President Abelardo De La Espriella and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed two bilateral framework agreements in Barranquilla on September 8, 2026, covering critical minerals supply chains and civil nuclear cooperation, in what Rubio said was his first trip to Colombia since becoming secretary of state. The signing was held at the Batallón Paraíso, which has served as a presidential venue in Barranquilla during the visit, according to El Heraldo. It capped a day of meetings between Rubio, De La Espriella and Foreign Minister Omar Bula Escobar that De La Espriella framed as the start of a broader package he called the Acuerdos de Barranquilla (Barranquilla Agreements).

The first instrument, the Framework Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Republic of Colombia for Securing of Supply in the Mining and Processing of Critical Minerals and Rare Earths, sets up cooperation on mineral supply-chain security. The second, the Memorandum of Understanding Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Republic of Colombia Concerning Strategic Civil Nuclear Cooperation, links Colombian and American nuclear researchers, regulators and industry and supports US non-proliferation objectives. According to El Tiempo, the nuclear memorandum does not authorize any transfer of nuclear technology, which would require a separate, longer-negotiated “123 Agreement,” and Colombia becomes the 16th country to sign this kind of arrangement with Washington since 2019, following Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Ghana, the Philippines, Armenia, Kenya, Singapore, El Salvador, Malaysia, Bahrain, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic and Paraguay.

De La Espriella tied the agreements directly to the August 10 earthquake that struck near San José del Palmar, Chocó, and damaged municipalities in Valle del Cauca. He said the US has provided $26.5 million USD in humanitarian assistance since the disaster, calling it more support than any other country has given, and said the two governments are moving “from emergency solidarity to a long-term strategic partnership.” The US Department of State has said the aid, delivered in two tranches, covers food, health care, protection, shelter and post-earthquake structural assessments, and is channeled through groups including the International Federation of the Red Cross, the International Organization for Migration, UNICEF, the World Food Programme and World Vision, according to Portafolio.

De La Espriella described the Acuerdos de Barranquilla as organized around three goals: rebuilding earthquake-affected areas, recovering the economy and strengthening hemispheric security. On the economic side, he proposed a bilateral prosperity dialogue with specific, funded, timelined projects on infrastructure, technology, industrial rebuilding and the minerals sector, and asked Rubio to back Colombia’s access to multilateral financing instruments. He also asked for a US commercial-diplomacy commitment covering investment, funding and technology, in exchange for Colombia offering project sites, production capacity and streamlined regulation.

On security, De La Espriella again pressed for what he calls the Plan Patriota Siglo XXI (21st Century Patriot Plan), a proposal to modernize Colombia’s aircraft, drones, radar, helicopters, counter-drone systems, air defense, cybersecurity and special-forces capability, financed partly with Colombia’s own resources. He said Colombia wants to be Washington’s top hemispheric security partner and set annual, verifiable counternarcotics targets covering precursor chemicals, trafficking routes, leadership networks and money laundering. Colombia joined the Coalition of the Americas Against the Cartels, a multinational anti-cartel effort coordinated by US Southern Command and known regionally as the Escudo de las Américas (Shield of the Americas), on August 12, becoming its 19th member nation, and De La Espriella said Medellín will host the coalition’s Colombian coordination site. Rubio, for his part, said Colombia has not asked for US troops and described the cooperation instead as intelligence-sharing, equipment, target identification and specialized training, according to El Heraldo.

De La Espriella also raised Venezuela, noting the two countries share more than 2,000 kilometers of border and that instability there affects Colombian security, migration, smuggling, armed groups and energy supply; he said Colombia would cooperate with the US on regional stability “in a very responsible manner.” In a separate press appearance the same day, Rubio said Washington had raised the presence of ELN camps and other armed groups operating from Venezuelan territory with the interim government led by Delcy Rodríguez, and that the matter would also be taken up with what he called Venezuela’s future democratic government, calling the pattern of fighters crossing into Colombia to commit crimes and returning across the border “not sustainable,” according to El Tiempo. De La Espriella said the two governments had agreed to expand migration-data and biometric cooperation and border enforcement, and he asked Rubio to study reopening a US consulate in Barranquilla, which last had one years ago. On illicit finance, De La Espriella asked for expanded judicial and financial cooperation to trace and seize laundered proceeds and hidden assets tied to organized crime.

Foreign Minister Bula Escobar cast the visit in commercial terms, saying before Rubio’s arrival that Colombia would pursue “solid, constructive and mutually beneficial relations,” with particular emphasis on “economic and commercial diplomacy: attracting investment, opening markets, promoting exports, tourism, technology and innovation.” Colombia’s ambassador to Washington, María Consuelo Araújo, said in the same release that the bilateral relationship in security, commerce and culture remains “extremely important and relevant” to both countries, according to the US Embassy in Bogotá.

“We look forward not just to restoring that but building upon it and creating a golden age of relationships between our two countries and our two people.”

— Secretary of State Marco Rubio

Rubio, who first met De La Espriella years before either held his current office, said the previous four years of distance between the two governments were “not natural” given the scale of economic, cultural and personal ties between Colombia and the US. Neither side put a dollar figure on the broader minerals, infrastructure or energy commitments discussed; De La Espriella said working teams in Washington and Bogotá will develop specific projects, funding and timelines in the coming weeks.

Full remarks: the Barranquilla signing ceremony and joint statement

The following is the full text of the signing ceremony and joint statement between President Abelardo De La Espriella and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, released by the US Department of State, Office of the Spokesperson. Video of the exchange is available from the official Colombian Presidencia YouTube channel.

MODERATOR: (Via interpreter) Good afternoon. Good afternoon. The Presidency of Colombia and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would like to welcome you to the ceremony of two memorandums of understanding between the Government of Colombia and the Government of the US of America.

We are pleased to have His Highness President Abelardo De La Espriella, who is the president of Colombia, that’s going to be in this act as the witness — as a witness of honor. And we would also like to greet Omar Bula Escobar, who is the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Colombia, and His Excellency Marco Rubio, who is the Secretary of State of the United States of America, who are going to sign both agreements.

(In English) Good afternoon. The Presidency of the Republic of Colombia and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcome you to the signing ceremony of two memoranda of understanding between the Government of the Republic of Colombia and the Government of the United States of America. We are honored by the presence of His Excellency Abelardo De La Espriella, President of the Republic of Colombia, who joins us as witness of honor. We also welcome His Excellency Omar Bula Escobar, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Colombia, and the Honorable Marco Rubio, Secretary of State of the United States of America, who will sign both instruments.

(In Spanish.)

(In English) We will now proceed with the signing of the first memorandum of understanding, the Framework Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Republic of Colombia for Securing of Supply in the Mining and Processing of Critical Minerals and Rare Earths. (Applause.)

(The Memorandum is signed.)

(Applause.)

(Via interpreter) Okay, thank you so much. We will now proceed with the signing of the second memorandum of understanding that it’s called the Memorandum of Understanding Between the Government of Colombia and the United States of America about Civil Strategic Cooperation, signed by the chancellor of Colombia and the Secretary of State of the US.

(In English) We will now proceed with the signing of the second memorandum of understanding, the Memorandum of Understanding Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Republic of Colombia Concerning Strategic Civil Nuclear Cooperation. (Applause.)

(The Memorandum is signed.)

(Applause.)

(Via interpreter) Thank you so much. Thank you so much. And now we were going to go to the joint declaration about the meeting between the statement between Abelardo De La Espriella and the Secretary of State of the United States Marco Rubio. And we’re going to initiate with the Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Mr. Secretary, welcome. Welcome.

SECRETARY RUBIO: (Via interpreter) Thank you so much, Mr. President. And thank you. I’m so glad — I’m so glad. I came here last time as a senator but in the last four years as a senator, and then as the Secretary of State we hadn’t traveled here. And I think that until a certain point, this is a signal of the distance that had been created between our governments, which is not natural because the relationship between Colombia and the United States is almost impossible to replicate because they are personal links, cultural links, and also — and also at the economic level. And also we also have the opportunity to restore that natural relationships that we have between our countries, but also to grow into a new stage, a new cooperation stage with our president even stronger than we had before.

We talked a lot about security, because always security is key, because without security there is no prosperity. But the opportunities that exist between Colombia and the US is much more than security because it’s the base of everything. Without security it’s impossible to operate as a country and as a society. But beyond that — because sometime people say that I — now they’re telling me I’m speaking in a low — you can hear me well, right? They say I’m speaking in a very low voice.

There is no doubt that without security a country cannot progress, and the threats to security that Colombia is facing, it’s the same things that we face in the US: the same networks, the same criminal groups that, although they commit their crimes here, they also commit crimes in the US, and they damage our people. But that’s the base. That’s the key. That’s the most relevant thing.

And because the most important role of any — of any government in any part of the world, it’s the security of its people. But above that, we can build on prosperity, which is extremely important to move forward. And also the opportunity that exists for Colombia at the economic level are huge, are amazing, and these are opportunities that Mr. President has in mind that we can work together so that it benefits both countries.

