s 2023 budget was actually executed. You cannot ask a farmer to switch crops when the entity controlling his life and his land is not the government but a guerrilla faction that has already told him what he will plant.

That is why this is not a matter of asking farmers nicely to grow coffee or cacao. It is not their choice. Security has to come first. Crop substitution can only work where the state — not the guerrillas — holds the territory and can guarantee a farmer’s safety when he says no to coca. The armed groups must be displaced before substitution has any chance, and any candidate who treats substitution as a soft alternative to security has the sequence backwards. That is the simple truth of it, and it is the heart of my concern with the Total Peace approach Cepeda helped design.

Seventh, he wants to expand the state’s role across the board, including continuing Petro’s effort to take over the health sector. Before the pandemic, Colombia had one of the best reputations in the world for health-care quality. Is it unequal? Yes — care in an isolated hamlet does not match Cali or Medellín, and the south of Bogotá does not match the north. Then let the government build clinics and hospitals where they are missing. There is no reason to take over the parts of the private system that work in order to do that, unless one objects on ideology to doctors and dentists existing as small businesspeople. That is ideology, not health policy.

Eighth, if Cepeda wins he may well protect Daniel Quintero, the former mayor of Medellín under indictment on more than forty counts of corruption. That kind of debt-collection worries me. And ninth, the selective conscience. Cepeda is a former member of the Communist Youth — a plus if you are a communist, unsettling if you are not. The FARC and ELN are also communist groups; one wonders whether that is the root of his apparent sympathy. He casts himself as a human rights defender yet stays conspicuously silent on the abuses of the Chavista regime in Venezuela. La Silla Vacía documented this in detail: roughly a decade of avoiding criticism of Maduro’s repression, fraudulent elections, and alliances with Colombian guerrillas. Cepeda notices human rights violations committed by people he dislikes while exempting bad actors he is closer to, provided they are communist or socialist. The record on that is fairly clear.

So where does that leave us?

Two men. One built his life on being seen — a brilliant, theatrical defense lawyer for the powerful and the accused, now promising an iron fist while surrounding himself with at least one genuinely serious technocrat in José Manuel Restrepo. The other built his life on a single tragedy — a disciplined, consistent, ideologically committed man of the left who has fought for victims for thirty years, and who carries a blind spot the size of a guerrilla encampment.

Here is the paradox I cannot get past: the “tough on crime” candidate has spent his career defending criminals, and the “human rights” candidate stays silent on half the human rights abuses in his own backyard. Each is, in some way, the very thing he claims to oppose. This is not a runoff between an angel and a devil. It is a runoff between two men who each ask voters to trust that their inconvenient friendships were strictly professional.

I am uneasy about both candidacies, for very different reasons, and I am doing what I said I would: laying it out and handing it to the reader. For deeper background, see Finance Colombia’s earlier survey of how the leading candidates draw divergent maps for foreign capital, security, and the rule of law, its reporting on what is behind Colombia’s increased violence, and its account of the final push of the Total Peace policy. The runoff is Sunday, June 21, and the winner is inaugurated August 7.

The Financiera de Desarrollo Nacional (FDN), a member of the Grupo Bicentenario, has announced its participation in the financial closing of the El Campano Solar Park. Located in Chinu, Cordoba, the renewable energy project is designed to strengthen national energy security and support the transition toward cleaner power sources.

The initiative involves the development, construction, and operation of a photovoltaic solar plant with an installed capacity of 128.8 MWdc (99.9 MWac). The facility is scheduled to begin commercial operations by the third quarter of 2027.

The financial structure includes a commitment from the FDN of up to $157.5 billion COP, consisting of senior debt and a bank guarantee. This contribution represents approximately 50% of the total project debt. The total investment for the project is estimated at $453.9 billion COP, utilizing a framework that combines private equity and long-term debt.

“The financial closing of the El Campano Solar Park represents a firm step in the consolidation of a cleaner, more resilient, and sustainable energy matrix for Colombia.” — Rafael Herz, acting president of the FDN

“The financial closing of the El Campano Solar Park represents a firm step in the consolidation of a cleaner, more resilient, and sustainable energy matrix for Colombia,” stated Rafael Herz, acting president of the FDN. “At FDN, we remain committed to mobilizing investment toward strategic projects that not only strengthen the country’s infrastructure but also generate positive environmental and social impacts in the regions.”

