The announcements involve joint US-Colombian military operations against narcoterrorism, Colombia’s entry into a regional security coalition, and a proposed $1 billion USD assistance package. While all three signal a significant strengthening of bilateral relations, important questions remain about their implementation, legal framework, funding, and oversight.

First: Joint US-Colombian military operations

Colombia has authorized the United States to conduct joint military operations as part of its fight against drug trafficking, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday, August 12, in Panama.

According to Hegseth, the cooperation follows new Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella’s decision to join an anti-drug coalition led by US President Donald Trump. Hegseth made the announcement during a meeting of the alliance, which brings together about 20 countries, in Panama City. Colombia’s defense minister, retired Gen. Jorge Eduardo Mora, attended the meeting.

“Colombia has already requested that the War Department join Colombia in its fight against narcoterrorism, authorizing joint military operations to destroy terrorists and terrorist networks,” Hegseth stated during the meeting.

The announcement is consistent with De la Espriella’s security policy. In his first speech as president, he emphasized the need to confront “narcoterrorism and all criminal organizations without respite.”

But the announcement also raises several questions that the Colombian government will have to address, beginning with what it means by “joint military operations.”

If those operations involve authorizing the presence of armed US military personnel on Colombian territory, congressional authorization could be required. Article 173 of Colombia’s Constitution establishes that the Senate has the authority to “permit the transit of foreign troops through Colombian territory.”

Colombia has maintained a close military relationship with the United States for decades. The two countries have developed training programs, intelligence-sharing arrangements, counternarcotics efforts and interdiction operations. That relationship also included US financing for Plan Colombia beginning in the early 2000s under former President Álvaro Uribe, with Washington providing more than $10 billion.

However, military cooperation and joint training are one thing; the authorization announced by Hegseth to conduct joint military operations involving US forces is potentially broader in scope and raises questions about precisely where and how those operations would take place.

The bilateral relationship had been strained by disputes between Trump and Colombia’s previous president, leftist Gustavo Petro. De la Espriella has made restoring close ties with Washington one of his foreign policy priorities.

Second: Colombia joins Escudo de las Américas

During the same remarks, Hegseth said the United States and its partners would “defend our hemisphere from external threats” and announced that Colombia would join the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition, or A3C, also known as Escudo de las Américas.

“I’m also proud to announce that Colombia will join the A3C, becoming the 19th member. And through the newly inaugurated president, as our president likes to say, ‘President El Tigre,’ Colombia has requested that the Department of War join Colombia in its fight against narcoterrorism” Hegseth said.

During the event, Hegseth met with Mora to formalize Colombia’s entry into Escudo de las Américas.

“It is the beginning of a new stage in defense cooperation between the United States and Colombia,” according to the announcement.

However, the Colombian government has yet to publicly provide detailed information explaining what membership entails, what resources Colombia will commit, what specific objectives have been established or what oversight mechanisms will be implemented to safeguard human rights, international humanitarian law and protections for civilians.

“The minister emphasized that transnational threats do not recognize borders and that no state can confront them in isolation. Consequently, Colombia has offered to place its capabilities and experience at the service of hemispheric security, leading strategic efforts in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea alongside the nations that make up the coalition. The purpose is unequivocal: to prevent criminal organizations from replacing state authority and to guarantee that, throughout the territory, the Constitution, the law and the legitimate monopoly on the use of force prevail,” Colombia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement.

The announcement establishes Colombia’s participation in the coalition, but further information from the government will be necessary to determine how that commitment will translate into operations, funding and accountability mechanisms.

Third: A proposed $1 billion US assistance package

Immediately after De la Espriella’s inauguration on August 7, the United States announced its intention to provide Colombia with a $1 billion USD assistance package.

In a statement, the US State Department described the proposal as a “cornerstone” of the renewed relationship between the two governments, saying that “the United States, working with Congress, intends to announce $1 billion USD in assistance as part of a security package to support President de la Espriella’s Administration in achieving our shared goals.”

According to the same statement, the funding would focus on dismantling transnational narcoterrorism networks, including by strengthening security forces, disrupting the operations of transnational terrorist organizations, expanding coca eradication programs, intercepting cocaine shipments, curbing illegal immigration and protecting minors from recruitment.

The package would also seek to expand economic opportunities. The State Department said De la Espriella’s “pro-growth agenda and openness to US investment creates an opportunity to increase trade and deepen economic ties between our countries.”

But the $1 billion USD is not yet guaranteed.

The funding is subject to approval by the US Congress, and the legislative process required to authorize the resources has not yet begun.

The timing adds another layer of uncertainty. The United States will hold its midterm elections on November 3, 2026, with control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate at stake, along with several governorships. The outcome could influence the congressional dynamics surrounding approval of the resources announced by the Trump administration.

Taken together, the three announcements point to a rapid expansion of Colombia’s relationship with the United States under De la Espriella. But they also leave significant questions unanswered, particularly about the scope and legal basis of joint military operations, Colombia’s commitments under Escudo de las Américas and whether the proposed $1 billion USD assistance package will ultimately secure congressional approval in Washington.

The election took place during a joint session of the Senate and House of Representatives, with 269 of the 286 members of Congress participating: 95 senators and 174 representatives. The other 17 lawmakers either did not attend the session or abstained from voting.

Laverde, a lawyer with ties to the Partido Liberal, had served since 2015 as secretary of the Senate’s Sixth Committee, which handles matters related to public services, transportation, education, communications and technological development.

He will now lead the Contraloría General de la República, Colombia’s highest fiscal oversight body, for four years. His main responsibilities will include overseeing the management of public funds and assets, determining fiscal liability when resources are misused and pursuing proceedings aimed at recovering state funds.

“We will adopt global standards to pursue assets and fight corruption anywhere in the world. We will be the home of transparency and a technical institution at the service of the Colombian people,” Laverde said after his election.

“I will defend all citizens under an unwavering premise: zero political persecution, zero impunity. The Contraloría will not be a political weapon, but it will have all the resolve and authority necessary to punish, without distinction, anyone who touches public funds,” he added.

An election without direct government backing

Laverde’s candidacy received support from several parties backing the new government, although neither Salvación Nacional, De la Espriella’s party, nor the executive branch directly participated in selecting the candidate.

The president and his interior minister, Rodrigo Lara Restrepo, chose to remain on the sidelines to avoid becoming involved in another political dispute with the opposition after the executive branch suffered a defeat in the election of the Senate president at the beginning of the new legislative term.

Lara publicly acknowledged the government’s decision not to participate in the comptroller general election and urged its allies not to strike deals with or support the Pacto Histórico, which he described as an “opposition party and enemy of the government.” A similar situation occurred during the election of the Senate president, when the government lost because of an alliance between the Centro Democrático and the opposition Pacto Histórico, led by former President Gustavo Petro.

Laverde’s candidacy, however, ultimately drew support from different political sectors.

Before the vote, the Centro Democrático, Partido Liberal, Partido Conservador, Partido de la U and Cambio Radical issued a joint letter saying Laverde possessed “the highest professional, technical and personal qualifications to exercise this important responsibility,” backed by “a recognized career, extensive experience and deep knowledge of public affairs.”

Even the Pacto Histórico, the main left-wing opposition force led by former President Gustavo Petro, announced its support for Laverde hours before the vote.

“Our decision responds to the need for an independent, transparent Contraloría that firmly defends public resources,” the congressional bloc said on Facebook.

A key position in the system of checks and balances

Although Laverde received the backing of parties allied with the executive branch, his election also puts Colombia’s system of separation of powers and checks and balances to the test.

The Contraloría General de la República is the state’s highest fiscal oversight body, primarily responsible for ensuring that public resources and assets are managed efficiently and transparently and for determining liability when they are misused.

Its oversight extends to resources administered by the different branches of government, including the executive branch headed by De la Espriella, as well as Congress and the judiciary. The election of the comptroller general is therefore particularly sensitive for any administration because the officeholder must exercise fiscal oversight over the national government throughout the four-year term.

The election takes on additional significance in the current political landscape: Although the new government has allies in Congress, no political force holds a sufficient majority on its own, requiring agreements among different parties to secure major legislative and institutional decisions.

Before joining Congress, Laverde worked as a judicial attorney at the Procuraduría Regional de Risaralda and served as a member of the Caldas Departmental Assembly, in his home department.

His more than a decade working inside Congress has given him extensive knowledge of how the legislative branch operates. Since 2015, he had served as secretary of the Senate’s Sixth Committee, a position from which he participated in the consideration of initiatives involving some of the country’s major areas of public policy.

That career now presents a significant shift in responsibilities: After more than 10 years working within Congress, Laverde will lead one of the institutions responsible for overseeing the use of public resources, including those administered by the same branch of government where he previously worked.

Three days after the ceremony, a magnitude 7.4 earthquake hit western Colombia and rewrote the agenda entirely. The inheritance came first, though, and it is the reason he is president at all.

The numbers that elected him

The Centro de Paz y Seguridad (Center for Peace and Security) at Universidad Externado counted 40,663 homicides in Colombia between August 2022 and August 2025 — Gustavo Petro’s first three years in office — an annual average of 13,554. Over the equivalent stretch under Iván Duque, the figure was 37,795, averaging 12,598 a year, and under Juan Manuel Santos it was 36,646, averaging 12,215. El Tiempo published the center’s findings in December 2025.