We have a lot to do because, unfortunately, this government inherited a series of disasters, bad decisions, and we feel — we feel the same when we went into power a year and a half ago. But you are facing the errors of the last four years, and you need to face this. And besides that, there was a disaster. There was an earthquake that was tragical.

But there are amazing opportunities, and we’re going to use this opportunity that we have nowadays, because the links between our two governments are so solid to ensure that not only are we going to focus on security, but this is something going to be key in our relationship, but we’re also going to focus in what we call the opportunity of creating a prosperity that helps the North American people and also helps the Colombian people.

And this relationship between our governments have a — have direct impact on the daily life of people here but also the people in the US, and especially people in the certain part of Florida where I’ve lived most of my life.

If you allow, Mr. President, I’m going to give a couple of words.

(In English) I want to say a few words in English as well. First, I want to thank the president for receiving us. It — it’s not every day — let me say in this in Spanish first. I should’ve said it earlier.

(Via interpreter) It’s not — and we’ve not always traveled to a country and we have the opportunity to exchange with chief of state that you met before they were president, before he was a politician, because of the mutual relationships that we have. And even when we were talking not long ago, the two years ago when we were in the same — we were in the same table at a wedding in the southern part of Florida. That’s why this is a place where the president of the — the president is someone that I’ve met at a personal level. And then he went crazy and decided to become a politician and decided to turn president.

(In English) So I think that it’s unusual that you travel to a country that you meet with a head of state and a president who you’ve actually known for years before he was president, before he was even in politics. And as I was joking, when he lost his mind and went into politics, and — but he’s going to do a great job for this country, and I know that. I know that from what I know about him from before he was president. This is a man of energy. This is a man of strength. This is a man of vision and of courage because he’s confronting a very difficult situation. He has inherited many disasters.

Obviously, the country faces the aftermath of a natural disaster in an earthquake, but he also faces a disaster that’s institutional, that goes through four years of very bad management and that, frankly, harmed the relationship between the United States and Colombia, something that simply is not natural. The United States and Colombia have a strong bond that exists well beyond just the cooperation of our governments. It’s a strong economic bond. It’s a strong cultural bond. It’s a strong people-to-people bond, a social bond.

I can tell you personally, having lived in south Florida the majority of my life, how we follow so closely the events that happen in Colombia, because it has a direct impact on life in south Florida and ultimately in our country. This is the natural state of things, is for the US and Colombia to be strong allies and strong partners, and the last four years is an aberration between our governments. But that is changing as well.

Clearly, the most important obligation of any government is to provide for the security of their people. It’s the number one obligation, and that is certainly an issue that you will confront here and that I am confident the president and his team are very serious about, and we’re going to do everything we can to help you.

But security is the basic and most important requirement of a government, but prosperity follows closely behind it, and that is opportunity of a country and an economy that provides the opportunity for upward mobility and prosperity for all of its people. And we believe we have a lot we can do together in the field of energy, in the field of trade, in the field of commerce, that allows both countries to benefit: the people of the United States, who I work for, and the people of Colombia, who the president works for and his team works for.

So I’m excited that after not having been here for a while, to be back, to be back with someone I know so well as president, who I know has a great vision and energy for the future, and excited to be back in a country that has been our strongest ally and partner in the region for many, many years. And we look forward not just to restoring that but building upon it and creating a golden age of relationships between our two countries and our two people.

Muchas gracias. (Applause.)

PRESIDENT DE LA ESPRIELLA: Thank you.

(Via interpreter) A very special welcome to all of you today. Barranquilla has been the scenario of a very strategic conversation for the present and for the future of Colombia and of our relationship with the United States of America. To welcome the Secretary of State Marco Rubio here in the Colombian Caribbean has a very special meaning, because Barranquilla has been historically the Golden Door of Colombia to the world and represents an absolute conviction of my government because Colombia, it’s not just governed from Bogotá, Colombia; it’s governed from its regions.

I would like to thank Secretary Rubio. His presence — we are honored by his presence. He has been an inspiration for this battle for democracy, institutionality, and freedom because there is no Latino in the world that doesn’t feel represented by Marco Rubio, that has always done things the best way possible. And with regards to our community, that’s why I thank you so much, Mr. Secretary of State. It’s a pride and honor to have you here in the land of Barranquilla.

I also would like to publicly acknowledge the solidarity of the US Government after the earthquake that we endured on August 10th. They have helped us with $26.5 million USD in humanitarian assistance, and besides all of what they are doing regarding the fires that people are suffering near Tolima. No country in the world has helped as much as the United States, and today we’re giving a step forward. We are not going back from the solidarity in the emergency, to a very strategic partnership, a long-term strategic partnership.

From this meeting there is a guideline that we’ve called the Barranquilla agreements, and they follow three main topics that are highly relevant for our country and for the hemisphere. We are going to rebuild the homeland, we are going to recover the economy, and we are going to protect the hemisphere. And we’re initiating a historical and close relationship that was interrupted during four years, but it has always been there in the deeper areas, in the deeper basis of Colombia, because the United States has been our partner. We have been their ally and partner, and when the United States and Colombia have worked together, the only thing that we have had, it’s development, security, and progress.

The main purpose of this agreement, it’s the rebuilding and the economic recovery. The earthquake left huge challenges in households, in bridges, utilities, and in productive capacity. We were thinking where we wanted to work on cooperation, investment, and funding mechanisms, including the International Development Corporation, other agencies, the private sectors and companies from both countries. We would like to attract investments to the infrastructure, energy, households energy, and the productive reconstruction Colombia is also going to do (inaudible) because we are going to do what we have to do regarding fiscal discipline, the legal certainty, efficiency, expanding better investment conditions.

In the same way, I requested Mr. Secretary of State to accompany us before multilateral organisms to enable instruments that allow us to fund these transitions without sacrificing the economic transition of our countries.

We are proposing to the US a partnership where Colombia puts project territories, productive capabilities, resources, and clear rules and regulations (inaudible) the US supports investments funding technologies and business capability.

Other of the important points, it’s shared prosperity. I have proposed Mr. Secretary to have this bilateral prosperity dialogue with very specific projects with — that has funding, timelines that our teams in Washington are going to continue developing. We identified some policies regarding infrastructure, technology, industry, rebuilding, and also rare minerals, which is the treatment we’ve just signed. Colombia has access to two oceans, has the strategic resources and human talent. We need to turn all those opportunities that Colombia has in investments and productive chains, in manufacturing and also in employment for our people.

Another very important point, it’s security in the struggle against drug terrorism. Colombia wants to become the first hemispheric security partner with the US, and we’re going to be the partner number one in South America. The 21st century requires new capabilities. That’s why we have proposed to the government, and I said it once again today, the Patriot Plan 21st century is to update airplanes, drones, radars, helicopters, anti-drone systems, aerial defense, mobility, intelligence, cyber defense, special forces, and the maintenance and the operationality. We’re going to have our own resource and we hope to build together capabilities to be able to face sophisticated threats.

But at the same time, we need the support — we need the support, a push from the United States, and we’re going to work in a very decisive manner in our fight against drug trafficking. We’re going to start with — we’re going to go through the precursors, we’re going to go through the pathways, we’re going to go through the leaders, we’re going to go to the narco-terrorists, we’re going to go through the money laundering and other criminal equity and also those international networks that are a huge challenge not only for the hemisphere but also for humankind. Colombia, it’s ready to have annual quotas, verifiable indicators, and very specific agreements. We’re going to do what we are (inaudible), and with that basis we want to have a co-responsibility that is effective for both countries.

Another important thing — it’s the Shield of the Americas. We’re already operational. Colombia is going to fulfill its responsibilities. We’re going to have the site in Medellín, and we’re going to do whatever it takes to be able to attack and to be able to give them the place that they deserve, which is either a prison or a tomb. And I say it: If a criminal doesn’t — if a criminal doesn’t follow the law, he is not going to get it his way.

And we also talked about Venezuela because we share more than 2,000 kilometers of borders with the neighboring country, and everything that happens in Venezuela has a direct consequence in Colombia regarding security, migration, smuggling, armed groups, and also energy. Colombia will participate along with the United States in a very responsible manner in the focused efforts to be able to ensure regional stability and will delve on trans-border cooperation, migration, and security. Our interest, Mr. Secretary of State, it’s that we each have institutionality, stability, and also security. We want to avoid any type of issue.

Another very important point that I mentioned to Mr. Secretary, it’s our foreign policy is based on a main policy. It’s that Colombia relates with the world from its own national interests. It has sovereignty, autonomy, pragmatism, and also a long-term vision, and this is where we’re perfectly tuned with the United States. We have now resources, geographic positions, human talent, and also very strategic assets. Our diplomacy needs to turn those strengths in opportunities to be able to become the best partners of the US. And we’re going to do it, Mr. Secretary, because this is a new rebirth.