Revenue for the El Campano Solar Park is supported by a 15-year energy purchase agreement (PPA) with ISAGEN, a company maintaining a AAA credit rating. The contract operates under a “pay-as-generated” modality. Furthermore, the project is set to receive income via the Cargo por Confiabilidad (Reliability Charge) over a 20-year period, a mechanism intended to ensure long-term financial stability and debt service capacity.

The project is being developed by Atlas Renewable Energy in partnership with ISAGEN (BVC: ISAGEN). This collaboration is part of a broader joint strategy aiming to develop up to 1,000 MW of solar projects in Colombia by 2030.

In addition to its contribution to the Sistema Interconectado Nacional (National Interconnected System), the project is expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 4 million tons over its operational lifespan. This alignment follows national objectives regarding sustainability and climate change mitigation.

According to the FDN, the project integrates environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria into the financing decision-making process, focusing on the decarbonization of the economy and regional development.

The allocation follows capital discipline criteria and maintains investment levels comparable to projected 2025 year-end figures. Approximately 70% of the total budget ($17.2 trillion COP) is designated for core hydrocarbons operations, including production, refining, and transportation. The remaining 30% ($7.1 trillion COP) is slated for energy transition initiatives, power transmission, and corporate investments.

The 2026 financial model is built on an estimated Brent crude price of $60 USD per barrel and an average annual exchange rate near COP 4,050:1 USD. Under these assumptions, the Ecopetrol Group projects an approximate EBITDA margin of 40%, in line with 2025 levels. Transfers to the Colombian government are estimated at approximately $28 trillion COP. To support these financial targets and maintain debt metrics, the group plans to implement a portfolio rotation program.

A profitability and efficiency program is expected to contribute approximately $5.7 trillion COP, impacting EBITDA, investments, and working capital. This program is structured to support performance in total refining costs and transported barrel costs, while sustaining lifting costs below $12 USD per barrel.

Approximately $1.7 trillion COP is allocated to the company’s “SosTECnibility” strategy, focusing on climate change, sustainable territories, materials and waste management, and occupational health.

Hydrocarbons and Midstream Operations

Investment in exploration and production totals $14 trillion COP, constituting the largest single allocation. This is split with 89% dedicated to crude oil and 11% to natural gas, focused on achieving organic production levels of 730–740 thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day (BOED). Production is anticipated to consist of 80% crude, 15% gas, and 5% white products, utilizing recovery technologies to optimize resources. The strategy involves increasing crude oil output in Colombia to offset natural gas field declines.

The Ecopetrol Group plans to drill between 380 and 430 development wells, with 95% located in Colombia and 5% in the US. The exploration program includes 8 to 10 exploratory wells in Colombia, primarily in offshore, Meta, and Putumayo areas. Gas investments are estimated at $1.5 trillion COP, mainly targeting the Llanos Foothills and offshore areas to develop Caribbean gas, contributing an estimated 105–110,000 BOED.

Transport investments total about $1.5 trillion COP, representing 6% of the budget. The funding is primarily for integrity and reliability projects managed by Cenit, Ocensa, Oleoducto de Colombia S.A.), and Oleoducto del Llano S.A. Transported volumes are targeted between 1,110,000 and 1,120,000 barrels per day.

Refining investments are set at close to $1.7 trillion COP (7% of the budget), targeting reliability, availability, and sustainability at the Barrancabermeja and Cartagena refineries, aiming to reduce product imports and improve fuel quality. Combined refinery throughput is forecast between 410,000 and 420,000 barrels per day.

Energy Transition and Transmission Segment Growth

Interconexión Eléctrica S.A. E.S.P. (ISA) (BVC: ISA), an Ecopetrol subsidiary, is allocated between $6.2 and $6.8 trillion COP in 2026, comprising roughly 26% of the group’s annual budget, with approximately 80% dedicated to its electric transmission business.

For the core energy transition efforts, approximately $0.9 trillion COP (3% of the plan) is earmarked for non-conventional renewable energy and energy efficiency projects. This investment seeks to add approximately 750 MW of clean energy generation capacity from projects in operation, construction, and development.

Renewable Energy Acquisition Moves Ecopetrol Closer to 900 MW Target

In a separate announcement, Ecopetrol confirmed the successful conclusion of negotiations on November 28, 2025, with Grenergy Renovables S.A. (BME: GRE), a Spanish renewable energy company. The negotiations concern the potential acquisition by Ecopetrol of seven solar photovoltaic project companies in Colombia, located across the departments of Córdoba (3), Cesar (2), Magdalena (1), and Sucre (1).

