He calls himself El Tigre, places his trust only in “God” and “the People,” and says he is putting “the whole truth on the table.” When he won the first round of Colombia’s presidential elections, to the surprise of many analyses and forecasts, he said his victory represented “the total defeat of the usual politicians, of the usual parties.”

Despite his disruptive rhetoric, Abelardo de la Espriella’s narrow victory on Sunday places Colombia within the trend that has dominated 12 elections in Latin America over the past three years: the advance of the right and the far right in its many forms.

De la Espriella belongs to the most radical, personalist and heterodox strand of the trend — one that has been embodied since 2023 by Javier Milei in Argentina (who identifies himself as a lion) and earlier by Nayib Bukele in El Salvador (who was re-elected in 2024 by amending the Constitution). All three are staunch admirers and allies of U.S. President Donald Trump, in a region that the United States now aggressively considers its hegemonic sphere of influence. It’s a region where — with the exceptions of the heavyweights Mexico and Brazil, as well as Bernardo Arévalo’s Guatemala and Yamandú Orsi’s Uruguay — a shift to the right is consolidating.

“It is a trend, without doubt, and it is a new right-wing movement,” says Steven Levitsky, professor of governance at Harvard University, a Latin America specialist and author of the book How Democracies Die (2018). “It is very different from the right of the early 2000s, with Sebastián Piñera [Chile], Vicente Fox [Mexico], Pedro Pablo Kuczynski [Peru]… which was more liberal, focused on the economy and the free market, respected democracy and did not care about issues like feminism, abortion or LGBT rights.”

He explains: “Now it is a right-wing movement in which security and culture wars are more important, with the exception of Milei, who is very pro-market and prioritizes the economy. It is a less liberal right; it attacks minority rights and generally has a more precarious relationship with democracy.”

Two weeks before Colombia’s election, Peru went to the polls to elect its ninth president in a decade. Amid the political instability of recent years and extreme polarization, the right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori came close to victory with a razor-thin lead of about 40,000 votes. She is the virtual winner, focused on order and a tough stance on insecurity, one of the main concerns for citizens in Peru and across Latin America. And when this happens, the right often capitalizes electorally on that fear, which directly affects everyday life in a region plagued by violence linked to drug trafficking and new criminal economies.

The use of anachronistic terms such as “communist” to describe an opponent, sexist attitudes — De la Espriella often boasts about the size of his genitals, as he did in front of a journalist who felt harassed — attacks on reproductive rights, homophobia, and a savvy command of social media are all part of the repertoire of a right wing that is well connected across the region and more assertive.

“Before, no one said they were right-wing; everyone spoke of the center, but today they say it without shame, even among young people, who, although highly polarized, are no longer obviously required to be left-wing,” notes Pablo Stefanoni, who holds a PhD in history from the University of Buenos Aires and is an essayist and journalist.

If De la Espriella’s violent political language, alleged ties to paramilitary groups — denounced by his opponent — sexist attitudes and mockery of the LGBTQ community did not prevent him from winning, neither has Keiko Fujimori’s embrace of the legacy marked by corruption and human rights violations of her father, the autocrat Alberto Fujimori, kept her from winning the election — albeit narrowly and on her fourth attempt.

José Antonio Kast’s support for the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet did not block his path to the presidency in Chile, nor did Milei’s platform of drastic cuts to the state — the famous “chainsaw” — stop him from getting elected. In Brazil, the far-right Flávio Bolsonaro carries on the legacy of his father, an imprisoned coup plotter, and is now vying to challenge leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for the presidency in October.

That a majority of 12 Latin American countries ―out of the 16 analyzed among those holding elections ― are governed by right-wing forces does not imply, however, “that the large majorities of the region have turned to the right, where perhaps only Bukele has massive support,” says Levitsky. Beneath the numbers and the differences among right-wing movements in each country, as seen in Colombia and Peru, another trend is strongly at play that partly explains their electoral success: “the tremendous level of dissatisfaction with the status quo and with incumbents,” he argues.

This is occurring in a continent where the pandemic left deep scars, including economic ones, and where public debate increasingly plays out on social media, which amplifies and favors more extremist messages. “In a time of anger and frustration among citizens, when there is a sense that everything has already been tried — after alternations between left and right — anti-system discourse gains traction,” Stefanoni explains. “That is where outsiders and radicals thrive, projecting an image of supposed authenticity in contrast to traditional politics.”