Another very important topic, it’s migration and the rule of law. We agreed to delve on migration — more migration cooperation, exchange of information, biometric tools, identifying of the people (inaudible) to struggle against the migrants’ networks, and also the strengthening of border controls. Our idea, it’s that legal migration and — legal, safe, and organized migration, because our principle, it’s the same one that the United States shared. We’re not against migration. We’re against illegal migration, which is something different.

And there is a topic that it’s very close to my heart, and I said, Mr. Secretary, you know that many years ago we had — we had a consulate. And I said, hey, as the son of this region, I said if you can please open a consular office in Barranquilla, the alternate capital city of Colombia. And we are — we want a venue. We would like to consider it if possible, Mr. Secretary, because it’s been something that we’ve expected for years. First we had a consular office in Barranquilla, and then they took — and they removed the one from Barranquilla. The idea, it’s to go back to things as were before, and we hope to have here in Barranquilla the American consular office.

And once again, a topic that it’s also close to my heart, it’s cooperation to follow the path of the money. We would like to see what’s money laundering resources that come from resources and hidden assets, strengthening judicial cooperation and financial cooperation. All of this, it’s going to be under the evidence of the framework of law, due process, and the respect for institutions, because to catch criminals, it’s not enough. We also need to strike the money that supports those financial structures. We need to affect the pocket of the criminals because it will hurt them.

This was a very deep, cordial, strategic conversation. Not only are we talking about the United States can do for Colombia, we also talked about what Colombia and the United States can do together for the hemisphere, because Colombia contributes a geographic position, strategic resources, productive capability, human talent, a very experienced armed forces, and a government that is committed. And we would — wanted this — this new stage to start here in Barranquilla, in the Colombian Caribbean, and in the region. The Barranquilla agreements need to turn into projects, investments, and cooperation.

In the security and also specific outcomes, we need to rebuild the homeland. We need to recover the economy. We need to protect the hemisphere. As of now, our teams will start to work to turn those expectations, those desires, those projects, and realities. May God bless the United States of America. May God bless Colombia today more than ever. Thank you. (Applause.)

MODERATOR: (Via interpreter) Thank you so much, Mr. President. Thank you so much, Mr. Secretary of State. We — in this way, we are fulfilling the agenda of Mr. Marco Rubio to the city of Barranquilla. Thank you so much.

Headline photo: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Colombian President Abelardo De La Espriella and Foreign Minister Omar Bula Escobar at the signing ceremony in Barranquilla on September 8, 2026. (Photo courtesy Presidencia de Colombia via YouTube)

Colombian insurers had recorded an estimated $3.7 trillion COP in claims value tied to the August 10, 2026, earthquake as of September 7, according to the fourth weekly damage report published by Fasecolda, formally the Federación de Aseguradores Colombianos (Federation of Colombian Insurers), the trade group representing the country’s insurance companies. The figure is up $1 trillion COP from the previous week’s report and comes one month after a magnitude-7.4 earthquake struck near San José del Palmar, in the Chocó department, according to Semana. As of September 7, Colombia’s Unidad Nacional para la Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres (National Disaster Risk Management Unit, or UNGRD) had counted 331 deaths, 111 people missing and 4,505 injured, with nearly 467,000 people affected across 498 municipalities, Semana reported.

The estimated claims value has grown roughly tenfold since insurers’ first weekly report on August 14, when it stood at $370 billion COP. It rose to $1.2 trillion COP by August 21, $2.67 trillion COP by August 28 and $3.7 trillion COP in the report released September 8, covering the period through September 7.

Estimated earthquake insurance claims value in Colombia grew from $370 billion COP to $3.7 trillion COP across four weekly Fasecolda reports. (Chart: Finance Colombia, based on Fasecolda data)

Insurers had received 68,270 claims as of the September 7 cutoff, up from 66,370 in the prior report, a 3% increase in eight days. That volume is up 550% from the 10,465 claims logged in insurers’ first balance during the initial emergency response, before the weekly reporting series began. Claims have been filed in 451 municipalities across 31 departments, according to Fasecolda.

The number of earthquake-related insurance claims filed in Colombia rose from 13,855 to 68,270 across four weekly Fasecolda reports. (Chart: Finance Colombia, based on Fasecolda data)

Insurers have paid out $95.08 billion COP in indemnities to affected policyholders, up 121% from the prior weekly report, funds Fasecolda said are reaching homeowners, businesses and residential co-ownership associations directly. The disbursed total remains a small fraction of the $3.7 trillion COP insurers expect to eventually pay, reflecting how early the claims process remains a month into a filing window that runs two years from the date of the earthquake.

Gustavo Morales, Fasecolda’s chief executive, framed the figures as a reflection of both the scale of the damage and the industry’s remaining workload.

“A month after the earthquake, our priority continues to be standing by the people, families, businesses and co-ownership associations affected.”

— Gustavo Morales, chief executive, Fasecolda

The five hardest-hit departments by claims volume are Valle del Cauca, with 28,201 claims, $46.22 billion COP paid out and an estimated $1.35 trillion COP in total claims value; Risaralda, with 14,755 claims, $26.34 billion COP paid and an estimated $1.30 trillion COP in claims value; Quindío, with 8,158 claims, $12.45 billion COP paid and an estimated $256 billion COP in claims value; Caldas, with 3,998 claims, $4.68 billion COP paid and an estimated $220 billion COP in claims value; and Antioquia, with 5,847 claims, $660 million COP paid and an estimated $106 billion COP in claims value.

Valle del Cauca and Risaralda account for the largest share of estimated earthquake insurance claims value by department. (Chart: Finance Colombia, based on Fasecolda data)

By line of business, earthquake coverage — which Fasecolda groups together with homeowners’ and fire policies — accounts for the large majority of reserved claims value nationally: 63,786 claims and a $3.34 trillion COP reserve. Business-interruption coverage, known in Colombia as lucro cesante, accounts for just five claims but a $33.9 billion COP reserve, reflecting the size of the commercial policies involved. Automobile coverage accounts for 1,219 claims and a $22.9 billion COP reserve, and occupational-risk coverage, which insures workplace injury and death, accounts for 1,113 claims and a $16.6 billion COP reserve.

Earthquake, home and fire coverage account for the large majority of Colombia’s national earthquake-related insurance reserve. (Chart: Finance Colombia, based on Fasecolda data)

Fasecolda has published a claims guide on fasecolda.com intended to walk affected policyholders through what to do if they suffered damage, how to report a claim, which coverage may apply and the steps to file with their insurer. The federation reiterated that affected policyholders have up to two years from the date of the earthquake to file a claim, and can do so directly with their insurance company or through their broker without an intermediary.

The insurance-claims tally follows emergency measures Colombia’s financial regulator, the Superintendencia Financiera de Colombia (Financial Superintendency of Colombia, superfinanciera.gov.co), proposed within days of the earthquake to ease the burden on affected borrowers and claimants, including extended loan terms, waived default fees and fast-track insurance payment channels, as Finance Colombia reported in the days after the disaster.

Headline photo by Rupert Stebbings

The magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck on August 10, centered near San José del Palmar, in Chocó, killing at least 111 people on its first day, according to Finance Colombia’s coverage of the disaster, which also drew $1.3 billion USD in international pledges in the weeks that followed, Finance Colombia reported at the time. Colombia’s disaster-management agency, UNGRD, put the toll at 331 deaths, 111 people still missing and 36,326 homes completely destroyed as of a September 7 update — the same day as the Chocó summit — according to Semana.

Officials are calling the new initiative Colombia’s own “Plan Marshall,” a reference to the US-funded program that rebuilt Western Europe after World War II. The goal, De La Espriella’s government said, is not simply to repair what the earthquake destroyed, but to use the reconstruction to close Chocó’s longstanding economic gaps and draw new investment to one of the country’s poorest departments.

“I don’t want 100 small, scattered initiatives, each going its own way, with every ministry announcing its own program,” De La Espriella told the assembled executives, according to Valora Analitik. “We are going to do proper planning, set clear priorities, secure the resources we need and, as a government, I am committing to stay on top of execution so that things actually happen.”

Among the projects announced is the Malecón Gastronómico de Quibdó (Quibdó Gastronomic Waterfront), a new promenade along the Atrato River in the departmental capital meant to revive tourism and commerce there. Chocó Governor Nubia Córdoba said financing for the project is guaranteed through contributions from the business sector, according to El Colombiano. A separate $1 trillion COP infrastructure and connectivity package will fund five road projects to improve Chocó’s links to the rest of the country, split evenly between Colombia’s works-for-taxes program and direct private investment, according to Valora Analitik.

The strategy contemplates new commercialization opportunities for Chocó producers, through direct-purchase mechanisms that will connect local production with large business chains. (Photo courtesy Presidencia de la República)

A $5 billion COP seed-capital fund, channeled through iNNpulsa Colombia with contributions from Colombina (BVC: COLOMBINA), Bancolombia, the banking arm of Grupo Cibest (NYSE: CIB; BVC: CIBEST), and Tecnoglass (NASDAQ: TGLS), is intended to benefit roughly 1,000 entrepreneurs affected by the earthquake, with about $5 million COP going to each business, Commerce Minister Gómez Amín said, according to El Colombiano.