Each of the seven companies owns the assets, licenses, agreements, and permits for a solar project with an estimated renewable energy generation capacity of up to ~12.6 MWp. The completion of this acquisition is contingent upon certain conditions precedent and legal requirements.

Upon closing, the transaction would contribute to Ecopetrol’s decarbonization and energy transition goals by adding installed capacity toward its internal target of 900 MW of self-generated renewable energy. These projects are intended to support low-emission energy generation under competitive conditions for the Ecopetrol Group’s self-consumption, reducing the company’s reliance on bilateral energy contracts and mitigating exposure to spot market energy purchases.

Corporate Governance Changes

Ecopetrol also reported changes to its corporate leadership. During a meeting held on November 27, 2025, the board of directors elected Ángela María Robledo Gómez as Chairwoman and Álvaro Torres Macías as Vice Chairman of the Board. Both individuals were elected to the Ecopetrol Board of Directors in a slate that was “proposed by the government” (President Gustavo Petro’s administration).

Additionally, the company reported the resignation of Independent Director Guillermo García Realpe, citing personal reasons. His resignation is effective as of December 12, 2025. Ecopetrol acknowledged his service to the company during his tenure.

Ecopetrol operates as a key integrated energy firm on the American continent. In Colombia, it is responsible for more than 60% of hydrocarbon production and manages the majority of the nation’s transportation, logistics, and hydrocarbon refining systems. Through its 51.4% stake in ISA, the company holds positions in energy transmission across Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Bolivia, as well as road concessions in Chile, and participates in real-time systems management through XM and the Barranquilla – Cartagena coastal highway concession. Internationally, Ecopetrol has drilling and exploration operations in oilfields across the US (Permian basin and the Gulf of Mexico), Brazil, and Mexico.

At the Maria Conchita block, the Aruchara-4 well is being drilled to a total depth of 10,000 feet. The well targets the Jimol formation and aims to develop the H1A and H1B accumulations. The company will also explore the potential for reserve and resource extension in the H2 AA section and H3 and H4 fractures, and test the limestone formation on top of the well’s basement. The well is expected to be completed and tied in by the end of September 2025.

After the drilling of Aruchara-4, the rig will be used for a workover and recompletion of the Aruchara-3 well to address a downhole mechanical obstruction. The company will then proceed with the drilling of the Aruchara-5 well.

At the Sinu-9 block, gross production has reached 22 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d). The company is completing the installation of dew point handling equipment at the Central Processing Facility, with full installation expected by the end of August. Once the equipment is installed, aggregate gross production at Sinu-9 is projected to increase to up to 30 MMcf/d.

The company is also working with its infrastructure partner, INFRAES, on the construction of a twin pipeline to double transportation capacity from Sinu-9. The project is being completed in two phases. The first phase, an 18-kilometer loop from Jobo, is expected to increase transportation capacity to 40 – 45 MMcf/d. The second phase, the full twin pipeline, is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2026 and will increase transportation capacity to 60 MMcf/d.

Aruchara-4 Drilling Rig. Photo credit: CNW Group/NG Energy International Corp.

The companies are owned by Statkraft’s subsidiaries: Enerfín Sociedad de Energía S.L.U and Enerfin Enervento Exterior S.L. The portfolio’s projects are located in the departments of La Guajira, Sucre, Córdoba, Caldas, and Magdalena.

If completed, this acquisition would represent significant progress toward Ecopetrol S.A.’s decarbonization and energy transition goals, particularly the target of incorporating 900 MW of renewable self-generation capacity by 2025, in line with its 2040 Strategy. Additionally, the transaction would support the generation of low-emission energy under competitive conditions for the Ecopetrol Group’s self-consumption, reducing exposure to spot market purchases and contributing to the diversification of the company’s energy matrix.

Photo credit: Ecopetrol/Flickr.

According to Petro, the purchase package also comes with a flexible solar panel factory in Córdoba, Colombia, southwest of Cartagena, drinking water in the La Guajira department of Colombia near the Venezuelan border, and medical equipment for the San Juan de Dios hospital in Bogotá.

The Saab Gripen has been in competition with other 4^th generation fighters such as the Lockheed Martin F-16 and the Dassault Rafale to replace Colombia’s functionally obsolete Israeli-made KFIR fighters, now 50 years old.

Petro ran on a presidential platform opposing the purchase of any new jet fighter fleet for Colombia’s air force, though he quickly reversed course once elected, claiming that new aircraft were needed for the safety of the pilots. At the time of Petro’s election, the Saab and France’s Dassault were finalists, and $678 million USD had been allocated to the project, though the initiative collapsed when the budget allocation expired.