Two clear examples of this backlash are Colombia, which has shifted from the left of Gustavo Petro to the far right of De la Espriella, and Chile, which moved from the reformist left of Gabriel Boric to the far right of José Antonio Kast. In just three months as president, Kast has begun implementing his agenda of social spending cuts, tax reductions and measures such as eliminating inclusive language in public services and creating a register of minor offenses to impose penalties — such as withdrawing housing assistance or revoking driver’s licenses — for behaviors like drinking alcohol on the street or dumping debris without municipal authorization.

“There is a learning process within this right wing: it has realized that economic management alone is not enough to halt progressivism. So now it is reviving Cold War rhetoric, anti-communism, the idea that progressivism must be punished, that it is the enemy… that is where the culture war from the right emerges,” says Ariel Goldstein, a sociologist and researcher of right-wing movements in Latin America. “It draws in many young men, exalts entrepreneurship and personal effort. The message is: ‘your personal economic situation hasn’t improved, it has even worsened, but those to blame — the cucas [cockroaches, as Milei refers to Kirchnerists] — will be punished; we’re going to lock up [former president] Cristina Kirchner.’”

Many of these traits are shared by De la Espriella in Colombia and stand in stark contrast to the austere and measured image projected by leftist Iván Cepeda. While the former travels by private jet, sells campaign T-shirts featuring the tiger and has deployed an overwhelming, highly professional presence on social media, the latter has campaigned in town squares, traveling on commercial flights.

“Voters themselves are captivated by the spectacle of electoral politics that De la Espriella has introduced, and that is something centrists and moderates do not provide,” says Sandra Borda, an international relations scholar at the University of the Andes.

The left’s loss of momentum

All this is also compounded by the left’s own attitude, which shows signs of exhaustion, although in Colombia’s case it lost by a very small margin, as in Peru. “It offers a discourse more rooted in the past than in the future; when it governed, it implemented limited social reforms and it speaks less to young people,” Stefanoni says.

For Levitsky, “right now the only political force that has a project and inspires passion is the far right. They do not have the majority, but they believe in something, unlike the center-right, social democracy or the traditional left.”

The right-wing forces are also able to add other groups “such as evangelicals, for example, or the support of tech oligarchs,” Goldstein notes, and they organize “in networks like the Conservative Political Action Conference [CPAC] or in intercountry forums, like Trump’s Shield of the Americas.” In contrast, he argues, “the left has hardly managed to gather new supporters.”

In fact, for Rafael Rojas, a historian at El Colegio de México, this defeat of the left in Colombia, although very narrow, “confirms that the Bolivarian bloc is disarticulated, and the Colombian left will now have to reinvent itself by distancing from it, something Cepeda had already begun to do, unlike Petro,” he explains.

Law and order, a heavy hand, zero tolerance for crime. These are formulas that evoke the toughness many voters expect in a highly violent region — with a median homicide rate of 17.6 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to Insight Crime — where extortion is more widespread than ever.

Bukele’s model in El Salvador is the most extreme. He imposed a state of exception, deployed the army on the streets and built a mega-prison where gang members serve long sentences, packed together and shackled, wearing white uniforms and with their heads shaved. Since 2022, several organizations have documented human rights violations, torture, disappearances and killings in the country, where crime has been drastically reduced.

That recipe has had significant repercussions in countries such as Ecuador, where violence has surged in a very short period. Daniel Noboa won the election in 2023 against the leftist candidate backed by former leftist president Rafael Correa, and in 2025, swept to power with promises to take a hard line against mafias and the drug trade that have made Ecuador the most violent country in the region. Despite militarizing prisons and repeatedly declaring states of emergency, he has failed to halt the cycle of violence.

In Costa Rica, a country that has seen a sharp decline in security, right-wing candidate Laura Fernández also won the election in February with promises of a hard-line stance on crime. While a Bukele-style mega-prison was being built during the campaign — with the Salvadoran president even visiting the site — since taking office she has rolled out a series of measures that include putting an end to “idleness in prisons” and proposing that inmates have no right to leisure and work to cover their upkeep, an idea similar to one floated by Fujimori during her campaign: that prisoners should work for their own food.

On security, “the right is not necessarily more effective, but the simpler recipe and the marketing of cruelty compensate for the difficulty of solving a complex problem; the promise of a hard-line stance sounds more disruptive,” explains Stefanoni.