The Ministerio de Comercio, Industria y Turismo (Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism), known in Colombia as MinCIT, is leading several of the measures aimed at accelerating the region’s economic recovery. Nuquí and Bahía Solano, two Pacific coast municipalities in the earthquake-affected zone, were selected for a tourism-development push under what officials are calling a “Pueblos Milagro” strategy, backed by Fontur — the Fondo Nacional de Turismo (National Tourism Fund) — and the Fundación Santo Domingo.

Tourism is one of the strategic sectors of the agenda for Chocó, with the strengthening of tourist destinations such as Nuquí and Bahía Solano, selected among the municipalities in the affected zones that will be supported through Fontur. (Photo courtesy Presidencia de la República)

Companies including Olímpica, Grupo Nutresa (BVC: NUTRESA) and Colombina pledged to buy directly from Chocó producers, aiming to connect them with larger markets, the government said. Separately, officials said they will promote sales of biche, a traditional Pacific-coast spirit made by Chocó producers, through the Central Mayorista de Antioquia wholesale market in Itagüí, near Medellín.

The package also includes financial-inclusion measures, 100 scholarships for young Chocoanos — 50 of them pledged directly by Grupo Nutresa, according to Valora Analitik — solar-power generation for Pacific communities, a special regime meant to formalize small-scale mining, and a special tax and legal regime the government says is designed to attract private investment to the department. Officials also said they will study the feasibility of an interoceanic canal or a rail corridor linking the Urabá region with a deep-water port on Chocó’s Pacific coast.

De La Espriella framed the plan as a long-term commitment rather than a one-time relief effort.

“Chocó was not born to be poor. We are not simply going to rebuild what was lost — we are going to connect the department, attract investment, generate jobs and open opportunities. Government and business are united so that this time, promises become facts.”

— President Abelardo De La Espriella

Commerce, Industry and Tourism Minister Mauricio Gómez Amín said the government wants the reconstruction to leave a lasting economic footprint: “We have a historic opportunity to turn reconstruction into development. The challenge now is to translate these commitments into investment, jobs, new markets and concrete results for the people of Chocó.”

According to Valora Analitik, the business leaders who met with De La Espriella included Alejandro Santo Domingo of Valorem; brothers Jaime and Gabriel Gilinski of Grupo Gilinski; a representative of the Organización Ardila Lülle; David Vélez, founder of Nubank‘s parent, Nu Holdings (NYSE: NU); Bancolombia chief executive Juan Carlos Mora; Fuad Char of Olímpica; Colombina’s César Caicedo; Tecnoglass’s Christian Daes; and Miguel Cortés Kotal of Grupo Bolívar (BVC: GRUBOLIVAR).

Headline photo:Commerce, Industry and Tourism Minister Mauricio Gómez Amín speaks on the Chocó reconstruction plan.

A magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck western Colombia on August 10, 2026, with an epicenter about 20 kilometers from San José del Palmar in the department of Chocó, according to the United States Geological Survey. As of August 25, Colombia’s Unidad Nacional para la Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres (National Disaster Risk Management Unit, UNGRD) counted 331 dead, 4,439 injured and 240 people still missing, with 16 departments and 494 municipalities affected.

Ookla, the company behind the Speedtest and Downdetector network-monitoring platforms, has published an analysis of how Colombia’s mobile networks behaved in the hours and days that followed. Combining Speedtest data, background signal-scanning telemetry and Downdetector’s outage reports with the USGS ShakeMap seismic model, Ookla found that network failures tracked the intensity of the shaking closely, but that the worst of the damage did not arrive during the earthquake itself. It arrived hours later, and in Chocó, more than a day later, as backup batteries at cell sites ran down faster than utility crews could restore electricity.

Outages tracked the shaking, then kept getting worse

Service availability held roughly steady in zones that experienced shaking below 6 on the Modified Mercalli Intensity (MMI) scale, a measure of shaking severity rather than the earthquake’s magnitude, and began deteriorating rapidly above that threshold. In areas that registered MMI 8, severe enough to cause substantial structural damage, 22% of mobile devices lost service in the hours that followed, compared with a normal baseline of about 2%. Ookla’s modeling found that ground-motion intensity accounted for 45% of the variation in service loss, with distance from the epicenter explaining another 34%.

The worst point did not come until four and a half hours after the main shock, when 27% of devices in the most intensely shaken zone were without service. In Chocó, where the earthquake originated beneath San José del Palmar, the share of devices without service kept climbing for a full additional day, reaching 42%.

Devices without mobile service kept climbing for hours after the shaking stopped, peaking at 42% in Chocó a day later. (Chart: Finance Colombia)

Power, more than the shaking itself, decided who stayed connected

Colombia’s electrical grid absorbed the earthquake’s second-order damage. Chocó lost essentially all of its electricity supply, while the coffee-growing Eje Cafetero region lost about 80% of demand and Valle del Cauca about 70%, according to Ookla’s analysis of data from grid operator XM. Colombia’s Ministerio de Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones (Ministry of Information and Communications Technologies, MinTIC) separately counted 3,403 base stations out of service, equivalent to 46% of those it evaluated across seven departments; in Risaralda, the figure reached 77%. XM reported that 86% of electricity demand had been restored by the afternoon of the day after the quake, and mobile-network recovery tracked the pace of that grid restoration closely.

Downdetector registered an anomaly in consumer-submitted problem reports just 34 minutes after the rupture. But reports per million residents were roughly 18 times lower in severely shaken zones than in moderately shaken ones, an inversion Ookla attributes to a simple constraint: residents in the hardest-hit areas needed working connectivity to file a report in the first place.

Chocó lost its entire electricity supply, while the Eje Cafetero and Valle del Cauca lost about 80% and 70% of demand. (Chart: Finance Colombia)

Redundancy mattered more than any single site surviving

Claro reported the largest share of downed sites among the four national networks in the hardest-hit areas, roughly one in five, yet held its peak share of users without service to 10%, the lowest of the three operators for which Ookla reported that figure. Movistar recorded the highest peak user unavailability, at 16%, while Tigo reached 13%. Sites that stayed on the air served a wider area than usual and carried signal roughly 3 decibels weaker on average as a result. Devices on the network then marketed as WOM connected to competitors’ networks at a rate that rose from 8% to 13% of its host-network traffic, and observations of Movistar devices roaming onto Tigo’s network more than quadrupled. Ookla did not report a peak user-unavailability figure for WOM itself.

Claro held peak user unavailability to 10%, the lowest of the three operators Ookla measured, despite losing the most sites. (Chart: Finance Colombia)

The roaming shift also reflects a change in market structure that was already in place by the time of the earthquake: two of the four networks Ookla compared were, as of the earthquake, sister brands under a single owner. Millicom International Cellular (Nasdaq: TIGO) completed its purchase of Empresas Públicas de Medellín‘s 50% stake in Tigo-UNE in January for $571 million USD, then closed its purchase of a 67.5% controlling stake in Movistar’s Colombian unit, Colombia Telecomunicaciones, from Telefónica (BME: TEF) the following month for $214 million USD. Millicom completed a second purchase in April, buying the Colombian government’s remaining 32.5% stake in Colombia Telecomunicaciones for approximately $237 million USD to become its sole owner. Claro is operated by América Móvil (NYSE: AMX; BMV: AMX A). The operator Ookla and contemporaneous Colombian press referred to simply as WOM has since been ordered by Colombia’s Superintendencia de Industria y Comercio (Superintendency of Industry and Commerce, SIC) to stop using that brand amid a trademark dispute with its former Chilean licensor, WOM SpA, and now operates as Partners Telecom Colombia.

Demand surged onto a diminished network

Restoring a site to service did not mean restoring its performance. In the hardest-hit departments, latency under load rose from 633 milliseconds to 903 milliseconds and packet loss doubled even as the share of devices without service was falling, a sign that reconnecting users loaded a network that was still running on reduced capacity. In Valle del Cauca, median mobile download speed fell to 8.24 Mbps on the afternoon of the earthquake, compared with 28.99 Mbps on comparable Mondays. Speedtest activity itself fell by about a third on the first day, then more than doubled its normal level on the second day as more users regained enough connectivity to test their own service.

Latency and download speeds worsened in the hardest-hit departments even as more devices reconnected. (Chart: Finance Colombia)

Satellite was the fastest redundancy layer to arrive

In the most affected zones, legacy 2G and 3G connections’ share of cellular activity more than doubled as devices fell back to older networks, and the share of fixed-network speed tests carried over satellite nearly tripled on the day of the earthquake. Starlink offered free satellite internet service in five affected departments — Chocó, Caldas, Valle del Cauca, Risaralda and Quindío — within 30 hours of the earthquake. Ookla recorded roughly a 40% increase in Starlink utilization, with median download speed rising from 86.83 Mbps to 96.81 Mbps despite the additional demand.