Under Paz Total (Total Peace), the policy that opened simultaneous negotiations with practically every armed and criminal structure in the country, those structures grew. Infobae reported a military intelligence count showing membership rising from 15,120 in December 2022 to 25,278 by July 2025, an increase of 10,158, concentrated in the Nariño Pacific, Catatumbo, Cauca, Bajo Cauca Antioqueño and Arauca — zones, in Infobae’s words, of weak institutional presence. The Fundación Ideas para la Paz (Ideas for Peace Foundation), working from the same count, puts 48 percent of that total under arms and the remaining 52 percent in support networks. By July 2026 the figure had reached 28,802, a 90 percent increase across the Petro years, according to El Colombiano. That is not an interpretation of the policy; it is the count.

The sharpest version of that failure, for a business, is extortion. Ministry of Defense data reviewed by La FM shows 2,914 extortion complaints filed in the first three months of 2026, the highest quarterly figure in 10 years. Gen. William Rincón, director of the National Police, told La FM that more complaints do not automatically mean more crimes, and put the year-over-year increase at 13.1 percent for the same period. La FM identifies merchants, shopkeepers, cattlemen and small business owners as the standing victims of that economy.

A mandate Medellín paid for

De la Espriella won the June 21, 2026, runoff with 12,959,542 votes against 12,708,712 for Iván Cepeda — a margin of 250,830 votes, which El Tiempo put at 0.96 percentage points of all ballots cast, blank and null included, in the Registraduría Nacional del Estado Civil (National Civil Registry) preliminary count. MercoPress called it the narrowest margin in a Colombian runoff in 32 years. In the same El Tiempo breakdown, Medellín gave him 819,285 votes against 421,839 for Cepeda — a net margin of about 397,000, larger than the entire national margin, out of a single metropolitan area. Bogotá went the other way, 2,235,514 to 1,933,243. World Population Review puts Bogotá at roughly 7.9 million against 2.5 million for Medellín, so the smaller city delivered the decisive block. Take Medellín out of the arithmetic and Abelardo de la Espriella is not the president of Colombia.

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That is arithmetic, not commentary, and Medellín knows it. The city will expect a return, and an itemized one: the international airport expansion, highway concessions, hard security and continued support for the business climate that made it a destination for nearshoring and technology investment. That is the first political claim on the new government, and it arrives ahead of everything else in the program.

The inauguration was supposed to happen somewhere else. De la Espriella wanted to be sworn in at a military garrison in Popayán, and the Senate approved moving Congress to Cauca for it. Petro killed that on July 24, 2026: “I give no permission to any garrison or military establishment to make itself ready for the swearing-in of any official of the civil power in Colombia,” he said, in a statement carried by El Colombiano that extended to the Army, the Navy and the National Police. La Silla Vacía traced what followed: the House approved the switch to Cali 117 to 7 on July 28, the Senate followed on July 29 by 58 to 30 with 15 abstentions, and de la Espriella’s team cited volcanic activity around Popayán, whose Guillermo León Valencia airport had been shut more than a third of the preceding 20 days. Pacto Histórico (Historic Pact) lost its own blocking motion 114 to 6 and then announced it would not attend the ceremony at all. Per MercoPress, Congress convened at Universidad Santiago de Cali’s arena, Senate President Honorio Henríquez placed the presidential sash on him, and de la Espriella then moved to the Pichincha Battalion, where he spoke to armed forces and police commanders for more than an hour. The same report lists King Felipe VI of Spain among the attendees, along with Javier Milei of Argentina, Daniel Noboa of Ecuador, Santiago Peña of Paraguay and José Raúl Mulino of Panama, with José Antonio Kast of Chile there for bilateral meetings on the sidelines, and records Cepeda ending the day by announcing a shadow cabinet.

Worth noting, because it complicates the symbolism: Cali voted against him, 682,166 to 443,047, and so did Barranquilla, 375,178 to 309,652 — the city he wants recognized as an alternate capital. That designation is not ordinary legislation. Infobae laid out the route: Article 322 of the Constitution makes Bogotá the sole capital and Capital District, so recognizing Barranquilla requires an acto legislativo (constitutional amendment) — eight debates across two rounds, against the four an ordinary law needs. “The forgetting is over, the neglect is over, the centralist abandonment is over,” de la Espriella said in announcing it, per Semana. He has cast it as a break with Rafael Núñez: “A hundred and forty years ago Colombia did not have a president from the Caribbean. The last was President Núñez. But I am not going to make Núñez’s mistake. I am not going to defend the centralism that President Núñez defended. I am going to defend decentralization,” he said, in remarks reported by Infobae. The physical seat is already going up: El Heraldo reported that the Army’s Second Brigade at the Batallón Paraíso will house it, with the Atlántico governor’s office under Eduardo Verano executing the works. El Tiempo counts three regional seats in all: Barranquilla, plus the Centro Cultural de Cali, offered by Mayor Alejandro Eder and plaqued as an alternate presidential seat, and Medellín’s Palacio de la Cultura Rafael Uribe Uribe. In Bogotá itself the presidency moves to the Palacio de San Carlos, which currently houses the Foreign Ministry, while the Casa de Nariño becomes a museum open to the public.

His diagnosis is sound, and the problem is older than any of us: power in Colombia has been concentrated in the capital since independence, and the coast, the Pacific, the plains and the south have paid for it. Whether this becomes an actual redistribution of investment and institutional capacity, or a series of well-photographed ceremonies in cities that did not vote for him, will take a year or more to read.

A mandate without a legislature

The Consejo Nacional Electoral (National Electoral Council) granted legal status to de la Espriella’s Defensores de la Patria (Defenders of the Homeland) on August 3, 2026 — six magistrates in favor, one against and two absent — on the strength of the 12,960,166 votes certified to the ticket in the final scrutiny — 624 more than the preliminary count above — or 49.66 percent, nearly 14 times the 3 percent threshold the law requires, as Infobae reported. He was inaugurated four days later. The party holds no seats in either chamber; Infobae puts its first electoral outing at the regional elections of October 2027, and the next congressional cycle is March 2030.

The Congress he has to work with was elected on March 8, 2026, and seated on July 20, 2026. El País of Cali reported Pacto Histórico rising from the 20 Senate seats it won in 2022 to 25, and Centro Democrático (Democratic Center) from 13 to 17. In the House, La República counted 183 seats, with Pacto Histórico again the largest bloc at 41, Centro Democrático second at 30 and the Partido Liberal (Liberal Party) at 24, one Cundinamarca seat still disputed. The largest single bloc in both chambers belongs to the coalition he just defeated.

That matters more than the usual first-100-days handicapping, because the marquee items all need a legislature. Abolishing the Instituto Nacional Penitenciario y Carcelario (National Penitentiary and Prison Institute), or INPEC, would require statutory change and a redefinition of the state’s role in prison administration. The alternate capital requires a constitutional amendment. So would eliminating the Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz (Special Jurisdiction for Peace), or JEP, a tribunal created by constitutional amendment under the 2016 peace accord. What a president can do alone is issue decrees and direct the security forces, and that is what week one consisted of.

The traditional right cannot rescue him, because it is coming apart at exactly the moment he needs it. Centro Democrático’s candidate, Paloma Valencia, won the right-wing inter-party consultation in March 2026 with more than 3 million votes and had been polling near 20 percent going into the May 31, 2026, first round. A Guarumo poll published by El Tiempo had her at 19.9 percent in March 2026, up from 6.9 percent in January. She finished the May 31 first round with 1,639,668 votes, 6.92 percent, behind de la Espriella’s 43.74 percent and Cepeda’s 40.90 percent, per El Espectador’s tally of the Registraduría count — ending roughly where she had started the year. A party founded in 2013 to be the wall against the Colombian left finished third, behind both the man who beat it and the left coalition it exists to stop.

María Fernanda Cabal left the party in January 2026 along with her husband, José Félix Lafaurie, who heads the Federación Colombiana de Ganaderos (Colombian Federation of Cattle Ranchers), telling Infobae that the internal process which selected Valencia over her was irregular. In August 2026, she went further and filed for an escisión (a formal legal split) of the party. “No party can survive when it renounces the ideas that gave it origin,” she wrote, in remarks also carried by Infobae. Valencia, for her part, told a meeting in Antioquia that “we have to understand very clearly what party we are in. This is not a right-wing party.”

Álvaro Uribe’s own legal position complicates the popular version of this story. Judge Sandra Liliana Heredia sentenced him on August 1, 2025, to 12 years of house detention and a fine of $3.444 billion COP for procedural fraud and bribery in a criminal proceeding, the first former Colombian president convicted by the ordinary courts after waiving his congressional privilege in 2020. “The damage was colossal,” she said, as El Espectador reported. The Tribunal Superior de Bogotá (Bogotá Superior Court) acquitted him on October 21, 2025, finding he had committed neither offense. Infobae reported that the court held the interceptions of Uribe’s calls with his attorney Diego Cadena to be illegal and threw them out, and found contradictions and personal motives in the accounts of the former paramilitaries whose testimony carried the case. The Fiscalía General de la Nación (Attorney General’s Office) and the accredited victims filed cassation appeals with the Corte Suprema de Justicia (Supreme Court of Justice) on January 13, 2026, as Infobae reported, and Infobae also reported the court halting the proceeding in February 2026 over a recusal motion against one of its magistrates. Convicted, then un-convicted, with the final word still pending.