Yet containing crime — which is increasingly violent, sophisticated and diversified — is not easy. “There is a temporal asymmetry in the promises of left and right,” says Goldstein. “The progressive promise is that you will be able to live better, with education and health. That takes years, if it can be achieved. But the right promises punishment and immediate measures, like, for example, closing the Ministry of Women [as Milei did in 2024].”

In Colombia’s case, more than promises, De la Espriella sells concepts like the “miracle homeland.” One example is his proposal to end the decades-long armed conflict in 90 days. Although he toned it down as the election approached, the punitive model — bombing armed groups with U.S. support and building Bukele-style mega-prisons — remains, in contrast to his rival Cepeda, who spoke of “human security” and a comprehensive approach based on implementing the peace agreements signed with the FARC in 2016.

De la Espriella will govern surrounded by ideological allies in other countries — he has been congratulated on his victory by all of them, including far-right leaders from other parts of the world such as Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel and Santiago Abascal in Spain — but the most difficult task will be turning miracles into concrete policies, and doing so without relying on “the usual” allies, especially given such a narrow victory.

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The far-right campaign team of Abelardo de la Espriella is worried about Colombians who left the country to support the national team at the World Cup. There are about 80,000 adults who, they calculate, could affect the vote flow in the second round of the presidential election on June 21, says a senior source in the campaign that currently leads the polls having won the first round three weeks ago. Meanwhile, Iván Cepeda’s campaign is fighting for votes at all costs, since they still consider victory possible despite the average of recent polls giving De la Espriella an 80% chance of winning.

“Let’s not get complacent!” former senator Mauricio Gómez Amín, the far-right candidate’s campaign chief, said Thursday. “We’re doing well in the polls, but this isn’t won by polls.” If on Monday, June 1, after the first round of voting, De la Espriella’s campaign appeared triumphant and Cepeda’s looked defeated, the culmination of the three weeks leading up to the runoff has left both sides with a different sensation: the race is much tighter than the polls suggest.

Polls — which, by law, could only be published through last weekend — showed the far-right candidate as the frontrunner, and prediction markets reinforce that view. However, the mood on the campaign trail is different.

The margin the far-right candidate achieved in the first round — just under three percentage points, or 632,222 votes — does not seem that comfortable. About three million voters who had backed other candidates, and more than 400,000 who left their ballot blank, could swing to either ticket. Also in play is a possible uptick in turnout between rounds, similar to the 1.2 million voters who appeared in the 2022 runoff, tipping the balance in favor of Gustavo Petro’s election as the country’s first leftist president in contemporary history.

Within De la Espriella’s team there is confidence, but also fear that a premature sense of victory could demobilize overconfident supporters.

Voting from overseas, which began last Monday and went in De la Espriella’s favor in the first round, provided an early warning. Leszli Kálli, a former right-wing Senate candidate who supports the far-right contender, cited Atlanta consulate figures: the Tuesday before the runoff, De la Espriella received 3% fewer votes than the Tuesday before the first round. “No triumphalism. Vote en masse,” she wrote on X.

The candidate sent a similar message Wednesday about diaspora voters: “We need to redouble our efforts to increase that vote,” he said in a video on his social networks. The general idea is that complacency could affect the outcome. Concern about 80,000 people abroad who might have voted for the far-right candidate shows how pressured they feel.

On the opposing side there is not a shred of triumphalism, only anxiety about achieving significant growth, which they still see as possible. If in the immediate days after the first round Cepeda’s campaign appeared paralyzed and lost — partly while resolving differences with Petro — in recent days there has been renewed energy. The senator has embraced a more digital campaign, strengthened his digital team and begun appearing in social media videos designed to present him as less solemn and more relatable. It’s late, but his circle still believes it’s not over.

A person familiar with the campaign’s strategy says digital indicators had risen substantially leading into the weekend. On TikTok, a social network that was crucial to De la Espriella’s successful digital strategy, Cepeda was virtually nonexistent. He has now managed to get reactions, likes, and reposts that can rival the far-right candidate’s.

Beyond those specific figures and the campaign changes, grassroots activists have sought to generate enthusiasm and hope. Students, artists, and social movements have taken the initiative themselves — an effort that began with the support of the “kpopers,” fans of South Korean pop who boosted Cepeda’s digital presence and has since grown through other spontaneous expressions.