The setback opened the door for US aerospace manufacturer Lockheed Martin to attempt to restart talks with the Petro government for the more expensive F-16 Block 70 fighters, but at $108 million USD per aircraft, the $3.1 billion USD package would be considerably more expensive than the original budget.

Though the F-16 and Saab Gripen are both respected as excellent tactical fighters, the Swedes have touted the Gripen as appropriate for Colombia given both its ability to operate with less infrastructure, and ease of maintenance. Though the Gripen has some air superiority limitations compared to the F-16, it is able, for example to take off from a 500-meter runway—less than the length of three football fields, be maintained at a lower cost and with fewer personnel (according to Saab), and is quite capable in the types of engagements Colombia is likely to find itself involved in, such as air-to ground and anti-insurgency operations.

This morning, Saab head of Media Relations, Mattias Rådström told Finance Colombia in an email exchange that”It is very positive for Saab and Sweden that Colombia’s President Petro has announced his intention to acquire the Gripen E/F advanced multi-role fighter. Saab has the most comprehensive offer for Colombia, and we are convinced that Gripen E/F is the best choice for the long-term defense, security and prosperity of Colombia. Although no contract is yet in place, we look forward to finalizing negotiations with Colombia.”

Above photo: A Saab Gripen E at Colombia’s 2023 F-AIR airshow (photo: Loren Moss)

President Gustavo Petro’s Total Peace (Paz Total) policy, designed to negotiate agreements with the country’s main armed groups and criminal gangs, is struggling to make any headway as he passes the halfway point of his four-year administration. The negotiations have had profound effects on the criminal dynamics in the country.

SEE ALSO: What Is Behind Increased Violence in Colombia?

After initial progress in dialogue with the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional – ELN), talks collapsed in May last year when a faction of the group split off to pursue separate peace negotiations. The ELN’s extensive infrastructure and leadership in Venezuela, where Nicolás Maduro remains in power following a widely criticized election, has further undermined the chances of peace with the Marxist-Leninist rebel force.

Similarly, negotiations with dissidents of the demobilized Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC) have faced significant setbacks. Fragmentation within these groups has sparked infighting, with splinter factions emerging from the Central General Staff (Estado Mayor Central – EMC) and the Second Marquetalia, the two largest dissident factions. As a result, the government is engaging with only a small portion of each group.

The country’s most powerful drug-trafficking organization, the Gaitanist Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia – AGC), remains largely outside the Total Peace framework. Efforts have been stalled by the absence of a legal framework for negotiations and a potential peace deal. Similar legal obstacles have hindered progress in “urban peace laboratories” in cities like Buenaventura, Quibdó, and Medellín, where gangs dominate neighborhoods through drug trafficking and extortion rackets.

As Petro begins the third year of his presidency, InSight Crime reviews the key developments in Colombia’s peace dialogues and examines their criminal implications for 2025.

ELN

Initial progress with the ELN effectively unraveled as disputes with the government led to the collapse of negotiations.

In January last year, the Comuneros del Sur Front (Frente Comuneros del Sur – FCS), an ELN faction in southern Nariño, broke ranks, announcing plans to pursue separate “regional dialogue” with the government. Frustrated by the limited progress at the national level and growing threats from rival groups, the FCS sought a more localized approach. However, ELN top commander Eliecer Erlinto Chamorro, alias “Antonio García,” condemned these parallel dialogues as unauthorized and illegitimate.

SEE ALSO: Kidnappings Surge in Colombia Amid ELN Peace Negotiations

By May, the FCS formally severed ties with the ELN, emerging as a dissident faction of the guerrilla group. It quickly established dialogue with the government, advanced in peace talks, and even committed to a partial weapons handover, according to Carlos Augusto Erazo Murcia, head of the government’s negotiating team.

This was followed by the collapse of a bilateral ceasefire between the ELN and the government, which expired in August without renewal. After the ceasefire lapse, the ELN escalated hostilities by attacking a military base in Arauca in September, killing three soldiers. In response, the government suspended peace talks indefinitely.

The ELN and the government resumed talks on November 25, agreeing to reconvene in 2025 to reassess the dialogue process and explore the possibility of a renewed ceasefire.

The ELN also stands to benefit greatly from what was widely considered a stolen election in Venezuela, extending by another six years of Maduro’s time at the helm of the country. Venezuela remains a critical hub for the ELN, hosting much of its leadership and infrastructure.