Starlink’s free service in five departments saw usage rise about 40% while median speeds also improved. (Chart: Finance Colombia)

Ookla noted that Colombia had no direct-to-cell satellite network available during the emergency; the only device-to-satellite signals it detected came from Entel’s service operating across the border in Peru. Chile, by contrast, has offered a commercial direct-to-cell service between Entel and Starlink since November 2025, letting compatible phones connect straight to satellites without a dedicated terminal when terrestrial coverage fails.

Bogotá’s response, and the gap Ookla says remains

Colombia’s Ministry of Information and Communications Technologies activated a Sectoral Contingency Plan within days of the earthquake, ordering telecommunications operators under Circular 0028 to keep networks available to emergency authorities at no cost, making calls to the 123 emergency line free even for users without an active balance, and granting the Comisión de Regulación de Comunicaciones (Communications Regulation Commission) temporary power to require operators to share surviving infrastructure. The ministry also said it was evaluating a temporary allocation of spectrum for direct-to-device satellite connectivity. “Connectivity can save lives in the places affected by the emergency,” the ministry said in announcing the measures, as reported by Semana.

Ookla’s own conclusion points at a gap that policy has not yet closed: Colombia currently has no minimum backup-power requirement for network sites, a category of rule that resilience research, including work by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, identifies as central to keeping networks alive through an extended electrical failure. Chile offers a comparison of what such a rule looks like once regulators write it down. After a nationwide blackout in February 2025 exposed the same vulnerability, Chile’s telecommunications regulator, the Subsecretaría de Telecomunicaciones (Undersecretariat of Telecommunications, Subtel), published a decree in January 2026 raising the mandatory battery-backup requirement for critical cell sites from four hours to six. Chile had already learned a version of this lesson once before: after the country’s 2010 Maule earthquake, researchers found that only about 2% of the base stations that eventually failed had been damaged directly by the shaking, while most failed later, as backup batteries ran out. Claro and Tigo reported having restored more than 90% of their earthquake-damaged infrastructure in Chocó, Valle del Cauca and the Eje Cafetero by August 14, but Ookla’s data suggest the next earthquake will pose the same question this one did: how long the batteries last after the lights go out.

Ookla and Downdetector have been under joint ownership since June, when technology and consulting firm Accenture (NYSE: ACN) completed a $1.2 billion USD acquisition of the connectivity division of Ziff Davis (Nasdaq: ZD), which had previously owned both platforms.

The Unidad Nacional para la Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres (UNGRD, National Disaster Risk Management Unit) reported at least 273 people dead, 3,824 injured and 377 missing as of August 13, 2026, three days after a magnitude-7.4 earthquake struck the department of Chocó near San José del Palmar, according to agency director David Santiago Tamayo. The quake and its aftershocks damaged infrastructure across Chocó, Risaralda, Caldas and Valle del Cauca, affecting roughly 40,750 families. Collective Mining Ltd. (NASDAQ: CNL) (TSX: CNL), whose Guayabales and San Antonio gold, silver, copper and tungsten exploration projects lie roughly 100 kilometers from the epicenter, said none of its personnel were injured and none of its assets were damaged.

Rather than limit its response to its own project sites, the company said it is directing humanitarian support toward Manizales, the Caldas department capital about 80 kilometers from its Supía, Caldas operations, where it already has partnerships with local organizations. Collective Mining said it has been coordinating directly with municipal authorities, local fire departments and business associations to determine where that support is needed most.

On technical matters, the company will work with the Alcaldía de Manizales (Mayor’s Office of Manizales). Its monetary and in-kind contributions will flow through four organizations already active in the recovery: the Asociación Nacional de Empresarios de Colombia (National Business Association of Colombia, or ANDI), which is coordinating reconstruction planning in the hardest-hit areas; the Caldas chapter of the Cruz Roja Colombiana (Colombian Red Cross) and ProCaldas, a public-private development alliance, both focused on health infrastructure; and the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros de Colombia (National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia), which is targeting local school infrastructure.

Collective Mining traces its roots to Continental Gold Inc., the company that developed Colombia’s Buriticá gold mine before Zijin Mining Group (HKEX: 2899) (SSE: 601899) bought it in an all-cash deal valued at $1.4 billion CAD in enterprise value, a transaction that closed in March 2020. The same management group — now led by Executive Chairman Ari Sussman and President Omar Ossma, who served as Continental Gold’s legal vice president — regrouped around Continental Gold’s old playbook, exploring for gold, silver, copper and tungsten at Guayabales and San Antonio, two adjacent Caldas properties inside a district that already hosts 10 permitted, operating mines. Guayabales’ Apollo system, a large gold-silver-copper-tungsten discovery, is the company’s primary exploration target; recent drilling there has centered on extending the high-grade Ramp Zone and testing a newly exposed oxidized zone to the north.

“In moments like this, a coordinated response is essential to effectively reach affected communities. The support of organizations such as Collective Mining strengthens our ability to address immediate needs and support the recovery efforts underway in Manizales,” said Darío Gómez, president of the board of the Cruz Roja Colombiana’s Caldas chapter. “We appreciate their commitment to working alongside local institutions and organizations as the situation continues to evolve.”

“The safety and wellbeing of our people and communities is our first priority. I have been on the ground in Colombia working directly with our team and local stakeholders to lead our response and understand where assistance is most needed,” said Ossma. “Our thoughts are with everyone affected by the earthquake. We are mobilizing support through organizations that are positioned to direct assistance where it can have the greatest impact. We will continue to support our employees, their families and the broader community as recovery efforts progress.”

Management, insiders, a strategic investor and family and friends of the founding team own 45.2% of Collective Mining’s outstanding shares, according to the company.

Headline photo: Manizales skyline (Pixabay)

Colombia’s earthquake death toll had reached at least 273, with 3,824 injured and 377 missing, according to an August 13, 2026, update from the country’s Unidad Nacional para la Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres (National Disaster Risk Management Unit), three days after a magnitude-7.4 quake struck the department of Chocó near San José del Palmar. Samaritan’s Purse, a Boone, North Carolina-based disaster relief organization, dispatched a Boeing 767 cargo plane from Greensboro, North Carolina, before dawn Thursday carrying more than 48 tons of relief supplies for survivors.

The aircraft’s cargo included hygiene kits, solar lights and shelter materials, aimed at families left without safe housing. The earthquake destroyed thousands of homes and damaged tens of thousands more, according to the disaster risk management unit, which has recorded 12,584 homes destroyed and 74,873 damaged nationwide as of August 13, along with widespread damage to schools, health centers and roads. Samaritan’s Purse said its teams on the ground, working through local churches, would begin distributing the supplies to affected communities as quickly as possible.

The earthquake and its aftershocks caused significant damage in Pereira, Manizales, Cali and Quibdó, the capital of Chocó department. Search-and-rescue crews continue working through collapsed buildings as the Colombian government coordinates additional international assistance, and Samaritan’s Purse said the death and injury figures are expected to keep rising as the response continues.

“Although we don’t know the full extent of the destruction in Colombia yet, so many families are in need of immediate assistance,” said Franklin Graham, president of Samaritan’s Purse.

Samaritan’s Purse operates in more than 100 countries and says it provides aid to people affected by war, disaster, disease, poverty and famine. It already had a presence in Colombia before this week’s earthquake: in June 2026, the organization dispatched a team from its Colombia country office to respond to a separate pair of earthquakes in neighboring Venezuela. Those existing field offices, the organization said, will support distribution of the newly arrived supplies across the earthquake-affected region.

Headline photo: Samaritan’s Purse staff load pallets of relief supplies onto a cargo aircraft bound for Colombia. (Photo courtesy Samaritan’s Purse)

Colombia’s technology minister, Alexandra Falla Zerrate, swore in three senior officials on August 13, 2026, giving the Ministerio de Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones (Ministry of Information and Communications Technologies), or MinTIC, a full leadership bench six days after President Abelardo De la Espriella took office.

MinTIC reported in May 2026 that rural household internet access had reached 56.9%, passing half for the first time, and that the gain had left the urban-rural gap at around 20 percentage points. The ministry presented those figures to a team of economists from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in a session led by then Vice Minister of Connectivity Gloria Patricia Perdomo — the post one of the new appointees now takes over.

That post goes to Camilo Carrascal Vergel, an electronics engineer. Germán Enrique Bacca Medina takes the Vice Ministry of Digital Transformation, and Magda Yolima Amaya Arévalo becomes secretary general, according to the ministry, which supplied the biographical details that follow.

Carrascal Vergel brings more than 20 years across connectivity, regulation, infrastructure, digital inclusion, digital television, information security, data and innovation, and has worked in the public sector on initiatives to widen digital infrastructure and access to communications services in Colombia. Bacca Medina is a lawyer specializing in financial and securities law, with postgraduate study in communications law and in competition and competition economics, and has held posts at the Superintendencia de Industria y Comercio (Superintendency of Industry and Commerce) and the Comisión de Regulación de Comunicaciones (Communications Regulation Commission), alongside work in the private sector and in academia.

