“My brother was murdered for not paying an extortion payment…in front of his children,” Edilma Martinez Flores said at a support centre for displaced people in Bogotá.
She had fled her home on the outskirts of Cali, in south-west Colombia, after armed criminal groups handed out leaflets telling residents to leave or face violence. “We had no choice but to leave our things behind,” she said. “They started placing bombs along the routes people travel.”
Her story is common, and it is why insecurity weighs on voters ahead of Sunday’s presidential election.
A conflict that has grown
Six decades of fighting between armed groups, the state and cartels have killed hundreds of thousands of people. Illegal armed groups have roughly doubled their membership in the last five years, among them FARC dissident factions, the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the Clan del Golfo. They have widened their hold on rural areas that matter for drug trafficking and illegal mining. An offensive between the ELN and FARC dissidents near the Venezuela border last year displaced tens of thousands of people.
The campaign itself has been marked by the assassination of a presidential candidate, along with homicides, kidnappings and bombings.
Isabelita Mercado Pineda, a government advisor for peace, victims and reconciliation in Bogotá, said forced displacement rose 300% between 2024 and 2025. “We have not seen displacements like this for the last two decades,” she said. She pointed to rising cocaine production and to the army’s failure to occupy land the FARC left after demobilising in 2016, which left voids for armed groups to fill. She also called the government’s strategy a “failure” that gives criminal groups “carrot but not enough stick”.
At the Bogotá centre, Erin Gamboa from the Chocó region on the Pacific Coast said his half-brother was taken by FARC guerillas and the family has heard nothing since. A couple who asked not to be named said a man claiming to be from the FARC began extorting their children and demanded 5 million pesos (about $1,500; £1,100). The woman, in tears, said crime had grown “so much” that you “can’t go out in peace anymore”.
Two candidates, two answers
Left-wing senator Iván Cepeda is seen as the “architect” of President Gustavo Petro’s “total peace” strategy, which puts negotiation with armed groups first. Critics say it has failed and let groups use ceasefires to expand their control. Supporters say it prevents a larger loss of life. Cepeda also played a key role in the 2016 peace deal that disarmed thousands of FARC fighters. He has promised “social transformations that the country urgently cries out for” and to “take stock” of the strategy and “make the necessary changes”. He leads among younger voters. Student Catalina La Grande said: “We believe in negotiated security: combining repression [of armed groups] with social programmes.”
His challenger is Abelardo de la Espriella, a right-wing businessman and lawyer who calls himself El Tigre. A US citizen, he has been endorsed by Donald Trump. He promises 10 mega-prisons, a tough military crackdown and an end to negotiations with armed groups. “Any criminal who does not surrender will be taken down,” he has said. His supporters wear the Colombian football shirt, which the left accuses him of politicising. De la Espriella grew up on the Caribbean coast, where he keeps strong support. Family friend Maria Luisa Sanchez said he “has that character, courage, it’s what we need for Colombia”.
Trump said the election would determine Colombia’s relationship with the US, and called Cepeda a “radical left Marxist”. The left has criticised the endorsement as foreign interference.
At a fanzone for Colombia’s World Cup opener against Uzbekistan, a 3-1 win, Sofía Diaz said she hoped her team and Cepeda would both win. Bogotá’s streets rang with cheers and vuvuzelas afterwards. Sunday’s vote, the BBC noted, is likely to leave the country far more divided.
