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People light candles outside Santa Fe Foundation hospital, where Colombian Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay of the opposition Democratic Center party was shifted to from another hospital, after he was shot during a campaign event, in Bogota, Colombia, on June 7, 2025.
A surge of political violence has revived Colombia’s worst fears
On Saturday, a Colombian presidential candidate was shot in the head at a rally in the country’s capital, Bogotá. Three days later, a series of bombs went off in and around the third largest city, Cali, leaving at least four dead. The sudden surge of violence has many Colombians wondering if the country is headed back to a darker time.
“It’s a painful memory of where we come from,” says Colombia Risk Analysis director Sergio Guzmán. “Back then, political candidates were falling like flies.”
What was “back then”? In the 1980s and 1990s, Colombia suffered the worst of a decades-long internal conflict that left 220,000 dead, tens of thousands missing, and millions displaced. Initially a fight between Marxist rebels and the government, it rapidly expanded to include powerful drug cartels and right-wing paramilitaries. The violence was especially acute during the 1990 presidential campaign, when three candidates were assassinated, at least one of them by Pablo Escobar’s fearsome Medellín Cartel. In the early 2000s the state regained ground from the guerillas and the cartels, laying the groundwork for a 2016 peace accord with the main guerilla groups.
But amid rising violence generally, the assassination attempt on Senator Miguel Uribe has rattled a country on edge.
“The shooting is the most significant assault on a presidential hopeful in several years,” says Antonio Espinosa Calero, Eurasia Group’s Andean Region Researcher. “It has certainly fueled anxiety about instability and violence ahead of the upcoming election.”
The shooting isn’t the only reason for the country’s collective anxiety. President Gutavo Petro hasn’t been able to keep a lid on the drug cartels, crime is on the rise nationwide, and political violence has spread across nearby countries – like Ecuador and Mexico.
Wasn’t there a peace deal? Yes. Under the 2016 peace accord between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC, members of the guerilla group agreed to hand over their weapons to the government, in exchange for amnesty and political participation.
This hasn’t fostered peace? It has not. Instead, the drug cartels – which were not part of the peace deal – have filled the void, along with other guerilla groups that refused the peace. From 2021 to 2024, the number of kidnappings jumped 72%, while the number of extortion cases more than doubled. Cocaine production has reportedly reached record levels. Killings of human rights activists and other social leaders have soared.
Has the president tried anything? Elected in 2022, Petro tried to implement a Total Peace (“Paz Total”) to rid the country of violence. The former guerrilla fighter, Colombia’s first leftist president, tried to reach accords with every major armed group in the country. The plan has failed to bear fruit, as talks with groups like ELN – a dissident rebel group – have repeatedly broken down. The kidnapping of a famous soccer player’s father in 2023 only underscored the sense of chaos.
Politicians’ use of violent rhetoric hasn’t helped the situation, Colombia experts say. Petro is renowned for using provocative language in his social media posts, and he has already hinted at a conspiracy behind the shooting of Uribe.
“The presence of President Petro on social media,” Atlantic Council’s Colombia expert Enrique Millán-Mejía, has contributed to “an environment of political violence.”
Petro’s opponents – Uribe among them – have often responded in kind. The senator himself posted on X in May, “Every day Petro is in power, Colombia bleeds.”
Where does Colombian politics go from here? It’s a boost for the tough-on-crime candidates who seek to replace the term-limited Petro next year. A poll last year found 85% of adults believe the security situation is getting worse, and this assassination attempt will likely increase those numbers.
“The shooting will amplify public demand for change and concerns over safety in Colombia,” says Espinosa Calero, “likely benefiting conservative and tough-on-crime candidates in the lead-up to next year’s general elections.”
From stunted capitalism to economic growth in Colombia
During his victory speech last June, Colombia’s new president, and the country’s first leftist leader in modern history, said that it was time to “develop capitalism.” In an exclusive interview with Ian Bremmer for GZERO World, President Gustavo Petro explains what he meant.
“I mean to say that capitalism has not developed in Colombia. The productive capacity that it generates, which is indubitable throughout human history, has been quite rickety in my country.”