Regardless of how that ends, the political cost has landed. Centro Democrático was built around Uribe’s personal ability to anoint a candidate and deliver the votes behind them, and the legal fight, his age and the unpopularity of the Duque administration have drained that ability. The loyalists still worship the man, but his base is aging along with him and that circle is visibly shrinking. Younger conservatives who were not around to admire his successes against the guerrillas went a different direction this cycle, in some respects further right than Uribe and his movement.

“The peace commissioner’s office is finished, because there will be no more false peace processes in my government.” — Abelardo de la Espriella, president of Colombia

The program, and what it will cost

On his first day, de la Espriella signed the decree creating the Bloque de Defensa para la Seguridad Urbana (Urban Security Defense Block), which he had announced on July 5, 2026, while convening the mayors of Bogotá, Medellín, Cali, Barranquilla and Bucaramanga. “To issue effective measures matched to the needs of the worst-affected cities, I am convening the mayors of Bogotá, Medellín, Cali, Barranquilla and Bucaramanga so that, starting from their needs, we can create the largest urban security operation in Colombia,” he said, in remarks reported by El Tiempo. Bogotá Mayor Carlos Galán backed it in the same account: “the country needs to redefine its criminal policy. Far from rewarding criminal gangs, we must punish them. Anyone who commits a violent crime or reoffends in criminal conduct that harms the lives of others belongs in prison, not on the streets.” Medellín Mayor Federico Gutiérrez answered, in a post carried by El Heraldo, “We are ready, President Abelardo de la Espriella… The only ones who should feel afraid are the criminals.” His inauguration address added a tax reform aimed at evasion, elimination of the wealth tax, publication of an official list of narco-terrorist organizations, coca eradication and financial inclusion for informal workers, according to MercoPress.

The centerpiece of the longer program is a set of maximum-security megacárceles (mega-prisons) modeled on the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, built by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. Speaking to Caracol Radio in March 2026, in an interview Infobae wrote up, he described “ten mega-prisons in the middle of nowhere, where not even the signal of the Holy Cross gets in,” to be built with private capital in exchange for concessions of “fifty, seventy, eighty years, whatever it takes,” and confirmed the Bukele model when asked directly. On INPEC he was blunter: “INPEC is a cancer for Colombian justice and for Colombian society. It has to be taken out.” The number is not settled — El Tiempo’s summary of his 10 governing pillars put it at seven. A senior Salvadoran government official said Bukele’s administration is willing to advise Colombia on the build, in an interview with Semana reported by Chicanoticias. Medellín is not waiting: Gutiérrez has announced a high-security facility for more than 1,300 inmates, financed with public and private funds, guarded by its own dedicated force rather than INPEC officers, and expected to open in 2027, according to AFP reporting carried by France 24.

The baseline is genuinely bad. A Contraloría (Comptroller General) review running to 306 findings, reported by El Tiempo, puts overcrowding at 27.1 percent at the close of March 2026, against 19.9 percent in February 2022. Installed capacity rose by 378 beds in four years, from 80,647 to 81,025, while the inmate population grew by 6,246, from 96,703 to 102,949. El Tiempo puts the guard shortfall at up to 12,000, even as the custody corps itself grew from 12,715 to 14,142 officers. The economics are the harder problem. La Nación of Neiva estimates each facility at more than $1 trillion COP and three to four years to build, and cites the Universidad de los Andes security and drugs research center noting that five earlier national planning-council prison-infrastructure plans rarely executed more than 20 percent of their targets, while the combined budget of INPEC and the prison services agency USPEC went from $1.6 trillion COP to more than $4 trillion COP between 2015 and 2025 without improving recidivism.

Colombia does not bring a strong balance sheet to that negotiation. The Finance Ministry’s own investor relations office lists S&P Global Ratings at BB- in foreign currency with a stable outlook as of April 2026, Fitch Ratings at BB stable as of December 2025, and Moody’s Ratings at Baa3 stable as of June 2025 — two of the three agencies below investment grade, with Moody’s alone still holding the sovereign at its lowest investment-grade notch. The April cut was Colombia’s fourth on S&P’s scale since 2020, El Espectador reported, quoting José Ignacio López of the financial research institute ANIF that the country “keeps moving away from investment grade.” A government proposing a mega-prison program on that scale, a national urban security surge and the elimination of the wealth tax, from that starting point, will be judged on sequencing rather than on ambition.

Then the ground moved

At 7:34 a.m. on Monday, August 10, 2026, a magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck western Colombia, centered on San José del Palmar in Chocó, a community of 4,800 people about 400 kilometers west of Bogotá. Al Jazeera, reporting with AP and Reuters, sourced the epicenter to the United States Geological Survey and put the toll at 250 dead or more by August 11, with more than 2,700 people reported missing on citizen-run websites and about 1,600 buildings damaged or destroyed. Several upper floors of Cali’s Hospital Universitario del Valle collapsed, including pediatric wards, with roughly 600 patients treated in a street full of rubble; hospital director Irne Torres Castro described the scene to Caracol television. The same report cites the Servicio Geológico Colombiano (Colombian Geological Service) recording 21 aftershocks by late Monday, and quotes Camila Gómez, deputy director of programs for Colombia and Venezuela at the International Rescue Committee, calling it the largest earthquake Colombia has experienced in two decades.

Imágenes desgarradoras del terremoto en Pereira muestra como se les viene encima la casita a esta familia. Pensando más en lo material que en sus vidas, pero nadie sabe cuánto costó conseguirlo. #terremoto #temblor pic.twitter.com/i7gqeZmy5B

— Don Ramon (@RuedaJohnn37191) August 15, 2026

Per that same account, de la Espriella declared a national state of emergency, mobilized what he called “the entire military and police apparatus,” traveled to Quibdó and to Cali, and promised rental subsidies for people whose homes were damaged. Curfews went up in Cali, Armenia and Manizales; hospitals in five cities went to red alert; airports at Pereira, Manizales, Quibdó, Armenia, Cartago and Buenaventura suspended operations for structural inspection. “Chocó will never again be the land of the forgotten,” he said in Quibdó. MercoPress reported his appointment of geological engineer David Suárez Tamayo to head the Unidad Nacional para la Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres (National Disaster Risk Management Unit).

That Quibdó sentence is the decentralization argument, delivered under conditions nobody would have chosen. Counting the departments behind the cities named above — Chocó, Valle del Cauca, Risaralda, Quindío and Caldas — the quake hit the exact periphery the alternate-capital project is nominally about, and it hit the department where he had been sworn in three days earlier. It is also the first hard test of a government whose organizing promise is that the state can show up where it never has. On the early evidence, the machinery is being learned in real time. Colombia requested supplies but not foreign rescue personnel, despite offers from at least six countries, issuing a diplomatic note on August 11, 2026, that MercoPress noted does not formally amount to an international appeal. The same report has Bukele making Colombia’s position public before Bogotá did, and quotes international relations scholar Sandra Borda saying “the government is learning on the go how the mechanism works,” and that cities cannot channel aid directly. The posture shifted within days. By August 15, in the same El Tiempo report that carried his call with Trump, the Unidad Nacional para la Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres (National Disaster Risk Management Unit), or UNGRD, had begun formalizing requests for specialized teams from the United States, El Salvador, Ecuador and Israel, and de la Espriella had thanked Benjamin Netanyahu by telephone for the Israeli search-and-rescue crews.

🔴Se conocen impactantes imágenes del momento exacto en el que colapsó una edificación en la entrada del Centro del Comercio, en la ciudad de Pereira, durante el terremoto de 7,4 que se registró en Colombia el pasado 10 de agosto.

Las grabaciones muestran la caída de fragmentos… pic.twitter.com/oNZGvdbCJC

— EL TIEMPO (@ELTIEMPO) August 14, 2026

For the fiscal picture above, the quake is not a footnote. Reconstruction across those five departments now competes directly with prison concessions and an urban security surge for the same constrained peso. That belongs in any risk model built on the strength of the new security program.

Washington promises a billion dollars, and raises the tariff

The external position moved faster than anything domestic. On inauguration day, the US State Department released a statement titled “A New Era in US-Colombia Relations”, announcing that Washington, in coordination with Congress, intends to provide $1 billion USD as part of a security package supporting the new administration. El Tiempo noted the money is not approved: the statement says only that Washington will work with Congress to assemble it. The reversal it implies is still steep. US assistance to Colombia, which once ran at about $400 million USD a year, fell to roughly $187 million USD during the first year of Trump’s second term, according to a report to the US Congress cited by Infobae — a cut made in Washington, not in Bogotá, during a period of open dispute over drug policy. In 2025, the United States declined to certify Colombia’s counternarcotics performance for the first time since 1997, with a national-interest waiver that withheld the harshest consequences.

MercoPress reported that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche led the US delegation to the inauguration, with Office of National Drug Control Policy director Sara Carter and the vice president’s national security adviser, Cliff Sims; Donald Trump, JD Vance and Marco Rubio did not travel. The same State Department statement folded Colombia into Escudo de las Américas (Shield of the Americas), a regional security initiative backed by the Trump administration. De la Espriella had already placed its Colombian seat in Medellín, announcing on July 22, 2026, that the headquarters would go there “because this is where the head of the serpent of drug trafficking and organized crime is,” in remarks reported by Portafolio — a strategic choice, and also a second payment on the electoral debt described earlier.