Amaya Arévalo takes the Secretariat General. She is a lawyer with a specialization in administrative law and a master’s degree in public management. She has more than 15 years of experience in public management and the handling of public funds. She previously served at the Agencia Nacional del Espectro (National Spectrum Agency) as deputy director for institutional support, with responsibility for administrative and financial processes and for authorizing expenditure.

Amaya Arévalo resigned three days into the job. President De la Espriella publicly instructed Falla on August 15 to review the ministry’s recent appointments and verify appointees’ backgrounds; a ministry document accepting Amaya Arévalo’s resignation effective that date was reported by La República. Semana reported that the appointment had come under scrutiny after it emerged that Amaya Arévalo had worked at the Fondo de Financiamiento de la Infraestructura Educativa (Fund for Financing Educational Infrastructure), or FFIE, an entity tied to the Ministry of Education under the previous government of Gustavo Petro. MinTIC’s organizational chart lists Germán Enrique Bacca Medina, the vice minister of digital transformation, as acting secretary general.

The mandate

MinTIC has named connectivity, artificial intelligence, innovation and the strengthening of public media as the four axes of its agenda, describing them as a technological transformation meant to generate social and economic development, lift productivity and reduce the country’s digital divides.

Those sit inside a longer set of objectives De la Espriella set for the portfolio: a digital sovereignty strategy built on national technological capacity, continued expansion of connectivity into rural and remote areas, and adoption of artificial intelligence to raise productivity and competitiveness. The remainder cover more interoperable state digital services, digital skills training, a secure and resilient digital ecosystem, and a strengthened public media and audiovisual sector.

In his inaugural address, the president said Colombia must join the Fourth Industrial Revolution and pledged to train children and young people in artificial intelligence, programming, data science and robotics:

I do not want, dear compatriots, for our young people to be simple consumers of technology created in other latitudes. I want them to be innovative creators and protagonists of the digital world.

The new minister

Falla has held posts at TransMilenio, as deputy manager for communications and user services, and between 2012 and 2015, she was a member of the Autoridad Nacional de Televisión (National Television Authority), where she led the rollout of digital terrestrial television and took part in decisions on television concessions and broadcast spectrum. From 2015, she directed the Fundación Patrimonio Fílmico Colombiano (Colombian Film Heritage Foundation), and in 2024 she became the first woman to head the Asociación de las Televisiones Educativas y Culturales Iberoamericanas, the association of Ibero-American educational and cultural television networks.

The swearing-in came three days after a magnitude 7.4 earthquake centered on San José del Palmar, in Chocó, struck Colombia on August 10, after which De la Espriella declared an economic emergency to speed reconstruction.

Headline photo: Colombia’s technology minister, Alexandra Falla Zerrate, with the ministry’s two new vice ministers and its new secretary general at their swearing-in, August 13, 2026. From left: Camilo Carrascal Vergel, vice minister of connectivity; the minister; Magda Yolima Amaya Arévalo, secretary general; and Germán Enrique Bacca Medina, vice minister of digital transformation. (Photo courtesy MinTIC)

Goya Foods announced on August 13, 2026, that it has donated more than 200,000 pounds of food to communities in western Colombia struck by the magnitude 7.4 earthquake of August 10, routing the shipment through Global Empowerment Mission, the Doral, Florida-based disaster relief organization running distributions in the affected departments.

The donation totals five truckloads of Goya products and is being made through Goya Gives, the company’s philanthropic program. Global Empowerment Mission, known as GEM, is handling logistics and last-mile distribution. The announcement did not disclose a dollar value for the shipment, a staging point, or the specific municipalities that will receive it.

The earthquake hit at 7:34 a.m. on Monday, August 10, 2026, about three miles south of San José del Palmar, in the department of Chocó, at a depth of 68 miles, according to the United States Geological Survey. The magnitude 7.4 quake was the strongest to hit the country in a decade, said Julio Fierro Morales, director general of the Servicio Geológico Colombiano (Colombian Geological Survey), according to CNN en Español.

The Unidad Nacional para la Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres (National Unit for Disaster Risk Management, or UNGRD) reported that as of 6:30 a.m. on Friday, August 14, the earthquake had killed 285 people, injured 3,975 and left 379 missing, as reported by El Colombiano. The agency counted 12,828 homes destroyed and 73,455 damaged, with 45,523 families — 102,263 people — affected across 15 departments and 426 municipalities. UNGRD had reported 140 collapsed buildings as of August 13. Cali, Pereira, Quibdó, Manizales and Armenia remain under red alert.

In Cali, in Valle del Cauca, the city government reported 104 deaths, 1,401 injuries and 115 people still missing as of 6 p.m. on August 13, along with 45 buildings fully collapsed, 46 partially collapsed and 1,142 structurally damaged, according to El País. Rescuers had pulled 88 people alive from the rubble in the city, and 8,236 tons of debris had been removed.

GEM began daily distributions across the affected departments on August 12, working with the Bogotá-based foundation Solidaridad por Colombia and the volunteer motorcycle group Motorrad Angels. The organization has divided its response into an immediate relief phase covering food, water, hygiene supplies, tents and bedding, and a later early-recovery phase. GEM previously operated in Colombia during the January 2024 wildfires, and its Latin America headquarters is in La Guaira, Venezuela.

“This donation gives GEM the ability to rapidly move essential resources directly into the hands of families impacted by the earthquakes in Colombia,” said Michael Capponi, founder and president of Global Empowerment Mission. “Our model is built around speed, efficiency and strong partnerships, ensuring aid arrives quickly and reaches the communities where it has the greatest impact.”

Peter Unanue of Goya Foods framed the donation in terms of the company’s 90-year history. “For 90 years, Goya has stood with communities in times of need,” he said. “We hope this donation provides nourishment and comfort to families as they recover and rebuild.”

The Colombia shipment follows a similar operation six weeks earlier. On June 29, 2026, Goya announced a donation of 100,000 pounds of food for Venezuela after back-to-back earthquakes of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 struck west of Caracas on June 24. That shipment also moved through GEM, distributed out of Goya’s warehouse in Miami.

Sovereign and corporate contributions have followed in Colombia. President Abelardo de la Espriella said on August 13 that the United Arab Emirates was donating $10 million USD for relief. The South American Football Confederation and the Colombian Football Federation announced a combined $1 million USD for reconstruction. The United States Department of State deployed two urban search-and-rescue teams to assist Colombian first responders on August 12, the agency said. Vice President José Manuel Restrepo has said multilateral institutions presented cooperation proposals totaling $1.3 billion USD.

De la Espriella has declared a state of economic, social and ecological emergency to speed reconstruction. The government declared a national disaster on the day of the quake, and the Superintendencia Financiera de Colombia (Financial Superintendency of Colombia) has since put draft relief rules for affected borrowers and insurance claimants out for public comment.

Goya Foods is a privately held, family-owned company founded in 1936 and headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey. It describes itself as the largest Hispanic-owned food company in the United States. Its Goya Gives program works with food banks, churches, shelters, schools and cultural institutions, and has directed food shipments to disasters in the US and abroad.

Goya products at a company warehouse. (Photo courtesy Goya Foods)

The decision that kept foreign rescue teams out of Colombia in the first days after the August 10 earthquake did not originate with the government that has spent the past week defending it. It originated with Javier Pava Sánchez, the acting director of the country’s disaster-risk agency, an appointee of former President Gustavo Petro who was still holding the post four days into Abelardo de la Espriella’s administration, and it is set out over two pages under his own digital signature.

The letter, reviewed by Finance Colombia and filed under radicado (case reference) UNGRD 2026EE14740, tells Foreign Minister Omar Bula Escobar that Colombia’s own accredited capacity is sufficient and that “at this stage of the emergency, it is not necessary to request or activate the deployment of specialized international search-and-rescue teams (USAR).” The document’s embedded digital signature records a signing time of 1:45:08 p.m. on Tuesday, August 11. Pava has since said publicly that it went out at 1:20 p.m.

What the Letter Says

The earthquake struck at 7:34 a.m. on Monday, August 10, with a magnitude of 7.4 and an epicenter in the municipality of San José del Palmar, in the department of Chocó, according to the Servicio Geológico Colombiano (Colombian Geological Survey, or SGC), as reported by Pulzo. De la Espriella had been sworn in the previous Friday and had named little more than his cabinet and a handful of front-line officials; the rest of the state was still staffed by Petro appointees or by lower-ranked officials serving on an interim basis, Madrid’s El País reported in the August 12 interview in which Pava gave his account.

Addressed to Bula at the Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and signed by Pava as acting director general of the Unidad Nacional para la Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres (National Unit for Disaster Risk Management, or UNGRD), the letter states that the country has more than 25 groups with search-and-rescue capabilities and that Chocó, Valle del Cauca and Risaralda had been prioritized. The figure is broader than the 23 UNGRD-accredited USAR teams that Pava, El Tiempo and La Silla Vacía all cite; the letter counts groups with search-and-rescue capability rather than accredited USAR units. Its finding is conditional: should the emergency outgrow national capacity, Colombia would request support, though only from teams holding a valid classification from INSARAG, the United Nations’ International Search and Rescue Advisory Group. It thanks the international community for its offers. No country is named in it.