Since the FARC’s demobilization in 2016, the ELN has expanded its presence in Venezuela and Colombia’s border departments, strengthening its operations through a symbiotic relationship with the Maduro regime. The group now controls entire sections of the border, managing smuggling and drug-trafficking corridors between the two countries, while maintaining corridors moving troops. Its influence spans eight of Venezuela’s 24 states, with significant income derived from controlling illegal mining and cocaine production zones.

With little interference and often support from military forces and local officials within the Maduro regime—who depend on the income generated by these groups, particularly amid severe US sanctions—the ELN has solidified its presence along the 2,219 km border with Venezuela and uses this haven to project into Colombia. This growing entrenchment further undermines the Total Peace initiative.

Ex-FARC

Government dialogue with the EMC, the largest ex-FARC organization, has also splintered the group. In March, Petro suspended a bilateral ceasefire with the EMC in the departments of Cauca, Valle del Cauca, and Nariño due to ongoing violence against Indigenous communities. This decision deepened internal divisions within the EMC. Its leader, Néstor Gregorio Vera Fernández, alias “Iván Mordisco,” refused further negotiations until the ceasefire was reinstated, while another faction, led by Alexander Díaz, alias “Calarcá Córdoba,” opted to continue talks.

By April, the government expelled Mordisco’s faction from the peace talks, shifting its focus to negotiations exclusively with Calarcá’s bloc. In July, his group signed a bilateral ceasefire agreement, marking a tentative step forward. However, significant challenges remain: Calarcá’s faction has been accused of threatening demobilized FARC members in Caquetá, and in December, six soldiers were killed in a minefield allegedly planted by the group.

Mordisco’s wing, on the other hand, has intensified violent activities, particularly in Cauca, an important region for coca cultivation and drug trafficking. By September, Cauca had recorded 466 violent incidents over 12 months, the most of any department during that period, with numbers continuing to rise through the end of 2024.

Meanwhile, the Second Marquetalia, a separate group of FARC dissidents led by Luciano Marín Arango, alias “Iván Márquez,” became the third major group to enter Total Peace negotiations in 2024. However, internal divisions also plagued this effort. In November, two key factions—the Border Command and the Pacific Guerrilla Coordinating Committee (Coordinadora Guerrillera del Pacífico)—broke away, frustrated by Márquez’s leadership. They formed the National Bolivarian Army Coordinator (Coordinadora Nacional Ejército Bolivariano), led by José Vicente Lesmes, alias “Walter Mendoza.”

AGC and Urban Groups

The AGC has been largely excluded from the Total Peace initiative thus far, but signs emerged in 2024 that Petro sought to change this. In July, he authorized dialogue with the group, signaling a potential shift in policy.

But significant obstacles remain. The government’s classification of the AGC as a high-impact organized crime group, rather than a political organization like the ELN or FARC dissidents, has become a sticking point in the negotiations. This designation precludes the AGC from seeking transitional justice terms, such as guarantees against extradition and amnesty, similar to those offered to the FARC in the 2016 peace agreement. Under Colombian law, high-impact organized crime groups are only eligible for limited judicial benefits, such as reduced sentences, making negotiations far less appealing for the AGC.

SEE ALSO: GameChangers 2023: The Cocaine Flash-to-Bang in 2024

Despite minor progress—such as the attorney general lifting arrest warrants for key AGC leaders—negotiations have yielded few tangible results. Tensions remain high: in December, the military bombed an AGC camp in northern Antioquia, underscoring the ongoing hostilities.

Moreover, skepticism about the AGC’s intentions persists. Some analysts suggest the group is using negotiations as a tactical maneuver to secure a bilateral ceasefire and reduce military pressure, rather than genuinely committing to demobilization. At the same time, its ongoing territorial expansion and dominance over key criminal economies fuel doubts about its willingness to disarm.

The absence of a legal framework for gang demobilization, or “transition to legality,” as it is officially termed, has also hindered progress in cities like Medellín, Quibdó, and Buenaventura.

Efforts to pass legislation to formalize a framework for gang demobilization have stalled in Colombia’s gridlocked congress, leaving urban peace efforts in limbo.

In Medellín, several gangs agreed to reduce violence following Petro’s 2022 election, resulting in a notable drop in homicide rates. In June 2023, Petro initiated a dialogue table with former gang leaders at Itagüí prison, but progress faltered in 2024.

In Quibdó, the gangs Los Mexicanos, Lokos Yam, and RPS began talks in August 2023, achieving significant milestones like a commitment to halt the extortion of teachers and health workers. But in September 2024, a ceasefire between the gangs collapsed, amidst incursions by the AGC into the city. In December, Petro authorized exploratory talks to include three additional groups—the Zetas, Cabí, and AGC—in the Quibdó table.