Five days after the inauguration that relationship acquired a considerably harder edge. At an Escudo de las Américas meeting in Panama on August 12, 2026, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the new Colombian government had asked Washington to join its fight against narcoterrorism, “authorizing joint military operations to destroy the terrorists and the terror networks,” and named Colombia the 19th member of the Coalition Against the Cartels of the Americas. El Universal of Cartagena reported the announcement, and Vanguardia and El Tiempo both described what was authorized as joint military operations inside Colombia. That is a different proposition from an assistance package. Aid is a budget line Washington can adjust; foreign forces operating alongside Colombian ones inside Colombia is a sovereignty question, and it was settled in the first week of a presidency that commands no bloc in Congress. Whether that arrangement stays executive or ends up before the legislature is among the most consequential open questions he leaves himself.

The billion-dollar headline needs one piece of context that did not make the statement. CBS News reported that at the end of July 2026, roughly a week before the “new era” release, the United States raised its general tariff on Colombian imports from 10 percent to 12.5 percent, with exceptions including coffee and oil. After the earthquake, de la Espriella’s first substantive ask of Trump was to undo it. He told El Tiempo that the 10-minute call was “very friendly and cordial,” that he had asked Trump to consider a temporary suspension “to relieve our businesspeople, who are facing very difficult times because of the effects of the earthquake,” and that he had described the task ahead as rebuilding Colombia “in the middle of the economic situation — so difficult, so apocalyptic — that I inherited.” CBS News put the accompanying US assistance at $26.5 million USD, up from the $15.5 million USD announced on the day of the quake.

In his victory speech in Barranquilla, covered at the time by Finance Colombia, he framed the shift as Colombia returning to its place among the free nations, as a serious partner and a loyal ally rather than a dependent one. A relationship in which the ally sets your tariff rate and you ask for relief by telephone is a workable relationship. Whether it stays reciprocal, or curdles into dependency on whichever administration holds the White House, is a fair question over four years, and it is worth asking no matter who is in Washington.

Troublesome tendencies in Abelardo’s background

Between 2008 and 2019, de la Espriella filed 109 criminal complaints for defamation and slander against journalists, reporters and other citizens, according to Fiscalía figures provided to the Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa (Foundation for Press Freedom), or FLIP. Most were archived, withdrawn or went nowhere, which is precisely FLIP’s point about them: the organization argues that the effect of repeated recourse to lawsuits, injunctions, rectification demands and platform complaints is measured not in convictions but in legal costs, attrition and self-censorship.

Ahead of the runoff, FLIP and the International Federation for Human Rights issued a joint statement describing a pattern of attacks against the press, and FLIP’s own June 18, 2026, statement characterized it as “public disparagement, accusations of alleged political agendas, judicial harassment of journalists, baseless challenges to editorial independence, and actions aimed at undermining journalism on matters of public interest related to his candidacy.” The same LatAm Journalism Review summary records de la Espriella’s answer, that it is necessary to “set limits on journalists who believe they are untouchable.” He now says that with the machinery of the state behind him rather than a private lawyer’s caseload. Whether he has matured on this point, or simply acquired better tools, is one of the first real tests of the term.

In July 2026, he announced the closure of the Office of the High Commissioner for Peace along with the presidential offices for National Reconciliation and for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law, folding their functions into the Interior, Foreign Affairs and Defense ministries on the argument that those competencies already sit there and the offices duplicate them. “The peace commissioner’s office is finished, because there will be no more false peace processes in my government,” he said, as El Tiempo reported. The Unit for Implementation of the Final Agreement goes with them, its responsibilities passing to a new National Security Commissioner — the postconflict brief absorbed into a security structure. Infobae put the scope at 229 positions cut from the Presidency as of August 7, 2026, for a projected annual saving of $10 billion COP. Winding down a negotiating strategy that failed on the numbers above is a defensible decision. El Tiempo’s reading of the rest is the part worth sitting with: the move dismantles the two offices that tracked state human rights policy and compliance with Colombia’s international commitments, and leaves those subjects with no unit reporting directly to the president.

The prison model carries the same risk in another form. The attraction of Bukele’s system, in de la Espriella’s own telling, is the collapse in gang violence that followed it. What it also produced is documented: Amnesty International found that four years into El Salvador’s state of emergency more than 90,000 people had been detained and at least 470 had died in state custody, in a report titled «Seguridad» sin derechos (“Security” Without Rights) built on six documentation visits between May 2022 and January 2025, 109 interviews and direct examination of more than 80 individual cases. The organization argues the pattern could amount to crimes against humanity. Whether Colombia’s version imports the first result without the second is unknown, because the program does not exist yet. It belongs near the top of the watch list for the coming year, and not only on financial grounds.

What to watch

In the Barranquilla victory speech quoted earlier, de la Espriella struck a different note than his record suggests: no victors and no vanquished, no retaliation, no persecution, rights respected even for those who did not vote for him. With a margin under 1 percentage point, a party four days old at inauguration and no bloc in Congress, that posture is arithmetic before it is generosity. It is also the only version of this presidency with a chance of surviving past a single term.

The collapse documented here fell hardest on low-income Colombians in the cities and the countryside — the people without private security, who cannot simply avoid a dangerous neighborhood. If the crackdown that began under the urban security decree goes after the armed structures themselves rather than the poorest people living next to them, the homicide and extortion trends can reverse. If it does not, the country trades one set of victims for another and buys a human rights problem on top of a security problem.

Five markers will tell the story faster than any speech. Whether quarterly extortion and homicide figures move, and in which municipalities. Whether financing for the prison program appears as an actual budget line rather than a concession announcement, now that reconstruction has a prior claim on it. Whether the Corte Suprema rules on Uribe, and what that does to what is left of Centro Democrático. Whether the alternate-capital amendment survives even the first of its eight debates. And whether any rating agency moves an outlook on the strength of the new fiscal posture, or against it on the cost of the quake.

The armed groups tested every recent transition in Colombia early, and there is no reason to expect this one to be different. The FARC dissident structures and the National Liberation Army, or ELN, will test the response, and the way this administration answers that first test — in Cauca, in Catatumbo, in the Bajo Cauca — will tell you more about the next four years than the first 100 days of decrees.

“Colombia recognizes Morocco’s sovereignty over its Sahara,” Bula Escobar said at the meeting. Restrepo described the announcement as “a new beginning” for the two countries and called Morocco “Colombia’s first ally in Africa,” adding that Bogotá wants to build a strategic partnership with Rabat. Restrepo also raised the possibility of negotiating a free trade agreement to encourage Moroccan investment in Colombia, though no such talks have formally begun.

Colombia reconoció la soberanía de Marruecos sobre el Sáhara Occidental.

El anuncio se dio durante el primer encuentro del vicepresidente José Manuel Restrepo (@jrestrp) y el canciller Omar Bula (@omarbula) con el Ministro de Asuntos Exteriores del país africano.

Con esta… pic.twitter.com/aas0pirwSc

— Cancillería Colombia (@CancilleriaCol) August 8, 2026

Two days later, Colombia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (the Cancillería) issued a formal statement confirming the decision followed a “sovereign review” of the recognition its predecessor government had granted to the entity it calls the República Árabe Saharaui Democrática (Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, or SADR), noting that the United Nations does not recognize it as a member state. Bogotá said it would freeze all political and diplomatic contact with the SADR, halt exchanges of missions, and withdraw support for it in multilateral forums, “including the United Nations and the Security Council, where Colombia currently serves as a non-permanent member.” The ministry identified trade, investment promotion, tourism, food security, port and logistics development, and Atlantic connectivity as areas it wants to expand with Morocco.

A colonial-era dispute still unresolved

Western Sahara has been contested since Spain withdrew from its former colony in 1975. Morocco organized the “Green March” that year, sending hundreds of thousands of civilians into the territory to press its claim, and has administered most of it since. The Polisario Front, an armed movement representing the territory’s indigenous Sahrawi population, fought Morocco and declared a government-in-exile, the SADR, in 1976. A 1991 ceasefire monitored by the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) held for nearly three decades without the referendum ever taking place; fighting between Morocco and the Polisario Front resumed in November 2020 and has continued intermittently since. Morocco controls roughly the western three-quarters of the territory, separated from the Polisario-administered “Free Zone” to the east by a fortified sand berm running the length of the territory. Morocco has offered the region autonomy under its sovereignty since 2007; the Polisario Front continues to demand a UN-supervised independence referendum.

A widening diplomatic tilt toward Rabat

Colombia’s move follows a broader realignment in Morocco’s favor. The UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2797 on October 31, 2025, renewing the MINURSO mandate and, for the first time, calling on the parties to negotiate on the basis of Morocco’s autonomy proposal as the most “feasible” path to a settlement. Eleven Council members voted in favor; China, Russia and Pakistan abstained, and Algeria — not a Council member at the time — did not take part. Morocco’s foreign ministry says more than 130 countries now back the autonomy plan as the most realistic basis for resolving the dispute, and only about a dozen of the African Union’s 54 members still recognize the SADR. Mali withdrew its recognition of the SADR in April 2026 and Ecuador suspended its own in 2024; Peru ended its recognition in 2023. Colombia’s reversal extends that trend into what had been one of the Polisario Front’s remaining strongholds in Latin America.

For Morocco, Colombia’s recognition is a further diplomatic gain and another setback for Algeria, the Polisario Front’s principal regional backer. It also positions Rabat as an intermediary between Latin American and African markets, a role Bourita highlighted directly, saying Morocco and Colombia “could represent economic platforms for each other” given their respective positions on the two continents. He described Colombia’s decision as “historic,” saying it could give “great momentum” to bilateral relations, and said his presence in Cali reflected the Kingdom’s intent to elevate ties “to a higher level.”