Interior Minister Rodrigo Lara, of the Ministerio del Interior (Interior Ministry), has described that document as the trigger under Colombian procedure. He set out the mechanism on Blu Radio on August 14. “Requesting international rescuers is not something the foreign minister does motu proprio; it is not the foreign minister’s initiative. The foreign minister is the vehicle for doing it,” he told Néstor Morales. The determination is made by the Puesto de Mando Unificado (Unified Command Post), the interagency body the UNGRD directs. “If the man at the UNGRD, who was Pava, tells the foreign minister no, then the foreign minister cannot go and request any international assistance on his own initiative. That is to say, the initiative belongs to the director of the UNGRD.” Madrid’s El País reported the same sequence from the other direction: once Pava had specified what was needed, the Foreign Ministry went to multilateral bodies and individual governments and asked for precisely that.

Four Offers, and How Pava Weighed Them

Pava told Madrid’s El País by telephone that Bula had informed him before he wrote the letter of four countries offering rescue personnel: El Salvador, Peru, Israel and the United States. His own accounts differ on when that conversation happened: he told Infobae that he met Bula at around 2 p.m. to review the offers, which would place the meeting after the letter was signed. “In Colombia we have an enormous capacity of rescue teams, we have 23 USAR groups, so I looked carefully at what they offered us,” he said. Two he rejected on certification grounds: “In the case of El Salvador, they were not certified teams, they did not have experience in these types of situations. I also told the foreign minister that Peru’s are not certified either.”

His reasoning on the other two was different. “I told him, ‘Ugh, it seems complicated to me,’ because those have a political strategy,” he said of the Israeli and US offers — the director, Madrid’s El País noted, comes from the left. He qualified it in the same breath: “Of course it is good to have help from whoever, no matter where it comes from, but you have to see what we need most and what we already have capacity covered in. Things may change in the coming days, but at that moment we had capacity covered in rescuers.” He then chose between them. “Between Israel and the United States, I prefer the United States. But not the rescuers, because we have a good team here. It seemed better to me that they send their disaster coordination experts, who have very good technology for organizing satellite information in real time.”

To Blu Radio on August 12 and to the news agency Colprensa three days later, he set out the same four decisions in technical terms, without repeating the political characterization. “There was the offer from El Salvador, from Peru, in which, let’s say, their capacity is, on the one hand, they are not certified under INSARAG rules, and on the other hand, they are medium USAR teams, an area in which we have capacity,” he told Blu Radio. On Israel: “Israel has the response team and I said: no, that is not the one that is needed at this moment, and we stayed with that first requirement.” On the United States: “It was said that we would indeed need something related to specialized groups for the technological handling of information, and that is what the United States offers.”

The Letters That Followed

Pava’s defense is that the letter was a snapshot and that he accepted foreign help the same afternoon. In a video posted to his social media accounts on August 14 and in the Colprensa interview, he said he sent two more letters that day: one at about 3 p.m. accepting the US offer of technological and coordination support, and one at 5:20 p.m. asking that offers of humanitarian aid be accepted. “That letter was issued that day at one twenty in the afternoon and corresponds to the requirement conditions at that moment,” he said in the video, according to Infobae. “It is so that toward three in the afternoon I send a new letter to the Foreign Ministry accepting the help of the United States for those activities.”

Neither of the two follow-up letters has been released, but their contents have been described consistently. Madrid’s El País reported that in a later document Pava made explicit that three field hospitals and several thousand kits of food, household goods and cookware were required, including pet food. Infobae and Colprensa describe the 5:20 p.m. letter in the same terms — hygiene and food kits, and field hospitals to reinforce care in Chocó and Pereira.

He also framed the first letter as a technical instrument rather than a refusal. “There has at no point been any intention to limit access for those groups that can help and contribute assertively,” he said in the video. “When one speaks of authorizing USAR groups or search-and-rescue groups, one is speaking of specialized groups that have been accredited by the country sending them and that are accepted in Colombia.” He said the “disinformation” around the letter carried a “perverse intention: to justify the arrival of the Israeli Army’s USAR teams in Cali,” according to La Silla Vacía.

The México Question

México’s absence from the rescue effort became a story of its own, and Pava has described it two ways four days apart. To Madrid’s El País, on the night he announced he would resign, he said Bula had not initially wanted to receive support from México, which has a left-leaning government. To Colprensa on August 15, he said he had raised México himself and been told there was nothing on the table. “What I knew on Tuesday was the offer from only those four countries,” he said. “I asked whether there were any from México or from Chile, which we have had good experiences with, and they told me there were no offers. By Wednesday I found out that there were indeed offers from other countries, but by then those were other decisions the foreign minister had made.” Asked whether political interests shaped which aid was received, he told Colprensa: “Indeed, they are political decisions taken by the Foreign Ministry. Conflict was generated because aid from some countries was prioritized over others because they are political allies. I was left with many doubts about the México matter, because the foreign minister did not speak of further offers… I was lost.”

México’s public position on August 11 was that it was waiting on Bogotá. President Claudia Sheinbaum said that day that a humanitarian package and a specialized Mexican earthquake-rescue team were ready to go but that Colombia had to approve the deployment. “We are awaiting the formal request from the Government of Colombia, but we are ready for the moment they tell us we can go and help,” she said, according to El País. Chile’s President José Antonio Kast made a similar offer. Bula has said Colombia works with countries “without any ideological or political consideration,” a remark he made at a news conference on August 12, according to Chile’s Emol, citing AFP.

Three separate Mexican groups have figured in the argument. Sheinbaum said on August 13 — by which point Pava had been out of the job for a day — that Colombia had not approved entry for the Mexican Army’s rescue brigade, and that the obstacle was documentary: “They asked for certification from Colombia. They are certified, but now they are asking for another certification,” she said, adding that the brigade “is ready to leave at any moment,” La Opinión reported. The civilian Brigada de Rescate Topos Tlatelolco separately announced it would not travel, citing Colombia’s protocols for coordinating incoming teams. A third group, the independent Topos Aztecas, was already working in Cali, La Silla Vacía reported, noting that neither Topos brigade is México’s official state rescue capability. Pava’s own comment to Madrid’s El País about the Mexican volunteers already on the ground: “The Mexican topos (moles) seem to have come without authorization, and now they have to formalize their entry in order to operate.” Sheinbaum said Colombia had requested food parcels, water and medicine. La Opinión reported that México began an operation on August 12 contemplating 58.5 tons of aid, carried by Mexican Air Force C-130 aircraft, through August 14.

The Transition That Was Called Off

Pava spent 48 hours running the earthquake response for an administration that regarded him as the previous president’s man, and he has described the relationship in those terms. “They distrusted me, and I distrusted them,” he told Madrid’s El País. “In the meetings I was a fly in the milk, because they understand that I am from Petro’s very close circle of friends, not a second-tier official.”

The institutional gap was real on both sides. De la Espriella had ordered the customary transition process with the outgoing Petro administration suspended on July 7, Infobae reported at the time, and the incoming UNGRD director had not been named when the earthquake hit. The agency had no permanent director general and none of the three subdirectors who run its core areas — risk knowledge, risk reduction and disaster management — according to El País of Cali. “The UNGRD has 130 employees on provisional appointments and more than 1,000 contractors; with that team there were only some, because others ended their contracts with the end of the government,” he said. “What I did not count on was that there was no official from the other government, that there was no replacement in the post, and that I would arrive on Monday and this earthquake would occur.” He said the agency had more than $35 billion COP available for the first hours of response. Pava had himself replaced members of the UNGRD’s management team during his two months in the post, and defended those changes when Blu Radio put the criticism to him: “At no point was any sub-directorate left abandoned; it was taken on by career staff with experience and capacity.”

What the New Director Did Next

geologist David Santiago Tamayo Roldán, De la Espriella’s own pick, was sworn in as UNGRD director on the morning of Wednesday, August 12, and the government’s position changed the same day, on Lara’s account: “As soon as the new UNGRD director, Doctor Tamayo, arrived, the first thing he did in the morning with the foreign minister was to certify that international aid would be received, and international rescuers arrived.”

That Wednesday morning the Foreign Ministry welcomed a team of 22 US experts specialized not in carrying out rescue work but in coordinating those who do — the support Pava had recommended requesting from Washington. Hours later Tamayo announced Colombia would accept international rescue teams to relieve Colombian crews as needed. More than 54 hours had passed since the earthquake, Madrid’s El País reported.

The published country lists have not matched. Emol, citing AFP, reported on August 12 that Tamayo named four countries: the United States, Israel, El Salvador and Ecuador. México’s La Jornada carried the same four. La Silla Vacía reported three — Israel, the United States and El Salvador — and Lara also said three: “Rescuers were requested from three countries because no more are needed.” He went on: “Because we also cannot receive 4,000 rescuers, because receiving them, the 4,000 rescuers, becomes an additional problem for us.”

