Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.
The highlights this week: Colombians ready for presidential elections, the United States indicts Cuba’s former president, and Bolivia is rocked by disruptive antigovernment protests.
As Colombians prepare to vote in first-round presidential elections on May 31, political debate has focused largely on public insecurity. Last week, assailants on motorcycles gunned down two campaign workers for right-wing candidate Abelardo De La Espriella, a gruesome echo of the killing of presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe Turbay last year.
Journalist Mateo Pérez Rueda was also killed this month after being detained by a guerilla group. And the International Committee of the Red Cross announced that in 2025 Colombia experienced its worst humanitarian situation in a decade.
Outgoing left-wing President Gustavo Petro pledged to reduce violence in Colombia. One of his main campaign promises was to negotiate with armed groups, a strategy he dubbed “total peace.” Petro’s chosen successor, presidential candidate Iván Cepeda, has been reluctant to criticize that approach, even though it has repeatedly broken down.