“A regrettable quid pro quo arrangement driven by a deeply ideological agenda.” — Polisario Front, in a statement condemning Colombia’s decision

The Polisario Front rejected the decision. In a statement carried by Moroccan outlet Yabiladi, the movement said it “strongly condemned” Colombia’s move, calling it “a regrettable quid pro quo arrangement driven by a deeply ideological agenda” that helps “legitimize a situation resulting from the military occupation of a territory that remains subject to a decolonization process.” The Front argued the decision conflicts with Article 9 of Colombia’s own constitution, which grounds the country’s foreign relations in respect for international law and peoples’ right to self-determination, and said it undermines “Colombia’s international role as an important actor in the pursuit of peace.” It called on Bogotá to reconsider. Algeria has long framed the dispute as a matter of “incomplete decolonization and an unfulfilled right to self-determination,” and has backed the Polisario Front diplomatically and militarily for decades.

Why Colombia had not recognized Morocco’s claim before

Colombia’s position on Western Sahara has shifted with its governments for four decades. Bogotá first recognized the SADR in 1985 under President Belisario Betancur, then froze those ties in 2001 under President Andrés Pastrana. President Gustavo Petro restored full diplomatic relations with the SADR in August 2022, shortly after taking office, framing it as support for Sahrawi self-determination consistent with his government’s broader identification with Global South and non-aligned foreign-policy positions. Petro reaffirmed that stance as recently as November 2025, pledging what he called “unrestricted” support for the Sahrawi cause and linking it to Colombia’s arrival on the UN Security Council for a two-year term beginning in 2026.

That position did not survive the change of government. De la Espriella, a right-of-center former defense lawyer who took office August 7, had campaigned on unwinding Petro’s foreign policy, and moved quickly on more than one front: alongside the Western Sahara reversal, his government also recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and moved to restore ties with Israel, becoming only the second country after the United States to do so. Colombia’s recognition of Morocco’s claim over Western Sahara is best read in that context — less a response to new facts in the territory than a marker of where the incoming administration wants to position Colombia internationally, closer to Washington, Jerusalem and Rabat and further from the non-aligned coalition Petro had cultivated.

What remains untested is the commercial follow-through. Restrepo’s reference to a possible free trade agreement was aspirational rather than an announcement of negotiations, and the Colombian and Moroccan governments have yet to lay out a timeline for the trade, investment, port-logistics and Atlantic-connectivity cooperation both sides say they want to pursue.

Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella announced the declaration of a state of economic, social and ecological emergency to accelerate the response and reconstruction following the magnitude 7.4 earthquake that struck August 10, leaving more than 265 people dead, nearly 3,500 injured and 495 still missing.

The extraordinary measure will temporarily allow the executive branch to issue decrees with the force of law directly related to the emergency, mobilize resources and expedite procedures that, under normal circumstances, require lengthier administrative or legislative processes.

“I am informing the country that I have decided to make use of the economic emergency, a mechanism provided for in our Constitution that will allow us to address this crisis as required,” De la Espriella said during a televised news conference.

According to figures from the Unidad Nacional para la Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres, UNGRD (National Unit for Disaster Risk Management), released by the Presidency, the earthquake also damaged the homes of about 25,800 families and affected critical infrastructure, including medical centers, pedestrian bridges, roads, aqueducts and airports.

Among the hardest-hit areas are cities such as Manizales, Pereira and Cali, as well as the department of Chocó, which was the epicenter of the earthquake. The scale of the damage now opens a reconstruction process that could extend well beyond the duration of the state of exception. But what exactly does this measure entail? Here we explain.

What is a state of economic emergency?

The state of economic, social and ecological emergency is one of three states of exception established under Colombia’s 1991 Constitution to address extraordinary circumstances.

The other two are a state of foreign war, regulated by Article 212 of the Constitution, and a state of internal disturbance for security reasons, established under Article 213. The mechanism now being used by De la Espriella is regulated by Article 215.

That article establishes that when events other than a foreign war or internal disturbance occur that “seriously and imminently disrupt or threaten to disrupt the country’s economic, social and ecological order” or constitute a “serious public calamity,” the president, with the signatures of all Cabinet ministers, may declare a state of emergency.

Each declaration may remain in effect for up to 30 days, and the different periods of emergency may not total more than 90 days within the same calendar year.

To use this mechanism, the government must demonstrate the existence of real and verifiable circumstances that represent a serious and imminent threat and explain why the state’s ordinary powers are insufficient to respond to the crisis.

In addition, measures adopted through emergency decrees must be directly related to the causes that prompted the declaration.

Video news conference by President Abelardo de la Espriella announcing a state of economic emergency in Colombia.

What can the president do during the emergency?

In practice, the mechanism temporarily expands the executive branch’s powers by allowing it to issue decrees with the force of law without initially following the ordinary legislative process in Congress.

Among the measures it can adopt are the reallocation of budget funds, creation of funds to respond to the emergency, authorization of direct contracting mechanisms, changes to tax calendars and, under applicable constitutional conditions, the establishment of temporary taxes.

Those taxes must cease to apply at the end of the following fiscal year unless Congress subsequently decides to make them permanent. Colombia has had several examples of this. In March 2026, amid heavy rains, the government of former President Gustavo Petro enacted Decree 0240, creating two temporary taxes. The first was a 16% consumption tax on gambling platforms, along with an expansion of the wealth tax.

The 30-day window will be particularly important for the immediate response. During that period, the government will be able to establish extraordinary mechanisms to assist victims, mobilize resources and launch the initial phases of reconstruction, including the potential channeling of international cooperation.

However, because the reconstruction of infrastructure and housing will likely extend for months or years, much of its implementation will subsequently have to continue through ordinary legislation and resources from the national budget.

Government announces the ‘Fondo Milagro’

De la Espriella also announced that the emergency will allow the creation of the so-called “Fondo Milagro,” a name connected to “Patria Milagro,” one of his government’s political slogans.

The president described the fund as “an entity that will channel national and international contributions, which will be allocated to the reconstruction of hospitals, educational centers, buildings, roads and airports that were damaged by the earthquake.”

The government also intends to use the extraordinary powers to promote economic recovery in the affected regions.

“The emergency must also include economic recovery measures that stimulate investment, reduce obstacles to project development and generate more jobs,” De la Espriella said.

Is it a blank check for the president?

The scope of the extraordinary powers explains why states of emergency often generate political and legal controversy in Colombia.

The ability to issue decrees with the force of law, temporarily modify certain fiscal and budgetary rules and accelerate contracting processes can be interpreted as a way to reduce the ordinary controls and procedures that normally constrain executive action.

However, the Constitution establishes specific limits.

The president cannot use the emergency to suspend fundamental rights, weaken workers’ social rights or interrupt the functioning of the other branches of government. Nor can the president use extraordinary powers to adopt decisions that are not directly aimed at addressing the causes and consequences of the emergency.

In addition, legislative decrees issued during the state of exception are automatically subject to review by the Constitutional Court.

Congress also retains its political oversight functions and may examine the reasons that led the government to declare the emergency and assess the appropriateness and timing of the measures adopted. Within its constitutional powers, it may also modify, add to or repeal certain provisions issued during the emergency.

Those checks have already had an impact in 2026: In April, 2026, the court struck down the emergency declared by Gustavo Petro in December 2025, while in June it upheld, with restrictions, another declaration issued in February.

An economic emergency and a national disaster are not the same

Before announcing the state of economic emergency, the government had declared a national disaster, a different legal mechanism.

The disaster declaration stems from Law 1523 of 2012 and is linked to the Sistema Nacional de Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres, SNGRD (National Disaster Risk Management System). Among other tools, it allows resources from that fund to be mobilized and expedites the contracting needed to provide humanitarian assistance.

The state of economic, social and ecological emergency, by contrast, is constitutionally grounded in Article 215 and grants the executive branch extraordinary and temporary legislative powers.

The two mechanisms can therefore operate in a complementary manner: One facilitates the administrative and operational management of the disaster response, while the other temporarily allows measures with the force of law to address a crisis that the government considers impossible to manage solely through ordinary mechanisms.

De la Espriella’s use of the mechanism now opens a new period of constitutional and political oversight. Although the executive branch will be able to act more quickly during the initial earthquake response, the measures it adopts must remain directly connected to the calamity and will be reviewed by both the Constitutional Court and Congress.

As Abelardo de la Espriella took the oath of office as Colombia’s president on August 7, the US Department of State announced that Washington intends to provide $1 billion USD in security assistance to his new government, capping a stunning reversal in a bilateral relationship that a year earlier had produced sanctions against a sitting Colombian president, a revoked visa, and a call from the presidential palace for American soldiers to disobey their commander-in-chief.

A US Presidential Delegation led by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche represented the United States at de la Espriella’s August 7 inauguration in Cali, a city in Colombia’s conflict-scarred southwest that hosted the ceremony instead of the traditional venue in Bogotá. In a statement titled “A New Era in U.S.-Colombia Relations,” the State Department said the delegation “demonstrates US commitment to reinvigorating the US-Colombia relationship and deepening of our shared security and economic partnership,” and that the $1 billion package is intended “as a cornerstone of this renewed partnership.”

A delegation built around security and counternarcotics

Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not travel to Cali, but the delegation Washington sent was heavy with counternarcotics and security officials, according to ColombiaOne and Local 10 News. Alongside Blanche, the group included Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Terry Cole; US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida; Sara Carter, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy; Hugo Guevara of the US Embassy in Bogotá; Cliff Sims, national security adviser to Vice President JD Vance; Viviana Bovo of the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs; Joseph M. Humire, deputy assistant secretary of war for Americas security affairs; and Chris Jarvis of Joint Task Force Vulcan, which targets transnational criminal organizations.