In Buenaventura, negotiations with the Spartans and Shottas—which together command over 1,700 members—have produced mixed results. The groups agreed to a truce in August 2023, significantly reducing violence throughout 2024. While tensions flared in March when the Spartans temporarily withdrew from the negotiations, they eventually returned to the table, and have renewed the ceasefire, currently set to last until February 2025.

Looking Forward

Several key factors will significantly influence peace negotiations in 2025.

First, the fragmentation of major groups within the Total Peace process highlights the challenges of negotiating with organizations that appear unified but are, in fact, loose coalitions of diverse factions. The Comuneros del Sur’s split from the ELN exposed the group’s limited control over its regional fronts. Similarly, the EMC’s divided leadership—between Mordisco and Calarcá—mirrors the internal tensions within the Second Marquetalia, where Iván Márquez has struggled to maintain cohesion among factions like the Border Command.

These fractures risk escalating violence as splinter groups vie for territorial control and factions excluded from peace talks increase attacks on government targets.

Since the EMC split, clashes between Mordisco’s and Calarcá’s factions have escalated in Putumayo, a key region for coca cultivation and drug trafficking. Violence has also surged in other southwestern departments, such as Cauca. The deadly ELN attack on the military base could also foreshadow more violent confrontations between criminal groups and government forces, despite the relative lull achieved by ceasefires in 2024.

Second, the absence of widespread ceasefires with criminal groups has leveled the criminal playing field once again. Ceasefires maintained by the ELN and EMC in 2023 temporarily shifted criminal dynamics, allowing these groups to expand their territorial control, recruit new members, and focus on rival factions rather than government forces.

“We know [armed groups] have taken advantage of the ceasefire to try to increase their illegal control over the territory,” Colombia’s Minister of Defense said in a press conference in March 2024.

This reprieve boosted profits from drug trafficking, illegal mining, and extortion. In contrast, the AGC, excluded from ceasefire agreements, continued to face government offensives.

SEE ALSO: The Informants of Tibú: How the Colombian State Unleashed a Wave of Femicides

Currently, only the Calarcá dissidents and the FCS have active bilateral ceasefires with the government. The FCS, being relatively small, is unlikely to use the ceasefire for significant territorial expansion but will likely consolidate its holdings and defend against incoming EMC incursions into Nariño. Conversely, the Calarcá dissidents are better positioned to exploit their ceasefire to strengthen their presence in critical drug trafficking zones, particularly along the Amazonian border with Brazil and in parts of the Venezuelan frontier.

For groups like the Mordisco dissidents and the ELN, the absence of ceasefires means they will lose their distinct advantage as they compete for control over territories essential for drug trafficking, illegal mining, and other key revenue streams. However, the lack of ceasefires could give the AGC an edge.

Despite facing sustained military pressure, the AGC has expanded along the Pacific coast in Chocó, the Caribbean coast in Bolívar, Córdoba, and Cesar, and is encircling Catatumbo in Norte de Santander—one of Colombia’s most critical coca cultivation regions. With its criminal rivals now experiencing the same pressure it has endured, the AGC is poised to solidify and take even greater control as cocaine production explodes and gold prices approach record highs.

Third, Maduro’s dependence on Colombian criminal groups ensures that the ELN and Second Marquetalia will continue to strengthen their footholds in Venezuela and along Colombia’s border. With minimal interference—and often direct support from military forces and local officials within the Maduro regime—both groups have entrenched themselves in the region, controlling key criminal economies such as drug trafficking, illegal mining, and contraband smuggling.

With the prospect of six more years of protection under Maduro, these groups have little immediate incentive to engage in peace negotiations. Instead, they are well-positioned to expand their operations further.

This article, written by Henry Shuldiner, was originally published by InSight Crime, a Medellín-based foundation dedicated to the investigation and analysis of crime and security in Colombia and Latin America. It has been generously shared with Finance Colombia under a Creative Commons license.

But beneath it all there was hard work being done and whilst all the pavilions were bustling, one bustled more than rest. Latin America is quite clearly in play and the multitude of countries represented weren’t going to miss a trick.

Colombia 🇨🇴 is a absolutely central to that demand for the region and it is important that it acts as a collective to harness that goodwill towards the country. My personal thanks to all who took time to sit down with me and also for the beautiful messages of support. If seaplanes were majestic in 1920, just wait and see what they can do now.