Petro tells Ian how he intends to expand Colombia’s productive capacity, and why the nation’s teeming biodiversity is central to that mission. And why a new kind of capitalism can diminish coca production in the process.
Watch the GZERO World episode: Gustavo Petro: the guerilla-turned-president who wants to "develop capitalism"
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Colombians want change, but what kind?
Against a backdrop of grinding inequality, rising violence, and widespread frustration with the political class, Colombians head to the polls on Sunday in the first round of what could be a watershed election for one of Latin America’s largest economies.
The past several years have been tumultuous for Colombians. The pandemic pushed 3.5 million of them into poverty, raising the overall rate to more than 40% of the population. Unemployment is running above 10 percent and inflation is at a 21-year high. There were mass urban protests over inequality in 2019 and a botched tax reform in 2021. Both led to deadly clashes with the police.
Meanwhile, Colombia has gotten more dangerous. After nearly two decades of steady declines, the homicide rate jumped 13% last year, and lackluster implementation of the historic 2016 peace accords with FARC guerillas has left vast areas of the country under the control of other armed groups or traffickers. Earlier this month, a major cartel paralyzed parts of a dozen different Colombian regions with an “armed strike” to protest the extradition of their leader to the United States.
Not surprisingly, most Colombians are fed up. Outgoing president Iván Duque has an approval rating of barely 20%. Polls show that the economy, corruption, and inequality top the list of voter concerns.
But Elizabeth Dickinson, a Colombia analyst at Crisis Group, says most Colombians’ frustrations now go beyond specific issues to something broader – “the lack of social mobility, the inequality, and an exclusionary system that privileges a small and self-contained elite.”
The three leading candidates offer very different visions for how to fix all of this.
So who are they?
The (ex)revolutionary: Gustavo Petro. As a young man, the leading opposition senator and former Bogotá mayor was part of a left-wing rebel group. His politics have mellowed since then, but the 62-year-old Petro still seeks major changes to tackle systemic inequality. He says he’d boost taxes on the rich, expand healthcare and education rights, shutter the oil and mining industries, give state jobs to the unemployed, and reframe the war on drugs as a socioeconomic issue rather than a security one. If he wins, he’d be the first overtly leftist president in Colombia’s history. And although Petro would lack power in Congress, his critics warn that he could bankrupt the country or turn it into a new Venezuela. But for those who want a left-leaning Colombia that empowers the marginalized, Petro is the clear choice.
The continuity candidate: Federico “Fico” Gutierrez. The 47-year-old former mayor of Medellín is the flagbearer of Colombia’s mainstream conservative camp. With the support of powerful former president Álvaro Uribe, Gutierrez has focused on law and order themes, promising a tough-on-crime approach, coupled with austerity measures to balance Colombia’s deeply in-the-red budget. For those who don’t want to rock the boat too much, “Fico” is the man of the hour.
The wildcard: Rodolfo Hernández. The 77-year-old self-made construction tycoon and former small-town mayor has an unvarnished, impulsive, and perma-tanned style that evokes shades of Donald Trump or Silvio Berlusconi. Hernández, who has surged lately in the polls thanks to his social media savvy and his anti-corruption message, is hard to pin down ideologically. He wants to slash taxes, legalize cocaine, boost import substitution, and fire a third of the state bureaucracy. But that’s all part of his appeal: he comes across as a fresh alternative to an insular and corrupt political class. For those who want big changes but are scared of Petro’s leftism, Hernandez is the pick.
Polls show Petro with a sizable lead, enjoying the support of about 40% of voters. Gutierrez and Hernandez are now in a virtual dead heat for second place, with around 20% support each.
Most experts think that Petro would likely win a second round against either of them, but that Hernández’s populist message would compete more favorably now than Gutierrez’s warmed-over continuity.
“There’s a climate of generalized rejection of the political class,” says Yann Bassett, a political scientist at the Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá. “So there’s a competition to embody change.”
What happens next? Unless any candidate gets more than 50 percent of the vote, which is very unlikely, the top two finishers on Sunday will head to a runoff in June.
The upshot: A clear majority of Colombians want big changes. On Sunday, we’ll learn more about what, precisely, that means.This comes to you from the Signal newsletter team of GZERO Media. Subscribe for your free daily Signal today.