“Yesterday was the start of a new friendship and partnership working as a team in the fight against drug trafficking and furthering our relationship in countering threats to our national security and public safety,” Blanche wrote in a statement carried by Local 10 News.

Cole struck a similarly pointed tone. “DEA is ready to stand shoulder to shoulder with Colombia again,” he said in a statement cited by Local 10 News. “We will hunt down those who profit from cocaine, corruption, violence, and terror. There will be no safe haven, no protected trafficking route, and no immunity for those who poison our communities.”

The turnaround stands in sharp contrast to where the relationship stood barely 10 months earlier. On October 24, 2025, the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) added outgoing President Gustavo Petro to its Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List — known in Colombia as the Lista Clinton (Clinton List), after the 1995 executive order that created it — under Executive Order 14059, which targets foreign persons involved in the global illicit drug trade. OFAC simultaneously designated Petro’s wife, Verónica Alcocer; his son, Nicolás Petro; and his interior minister, Armando Benedetti, according to a Federal Register notice of the action and Finance Colombia’s own reporting at the time. It marked the first time OFAC had designated a sitting, democratically elected head of state of a country long considered a close US ally.

The sanctions followed a September 15, 2025, presidential determination naming Colombia a “major drug transit country or major illicit drug producing country” that had “failed demonstrably” to meet its counternarcotics obligations — the first time Colombia had been placed on that list in more than 25 years.

Relations deteriorated further that same September, when Petro, addressing a pro-Palestinian rally near the United Nations General Assembly in New York, told a crowd: “I ask all the soldiers of the United States’ army, don’t point your rifles against humanity,” and urged them to “disobey the orders of Trump.” The State Department revoked his visa within hours, saying on social media that Petro had “urged US soldiers to disobey orders and incite violence,” according to CBS News. Petro dismissed the punishment, writing on social media that “international law grants me immunity to go to the UN and that there should be no reprisals for my free opinion, because I am a free person,” and noting that as a dual Colombian-European citizen he did not need a US visa, according to Al Jazeera.

Tensions eased only gradually. Petro traveled to Washington for a meeting with President Trump on February 2, 2026, in what CNN described at the time as a shift “from clash to dialogue” after a year of confrontation. Petro remained on the SDN list, and was still lobbying for his own removal from it as late as early July 2026, when he asked Trump by phone to lift the designation on him and his family — a request Trump said he would look into, according to ColombiaOne.

An election fought over the US relationship

De la Espriella, a 48-year-old lawyer and political outsider known to supporters as “El Tigre,” defeated Historic Pact candidate Iván Cepeda in a June 21 runoff, a race Trump endorsed publicly. Petro initially alleged the vote had been manipulated, a claim dismissed by international observers and Colombia’s electoral authorities before he conceded, according to Al Jazeera. The run-up to the inauguration was marked by violence, including a truck bombing near a police station in Cúcuta on August 1 that wounded eight police officers and three civilians, six days before de la Espriella took office, according to Al Jazeera. No group claimed responsibility; dissident factions of the demobilized FARC, the National Liberation Army (ELN), and the Clan del Golfo criminal group are all active in the border region. Security was tightened further ahead of the ceremony itself, held under armored vehicles, soldiers, and vehicle checkpoints in Cali, according to Al Jazeera.

At his swearing-in, de la Espriella broke with Petro’s negotiated-peace strategy toward armed groups, declaring that “the option of dialogue is completely exhausted” and pledging to “relentlessly defeat narco-terrorism.” He also committed Colombia to joining the Shield of the Americas, the US-backed regional counter-cartel coalition that grew out of a March 2026 summit hosted by the Trump administration, and pledged to strengthen state-run Ecopetrol (NYSE: EC) and pursue “responsible and sustainable fracking” to shore up the country’s oil and gas reserves.

Security package now, economic dialogue to follow

Under the State Department’s framework, the $1 billion package — which still requires action by the US Congress — is aimed at strengthening Colombia’s security forces against Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Transnational Criminal Organizations, expanding coca eradication and cocaine interdiction, freezing and prosecuting the finances behind armed groups, tightening border-security coordination, and rebuilding state presence in territory once controlled by armed groups.

The State Department said the two governments will also launch a Bilateral Prosperity Dialogue aimed at stabilizing Colombia’s economy, strengthening its energy sector, and exploring critical mineral investment, alongside efforts to connect Colombian small and medium enterprises in agribusiness, manufacturing, and tech services to US buyers and supply chains. Washington also committed to contributing to relief funds for potential El Niño-related flooding and drought, to modernizing Colombia’s digital, port, and energy infrastructure, and to advancing bilateral cooperation on civil nuclear energy.

Congressional approval of the $1 billion security package remains the first test of whether Friday’s pledges translate into disbursed assistance — and of how durable the “new era” proves once the inauguration goodwill fades.

Colombia recorded more than 24 million non-resident visitors during the current presidential term and generated close to $34.43 billion USD in foreign exchange from travel through December 2025, figures released by the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism (Ministerio de Comercio, Industria y Turismo, or MinCIT) show. The ministry says tourism has become one of the country’s largest sources of foreign exchange, surpassing traditional export sectors such as coal and coffee.

“Today, Colombia demonstrates that it can also generate wealth from its biodiversity, its cultural heritage, the quality of its services and the talent of its people.” -Diana Marcela Morales, Former Minister of Commerce, Industry and Tourism

The figures were presented during the Foro Internacional de Turismo: Colombia, un destino por explorar (International Tourism Forum: Colombia, a Destination to Explore), held in Bogotá on July 15. The event brought together tourism associations, business leaders, academics and government officials to discuss the sector’s performance and future, including regenerative tourism, artificial intelligence, smart mobility and innovation in visitor experiences.

Promoted under the campaign Descubre la Diversidad de Colombia, El País de la Belleza (Discover the Diversity of Colombia, the Country of Beauty), the ministry reported that more than 24 million non-resident visitors arrived during the administration of President Gustavo Petro, representing a 109% increase compared with the previous equivalent period. Of those arrivals, 14.8 million were foreign visitors.

According to the Banco de la República, Colombia’s central bank, tourism generated approximately $34.43 billion USD in foreign exchange through December 2025, exceeding revenue from coal and coffee exports. Tourism has also become the country’s largest services export, with 57% of services export earnings coming from the sector.

“For decades, much of the country’s capacity to generate foreign exchange was tied to the export of raw materials,” Former Minister of Commerce, Industry and Tourism Diana Marcela Morales said. “Today, Colombia demonstrates that it can also generate wealth from its biodiversity, its cultural heritage, the quality of its services, the talent of its people and the confidence that millions of people place in choosing the country as a destination. Tourism expresses, perhaps like few other sectors, that transition toward a more diversified economy with greater added value.”

Employment has also expanded alongside visitor growth. Figures from DANE (Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística, Colombia’s National Administrative Department of Statistics) show that accommodation and food service activities supported approximately 1.8 million jobs in February 2026, a 15% increase compared with the same period in 2019. During 2025, the sector accounted for 4.4% of Colombia’s national value added.

International demand has continued to grow during 2026. In the first quarter, more than 368,000 international airline tickets were sold with Colombia as the destination, representing a 16.7% increase over the previous year. The largest source markets were the United States, Brazil and Mexico.

During the first two months of 2026, approximately 10 million passengers traveled through Colombia’s airports, an 8% increase across domestic and international traffic. Between January and March, the country received 1.58 million non-resident visitors.

The government has also expanded tourism investment beyond major destinations. MinCIT reported that infrastructure projects—including trails, docks, boardwalks and gastronomic plazas—have reached 699 municipalities, representing 63% of Colombia’s territory. According to the ministry, 207 municipalities received tourism investment for the first time.

The ministry also said tourism initiatives now cover all 140 municipalities included in Colombia’s Programas de Desarrollo con Enfoque Territorial (Development Programs with a Territorial Focus, or PDET), a post-conflict development framework for areas historically affected by armed conflict. Through its Turismo para una Cultura de Paz (Tourism for a Culture of Peace) strategy, more than 999 businesses have joined the Colombia Destinos de Paz (Colombia Peace Destinations) certification.

“Unlike other economic activities, whose benefits tend to concentrate in specific production centers, tourism generates value precisely where a country’s natural, cultural and historical heritage is located,” Morales said. “It is a bridge that connects different cultures and brings opportunities to intermediate municipalities, strengthens rural economies, energizes small businesses and creates incentives to conserve what makes each territory unique.”

Headline Photo: Beachside in Barú, Colombia (photo by Loren Moss)

Four years after Gustavo Petro took office, Colombia is a different country from the one he inherited in August 2022, but it continues to face some of its deepest historical problems: inequality, violence, drug trafficking, illegal economies, corruption and the state’s limited ability to exercise control over large parts of the country.

Petro came to power with an ambitious promise: to transform the country. His election represented a historic change in itself. For the first time, a leader from the left reached the presidency, and social sectors traditionally distant from power gained direct representation in the executive branch.

Four years later, just as the self-described “Gobierno del Cambio” (Government of Change) comes to an end, the record is mixed. Petro leaves behind measurable social progress, a broader political spectrum capable of competing for power and significant reforms in labor and politics. But he also leaves unfinished projects, a peace policy that failed to achieve its objectives, a persistent crisis in the health care system, corruption scandals, and an administration marked by high ministerial turnover.