Tamayo’s own list changed again four days later. Presenting the national balance on the evening of August 15, he said the emergency had not exceeded the country’s response capacity, while noting that Colombia had accepted specialized international support to reinforce operations. He said three UN-accredited groups were in the country — from the United States, Ecuador and Israel, a trio that drops El Salvador from the list La Silla Vacía and Lara had given; warned local officials not to authorize groups not properly certified for search and rescue; and questioned that many such groups arrive requesting large quantities of resources without the capacity to operate autonomously, El País of Cali reported. Four days after Pava’s letter, the certification threshold and the capacity finding were the new government’s position as well.

What the Capacity Numbers Show

Colombia has 23 UNGRD-accredited USAR teams and roughly 1,000 trained rescuers drawn from the Colombian Red Cross, the Defensa Civil Colombiana (Colombian Civil Defense), fire departments, the armed forces and the national police‘s specialized Ponalsar search-and-rescue unit, according to El Tiempo, which interviewed Silvia Ballén, head of the UNGRD’s national search-and-rescue program. Colombia’s USAR COL-1 team obtained its international INSARAG classification in 2018, making the country one of four in the hemisphere with a UN-certified search-and-rescue team, El Tiempo reported; a team at the heavy classification averages 64 personnel and can sustain field work for seven to 10 days.

Lara said the constraint in some regions was demand, not supply. “In Quibdó 160 rescuers were left idle, with their arms crossed, because there was nothing left to search for or rescue,” he said, adding that they could be moved to Pereira, Dosquebradas or Cali but that local officials were reporting sufficient coverage: “Both the governor and the mayor, the mayors of these cities, tell us that there are enough rescuers.” La Silla Vacía reported that from Wednesday night several regions began closing the rescue phase, with Quibdó moving to reconstruction, Buenaventura expected to follow, and towns such as Quimbaya, in Quindío, requiring no rescue operations because there were no missing persons.

The View From Outside

Foreign governments spent August 11 asking whom to talk to. China’s ambassador to Colombia, Zhu Jingyang, asked the government to name an official and an official liaison for coordinating international assistance. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele confirmed publicly that Colombia had declined rescue personnel: “The Government of Colombia has requested humanitarian aid only in the form of supplies to assist the families affected by the earthquake,” he wrote on his social media accounts. “We have been informed that its rescue teams, medical teams and other emergency bodies are deployed and attending to the situation, so that at this moment they do not require personnel support.” El Salvador said it would send two cargo planes with 100 tons of supplies instead; Emol reported the shipment arrived. Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, made a similar request for a clear and organized response to the offers on the table, Madrid’s El País reported. Laerke also confirmed that the United Nations had received no formal request for assistance from Colombia, while saying the UN system stood ready to provide all the support within its reach, according to Infobae.

The United States was the exception. Washington announced $15.5 million USD in aid for emergency shelter, food, protection and damage assessment, and the State Department said it had activated a Disaster Assistance Response Team on Monday that would arrive in Colombia on Tuesday. Colombia issued a diplomatic note on Tuesday requesting specific support from the international community, short of a formal international appeal. UN Secretary-General António Guterres wrote that day that “the United Nations remains in close contact with the Colombian authorities and supports the government-led response, as requested.” Infobae reported that Pacto Histórico (Historic Pact) politicians including former Senator María José Pizarro and Representative Mafe Carrascal were pressing De la Espriella to request UN help. On August 12, Israel’s government said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had ordered an aid delegation dispatched “following a request from Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella,” according to Semana.

Where It Stands

Lara has been summoned to Congress to account for the government’s handling of the emergency. “On Tuesday we were summoned to Congress, we have been summoned, I was summoned to Congress so that we explain this situation,” he said, adding: “Watching how they make politics out of this tragedy — that is scavenger politics, frankly. Let’s drop it now.”

The UNGRD’s latest national balance, with a cutoff of 6:30 p.m. on August 15, records 289 people dead, 3,937 injured, 143 missing and 353 rescued across 15 departments and 448 municipalities, with 117,222 people affected. The death toll was revised down from 294 reported that morning and the missing figure from 320, after the agency cross-checked municipal reports against records held by the Fiscalía General de la Nación (Attorney General’s Office), the Instituto Nacional de Medicina Legal y Ciencias Forenses (National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences) and relief agencies to remove duplicates. Pava has pointed to that volatility in his own defense, telling Colprensa that on the Monday “I had an assessment far below what exists today,” and that at the time of his meeting with Bula the assessment showed the main sites requiring rescue were covered and that what was missing was coordination support and some technological capability.ungrd-carta-a-minexterior.

Full Translation: The UNGRD Letter to Colombia’s Foreign Ministry

The following is Finance Colombia’s translation of the original Spanish-language letter (radicado UNGRD 2026EE14740, dated August 11, 2026, digitally signed at 1:45 p.m.), sent by the UNGRD to Colombia’s Foreign Ministry:

Bogotá D.C.,
Doctor
Omar Bula Escobar
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Calle 10 No. 5 – 51. Palacio de San Carlos

Subject: Update on national search-and-response capacity in light of the earthquake that occurred in Colombia on August 10, 2026.

Dear Minister:

As part of the response to the emergency caused by the 7.4 Mw-magnitude earthquake recorded on August 10, 2026, with its epicenter in the municipality of San José del Palmar, department of Chocó, the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD) wishes to report on the current status of the response and the capabilities available within national territory.

According to information consolidated by the UNGRD’s National Crisis Room, the coordinating entity for risk management in Colombia, and taking into account that the assessment of damages and needs continues to be updated, different territories have been prioritized, particularly the departments of Chocó, Valle del Cauca and Risaralda, according to the needs identified in each of them.

With regard to search and rescue in collapsed structures, Colombia is carrying out response actions through its specialized national capabilities, with search-and-rescue groups accredited by the Government of Colombia, deployed and coordinated through the National Disaster Risk Management System.

At this hour, the country has more than 25 groups with search-and-rescue capabilities, which are sufficient to meet the operational needs identified in the affected areas. Based on the assessment carried out so far and on the national capabilities available, the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management, through its Search and Rescue Program, considers that, at this stage of the emergency, it is not necessary to request or activate the deployment of specialized international search-and-rescue teams (USAR).

This determination corresponds to the current state of the emergency and is subject to ongoing monitoring of conditions on the ground. Should the emergency evolve, or should the identification of new needs exceed available national capabilities, the Government of Colombia will promptly communicate, through established official channels, its specific requirements for international assistance and, if necessary, may request support solely from international search-and-rescue teams holding the corresponding INSARAG classification.

In this regard, the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management expresses its deep gratitude to the international community for its expressions of solidarity and for the offers of technical, operational and humanitarian support in search and rescue received through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the UNGRD.

Colombia maintains active mechanisms of coordination and information exchange with the international community and, in particular, is reporting on the evolution of the response and available capabilities through the corresponding international coordination mechanisms, including the Virtual OSOCC (Virtual On-Site Operations Coordination Centre) platform, within the framework of United Nations mechanisms for coordinating search-and-rescue operations.

Sincerely,

Javier Pava Sánchez
Director General (Acting)

Prepared by: Laura Manuela Bermúdez Caro, contractor, International Cooperation Group – UNGRD
Reviewed by: Nicolás Fernández de Soto, International Cooperation Liaison to the Director General’s Office – UNGRD
Reviewed by: Antonio José López Reales, Coordinator, International Cooperation Group – UNGRD
Reviewed by: Silvia Carolina Ballén Sánchez, Specialized Professional, Management Sub-Directorate – UNGRD
Reviewed by: Johana Andrea Rangel Franco, Specialized Professional, Management Sub-Directorate – UNGRD

Who Is Javier Pava Sánchez?

Javier Pava Sánchez is a geological engineer, a specialist in risk evaluation and disaster prevention and a master’s graduate in territorial planning and population dynamics, according to El Tiempo. Petro appointed him to lead the UNGRD in 2022, and returned him to the agency as acting director through Decree 0611 of June 16, 2026, after the Procuraduría General de la Nación (Inspector General’s Office) suspended director Carlos Carrillo over alleged improper political activity. Carrillo said the measure surprised him and rejected it, telling reporters, according to Infobae: “At no time did I campaign, I never promoted any candidate nor did I request electoral support for any campaign.”

Pava was still the UNGRD’s acting director when he signed the August 11 letter, announced that night that he would step down, and was replaced by Tamayo on the morning of August 12. He remains acting manager of the Fondo Adaptación (Adaptation Fund), another agency in the sector for which the new government has not named a replacement, Madrid’s El País reported. Two days after leaving the UNGRD, in the video responding to Lara, he said: “I want to state to Colombia that I have acted responsibly in the exercise of my functions and consistently with the government I represent, which is the government of President Petro.”

Above image: Javier Pava Sánchez speaks during a meeting at UNGRD headquarters in Bogotá. (Photo: UNGRD handout)

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.

Click above to watch the video!

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.