Perhaps his deepest legacy lies not in any specific reform, but in demonstrating that Colombian democracy could incorporate sectors that had remained on the margins of power for decades without altering the system of checks and balances that underpins the country’s democratic processes.

The main achievement: A broader democracy

Petro’s election in 2022 was the culmination of a political process Colombia had been experiencing for decades: the gradual expansion of the ideological spectrum with a realistic chance of reaching the presidency.

Francia Márquez‘s rise to the vice presidency carried equally profound significance. A Black woman from a region historically affected by poverty and conflict, her election became a symbol of political mobility and representation in a country where economic and social elites have traditionally dominated the main centers of power.

Márquez built part of her political discourse around the “nadies” (nobodies), an expression intended to champion historically excluded communities. Petro incorporated that narrative during his term and embraced political and social inclusion as one of the defining elements of his administration.

From that perspective, regardless of how its public policies are evaluated, the Petro administration leaves behind a broader democracy: after 2022, Colombia demonstrated that ideological, social, ethnic and regional groups previously distant from presidential power could also reach the Casa de Nariño. It was a necessary message for a country whose guerrilla movements emerged partly in response to the traditional two-party system of the last century.

Paradoxically, that expansion coexisted with an often-conflictive relationship between the president and some of the institutions designed precisely to limit the exercise of power.

At various points, Petro challenged Congress, the courts, the Banco de la República, the media and sectors of the opposition when their decisions stood in the way of parts of his agenda. Those checks, however, are not an anomaly in Colombia’s political system but one of its structural components: the system of checks and balances.

Incoming President Abelardo de la Espriella will likely face a similar reality. Without his own majorities in Congress, his ability to govern will also depend on negotiations, judicial oversight and institutional limits that no president can eliminate simply by winning an election.

Francia Márquez during her inauguration as vice president of Colombia at Plaza de Bolívar in Bogotá on August 7, 2022. Photo courtesy of the Presidency of Colombia.

Less poverty, more employment and higher wages

On social issues, several indicators improved during the Petro administration.

In 2025, according to figures from the Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística, or DANE, monetary poverty fell to 28%, the lowest level recorded in the country up to that point. Petro had taken office in 2022, when the rate stood at 36.6% following the sharp increase caused by the pandemic.

During the first three years of his administration, about 3.8 million people moved out of monetary poverty and nearly 1 million escaped extreme poverty, according to official DANE figures.

The labor market also improved. Unemployment, which stood at around 11.3% in 2022, fell to about 8% during the first months of 2026.

Petro also ended his term with a 23% increase in the minimum wage for 2026, far above inflation, which closed 2025 at 5.1%. The measure directly benefited about 2.5 million workers and their families and reflected one of the president’s most consistent political priorities: improving workers’ incomes and conditions.

The labor reform moved in the same direction, increasing the amount employers must pay for nighttime, Sunday and holiday work: one of the country’s long-standing labor policy shortcomings.

Those results allow the outgoing government to argue that part of its redistributive agenda produced tangible effects, even though Colombia remains a deeply unequal society.

Reforms that advanced and those left halfway

The record of Petro’s major structural reforms is considerably more complex.

Agrarian reform, one of his central campaign promises, fell far short of its goals. Petro had proposed purchasing 1.5 million hectares of land for distribution to farmers and advancing the formalization of 7 million hectares envisioned under the Peace Agreement.

According to figures from the Ministry of Agriculture, more than 462,000 hectares had been purchased by mid-2026, less than one-third of the announced target.

On pensions, the government succeeded in getting Congress to approve an overhaul of the system that replaced competition between public and private regimes with a system based on a public foundation and additional savings mechanisms administered by private entities. To secure its passage, the executive branch had to compromise on some of its original objectives. The reform was subsequently challenged in court, and its implementation was suspended while the Constitutional Court reviewed the legislative process, which remains unresolved in the absence of a final ruling from the court.

Colombia’s institutional system thus once again demonstrated the limits any president faces when attempting to implement structural transformations without sufficiently broad political consensus.

“Total Peace”, one of the administration’s biggest defeats

If there was one area where results fell particularly far short of initial expectations, it was security policy and the so-called “Total Peace” initiative.

Petro came to power proposing simultaneous negotiations with different armed organizations to reduce violence and move toward resolving the conflicts that persisted after the 2016 agreement with the FARC.

Four years later, his government ended without reaching a final agreement with the main armed groups with which it had opened negotiations.

During that period, organizations such as the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), and the Clan del Golfo maintained or expanded their operational capacity in different territories, while the country continued to record kidnappings, recruitment of minors, attacks and killings of social and political leaders.

Political violence reached one of its most serious moments with the killing of presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe, an event that reminded the country of the dangers of political violence that Colombia had believed it had left behind.

The failure of Total Peace to produce sustainable agreements will likely be one of the most difficult aspects of the outgoing president’s legacy to defend.

A health care transformation that never came

Petro also failed to transform the health care system on the terms he had proposed during the campaign.

The reform became one of the main battlegrounds among the executive branch, Congress, insurers, health care providers and different political sectors.

As that dispute continued, patient petitions, complaints and claims increased from about 915,000 in 2021 to 2.1 million in 2025, according to figures from the Superintendencia Nacional de Salud.

By the end of the administration, many patients continued to report difficulties obtaining medications and receiving timely care at hospitals and clinics, while household out-of-pocket spending on health care increased.

Petro profoundly altered the debate over Colombia’s health care model, but he failed to replace it with the system he had promised.

Corruption undermined one of Petro’s central promises

Perhaps one of the government’s most politically costly contradictions was corruption.

Petro had built much of his political career denouncing links among corruption, public contracting, and traditional power structures. His arrival at the presidency came with a promise to govern differently.

His administration, however, ended up being affected by several scandals.

The most significant involved the Unidad Nacional para la Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres (UNGRD), in which investigations pointed to the alleged use of public resources and contracts to benefit members of Congress in exchange for support for government initiatives.

The instability caused by the legal troubles surrounding Ricardo Roa, who headed the country’s most important oil and gas company, also had a profound economic impact, eroding both the company’s market value and the governance of one of the institutions underpinning the national economy.

Those controversies were compounded by investigations and disputes involving members of the president’s political and family circle. His son, Nicolás Petro, faced criminal proceedings related to funds received during the campaign, while Verónica Alcocer, then the president’s wife, remains at the center of questions over the use of public funds.

Determining individual responsibility is a matter for judicial and oversight authorities, but politically, the cases eroded one of the central elements of the message that had brought Petro to power.

More than 60 ministers in four years

Administrative instability also became a defining feature of the government. Over four years, more than 60 people served across 18 ministries, equivalent to an average of more than three officeholders per ministry.

The changes reflected political crises, disagreements within the governing coalition, differences between ministers and the president, shifts in the executive branch’s priorities and, at various points, difficulties maintaining a stable administrative course.

The result was a government with considerable rhetorical ability to place issues on the public agenda, but greater difficulty turning some of those debates into sustained policies over its four years in office.

Congresswoman María José Pizarro places the presidential sash on Gustavo Petro during his inauguration at Plaza de Bolívar in Bogotá on August 7, 2022. Photo courtesy of the Presidency of Colombia.

Petro changed who can govern, but not the rules of power

Gustavo Petro’s legacy can hardly be reduced to a simple choice between success and failure.

His administration produced tangible social results and expanded the boundaries of political representation in Colombia. It also put issues on the agenda that will likely remain part of the debate under future governments: inequality, the energy transition, agrarian reform, the functioning of the health care system, and representation for historically excluded populations.

But the promise of structural transformation was far broader than the results ultimately achieved.

Petro discovered, as his predecessors did and as De la Espriella probably will, that winning the presidency does not mean controlling the Colombian state. Congress, the courts, oversight agencies, the Banco de la República, regional governments, the media and a deeply polarized civil society impose limits on any political project.

Petro discovered, as his predecessors did and as De la Espriella probably will, that winning the presidency does not mean controlling the Colombian state. Congress, the courts, oversight agencies, the Banco de la República, regional governments, the media and a deeply polarized civil society impose limits on any political project.

In that sense, the main transformation of these four years may have been less institutional than democratic: Petro did not completely change the way Colombia works, but he did help change the idea of who can govern it.

De la Espriella’s arrival at the presidency from the opposite end of the ideological spectrum is, paradoxically, another manifestation of that expansion.

Colombia thus ends four years of its first left-wing government and begins its first far-right government. What remains between the two is a democracy with more diverse political alternatives, but one that is also deeply polarized, with institutions under intense strain and many of the country’s historical problems still unresolved.

President-elect Abelardo de la Espriella has completed the formation of his Cabinet ahead of taking office on August 7, assembling an 18-member team that includes nine women and nine men in compliance with Colombia’s gender parity law. The appointments complete the lineup of officials who will lead the country’s executive branch during his first year in office.

The Cabinet’s composition offers the first clues about the profile the new administration may adopt, becoming the first Colombian government led by a politician identified with the far right.

Throughout the presidential campaign, De la Espriella portrayed himself as a political outsider, describing himself as one of “los nunca”, those who had never governed before, while referring to his rivals as “los de siempre,” a label for Colombia’s traditional political class.

One of the central questions is whether he will govern following the models of leaders he has cited as references, such as Argentina’s Javier Milei and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, or whether he will ultimately rely on the traditional right that has governed Colombia repeatedly within the constitutional framework and the country’s system of checks and balances.

That debate had already emerged during the campaign when he selected José Manuel Restrepo, an economist and former minister under President Iván Duque, as his running mate. Widely regarded as a technocrat, Restrepo’s nomination was interpreted as a signal of moderation to voters who questioned the presidential candidate’s limited political and government experience.

The final Cabinet combines ministers who served in previous administrations, representatives of traditional political dynasties, business leaders, figures aligned with the MAGA movement and President Donald Trump, representatives of evangelical churches and Christian communities, and several officials with no previous experience in the national government. It also includes a number of politicians who were outspoken opponents of the outgoing administration of Gustavo Petro.

Top row, from left: Elsa Noguera (Transport), Mauricio Gómez Amín (Commerce, Industry and Tourism) and Viviane Morales (Education). Bottom row, from left: Jaime Andrés Beltrán (Housing), Juliana Gutiérrez Zuluaga (Sports) and Iván Cancino (Justice and Law). Photos from the ministers’ social media accounts.

The most technocratic appointments

Among this group, one of the appointments that generated the greatest expectations was Ana María Vesga as health minister, one of the country’s most sensitive portfolios after years of debate over Colombia’s health care system.

A lawyer and representative of the business sector, Vesga previously served as executive president of ACEMI, the association representing Colombia’s leading EPS or health insurance providers. From that position, she became one of the country’s main voices on the health system crisis, its financing and proposals to strengthen it. Eliminating the EPS system was one of the main objectives of the unsuccessful health reforms promoted by the government of Gustavo Petro.

Another top priority for the incoming administration will be security, which De la Espriella says has deteriorated because of “the failure of Petro’s Total Peace policy.” He appointed retired Gen. Jorge Mora as defense minister. With more than 35 years of military service, academic credentials and technical expertise, Mora will lead the government’s strategy against illegal armed groups, which the president-elect has given an ultimatum to abandon criminal activity. Mora also unsuccessfully ran for public office with the endorsement of Centro Democrático, the right-wing party founded by former President Álvaro Uribe.

María Nohemí Arboleda, appointed minister of Mines and Energy, represents a profile that bridges technical expertise and politics. Since 2016 she has led XM, the company responsible for operating Colombia’s national electricity transmission grid, after spending much of her career at ISA, the state-controlled energy company based in Medellín. One of her main challenges will be the possible reactivation of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a method of oil and gas extraction criticized by the outgoing government for its environmental impact.

Representatives of traditional political dynasties

Among figures affiliated with Colombia’s traditional political parties and family political clans, those De la Espriella has referred to as “los de siempre”, Elsa Noguera stands out as the incoming transportation minister. She previously served as mayor of Barranquilla, governor of Atlántico and housing minister, while building much of her political career within Cambio Radical, the party linked to the Char political clan, one of the new president’s main political allies.

Rodrigo Lara Restrepo, the incoming interior minister, also fits that profile. He served two terms as a senator for Cambio Radical and has maintained close political ties with former Presidents Álvaro Uribe and Iván Duque, as well as former Vice President Germán Vargas Lleras, all leading figures of Colombia’s conservative right.

Indalecio Dangond, who will head the Ministry of Agriculture, advised the administrations of Ernesto Samper (Partido Liberal), Andrés Pastrana (Partido Conservador) and Álvaro Uribe (Centro Democrático), and also worked for Fedepalma, the palm oil producers’ federation that he will now oversee as minister.

Mauricio Gómez Amín, appointed minister of Commerce, Industry and Tourism, served two terms as senator, was a member of the House of Representatives and a city council member. He also managed De la Espriella’s presidential campaign and is considered a key political ally of the Char clan in Barranquilla.

Also in this group is three-term Centro Democrático Senator Paola Holguín, who will become culture minister. Although she sought her party’s presidential nomination, she distanced herself after Paloma Valencia was selected.

Holguín also maintains close political ties with Medellín Mayor Federico “Fico” Gutiérrez, whose sister, Juliana Gutiérrez, has been appointed sports minister. They are joined by Natalia López, the incoming labor minister, who unsuccessfully ran for the Senate under the Creemos movement led by Fico Gutiérrez.

Fabio Arjona, the incoming environment minister, served as deputy environment minister during the Ernesto Samper administration from 1997 to 1998. He later led Conservation International in Colombia for two decades.

Rounding out this group is Miguel Gómez, the incoming finance minister. He belongs to one of Colombia’s traditional Conservative families: he is the nephew of slain Conservative leader Álvaro Gómez Hurtado, grandson of former President Laureano Gómez and brother of current Senator Enrique Gómez.

President-elect Abelardo de la Espriella poses with his Cabinet during a leadership retreat ahead of his inauguration. Photo published on X by the incoming administration.

Those who had never held government office

Five Cabinet members most clearly embody De la Espriella’s campaign concept of “los nunca”: Jorge Mora (Defense), criminal lawyer Iván Cancino (Justice and Law), audiovisual expert Alexandra Falla (Information and Communications Technologies), Omar Bula (Foreign Affairs) and Claudia Benavides (Science, Technology and Innovation).

Omar Bula’s appointment has attracted particular attention. Although De la Espriella has pledged to strengthen relations with the United States, the incoming foreign minister’s most significant international experience came between 1989 and 2012 through several missions with the United Nations World Food Program. At the same time, in recent years he has become a strong critic of the UN, describing it as a “left-wing directory” with an “anti-Western globalist agenda.” On social media he has also defended positions associated with the MAGA movement and argued that climate change is a false “woke idea.”

Claudia Benavides, meanwhile, was selected through a digital “talent hunt” platform created by De la Espriella to receive applications from citizens interested in joining the government. According to the president-elect, she was chosen from more than 300,000 applicants and had no previous relationship with him.

Signals to religious sectors

The presence of leaders linked to religious and Christian groups is another defining feature of the Cabinet.

The most prominent figure is former Senator and former Attorney General Viviane Morales. Although she built much of her political career within Partido Liberal, she has embraced conservative positions on same-sex marriage, adoption by same-sex couples, euthanasia and abortion. She also led a referendum initiative seeking to prohibit adoption by same-sex couples, although it was rejected by the House of Representatives.

Her appointment as education minister has raised concerns among academic and liberal sectors, particularly after stating that schools should “remove Marx and bring God back into the classroom.” Morales is also the wife of Carlos Alonso Lucío, a former M-19 guerrilla member who helped shape the ideology behind the Salvación Nacional movement and De la Espriella’s government.

Also, in this category is Jaime Andrés Beltrán, the incoming housing minister. The removed former mayor of Bucaramanga, Christian pastor and outspoken admirer of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele reflects the growing political influence of Christian movements within the governing coalition.

Between change and continuity

The Cabinet’s composition partially contrasts with one of De la Espriella’s central campaign messages: governing with “los nunca,” referring to people who, as he repeatedly said, had “never lived off the state’s payroll” and had never belonged to Colombia’s traditional political class.

Beyond the individual appointments, the Cabinet provides the first concrete indication of the governing model De la Espriella intends to pursue over the next four years.

The combination of figures drawn from the traditional political establishment, technocrats, private-sector representatives, leaders close to Christian movements and several officials with no previous government experience suggests a strategy focused more on governability and institutional stability than on political disruption.

That balance will be tested from the beginning of the administration in a highly fragmented Congress where no political force holds a majority, forcing the new president to negotiate each of his major reforms while confronting challenges including security, economic recovery, health care reform and strengthening relations with the United States.

Historically, not only in Colombia but around the world, incoming presidents and prime ministers typically achieve only a fraction of what is promised during their campaigns. Even if 30% of commitments are delivered, Abelardo could still disappoint some of his supporters, particularly those in Medellín who became deeply disaffected with Gustavo Petro’s administration. Ultimately, only time will tell. Much has been promised, but the pudding still has to be proven.

One major challenge will be the currency, which has moved to levels not seen in many years. The peso reached COP 3,100 against the dollar on Friday, and while many had feared a move toward COP 3,000, the surprise decision by Banco de la República to leave interest rates unchanged at 12%, despite rising inflation, quickly reversed that trajectory. COP 3,200 appears possible as the week begins.

These are extremely challenging levels for exporters and, in turn, for Abelardo, who has promised a golden age for overseas sales. Key sectors such as coffee and flowers have already publicly expressed concerns about declining competitiveness. Even if the new administration succeeds in creating a new oil boom, revenues generated at current peso levels will be significantly lower than anticipated.

The past four years have been dominated by discussions around debt and deficits, which economists understand are the cumulative result of decisions made by previous governments. These pressures are unlikely to ease if the peso remains at current levels.

Consumer confidence from Fedesarrollo remains solid. Retail sales are supporting imports of durable goods, particularly vehicles and electronics, adding more than $1 billion USD to the monthly deficit.

Other sectors likely to feel pressure include tourism and real estate, both of which have experienced significant growth in recent years. Colombia has become an increasingly fashionable destination, and many visitors have later returned to invest in houses and apartments. Today, however, those investments have slowed, while visitors are finding hotels, restaurants and excursions considerably more expensive than they were two years ago.

The reasons behind the peso’s current level are many, but a key factor has been investment flows into Colombia’s attractive local TES bond market through carry trade strategies. That said, profit-taking could soon emerge, particularly if investors begin positioning for a stronger dollar.

Let’s see how “The Tiger” addresses the challenge.

My regards,

Roops