Hope, in any case, does not lie in the digital world but in remote rural paths, in isolated Indigenous settlements, among young people and all those who did not vote in the first round because they lacked resources, fuel, or shoes to reach voting centers, or were demotivated to do so. Also in a more moderate, centrist vote that, while not trusting Cepeda, refuses to vote for De la Espriella.

The left-wing senator is well aware of the consequences of getting carried away by triumphalism after the setback of a first round in which he was expected to win, and he has been forced to make a sudden about-face. Cepeda has clearly distanced himself from Petro, especially when — after a few days of hesitation — he explicitly acknowledged the results of the first round, something the president did not do. He has also managed to influence Petro and succeeded in getting him to formally suspend the collection of signatures for a Constituent Assembly, a move that has sparked fears among undecided voters or those leaning more toward the center.

In contrast, the far-right candidate continued doing what he’s always done: running a campaign with impeccable logistics and very clear messages on social media. He also managed to retain the right to wear the Colombian national team jersey during the World Cup, after winning several legal battles to that end. He further strengthened his strategy of securing international support. Before the first round, the highlight was a video call with Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, during which he announced the end of tariffs on Colombia. Over the past three weeks, De la Espriella has secured the public endorsement of Donald Trump and Argentina’s Javier Milei.

With no official data reflecting the gap over the past week, a source from the far-right campaign notes that, while they have data showing a six-percentage-point lead — between 1.5 million and two million votes — they believe the margin is likely smaller. On both sides, the campaigns have been urging their supporters to turn out to vote, while also seeking to attract undecided voters, those who typically abstain, and centrist voters by tweaking their policy platforms to make them more moderate. The highly charged atmosphere — marked by mutual accusations of vote-buying, warnings of fraud, and mutual disparagement — reflects how the two campaigns feel the election remains very close at the 11th hour.

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The last time Verónica saw her son was December 16, 2025. She had been working at the small food stand with which she supports her family — an improvised oven and some plastic tables and chairs alongside the highway that connects Quinindé with Esmeraldas on the northern coast of Ecuador. Starting early in the day, she had watched for the military convoy transferring her son to the maximum-security prison Encuentro, which was built in the middle of a forest, some 280 miles from her home. “It was as if God wanted us to see each other, because the vehicle stopped for a moment,” she remembers.

For a few seconds, Verónica managed to make out her 38-year-old son’s face, pressed against the glass of the window. “He looked at me and motioned for me to bless him. He couldn’t raise his hands because they were chained. I blessed him and then my daughter and I started to cry.” In her memory, that scene has become the worst day of her life. Ever since, she’s had no news of him.

For family members of prisoners, the name of Encuentro has become associated with fear. Inaugurated by the Daniel Noboa administration as an emblem of its war against organized crime, the prison was created following the maximum-security model that President Nayib Bukele turned into a symbol of his punitive policy in El Salvador. Part of the team that built Bukele’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) even advised on the construction of Encuentro.

The Ecuadorian penitentiary facility has been the subject of allegations of starvation, abuse and complaints connected to an outbreak of tuberculosis and a lack of medical attention. Fear as to prisoners’ safety has only increased due to the hermeticism with which authorities manage information about those behind its walls. Families go weeks or months without news of their relatives and on occasion, are only informed when they are transferred to another prison, or of their death.

Three inmates died in May at the prison. Two of their deaths were attributed to tuberculosis, the other to pancreatitis. “No one dies from pancreatitis from one day to the next,” says Ana Morales, spokesperson for the Committee of Families for a Dignified Life In and Out of Prisons (COFAVID). “If someone dies from that cause, what happened was a lack of timely medical attention.”

A lack of information about those who are sent to Encuentro has also led to questions. The last person who died in the prison was a trans woman who had no criminal sentence in Ecuador, according to a complaint lodged by the Silueta X Association. “The United Nations’ Bangkok Rules are binding in Ecuador. A trans woman incarcerated in a maximum-security prison, with no clear sentence and with no documented gender-based protocol was not invisible, she was the responsibility of the state,” says Zackary Elías, deputy director of the organization, who is demanding an investigation under inter-American standards.

Most of what is known about the conditions inside Encuentro has come from the testimonies of prisoners who have been transferred to other facilities, and from information leaked by penitentiary officials. One of those leaks were photographs of the transfer of 11 out of 35 inmates diagnosed with tuberculosis to the Guayaquil regional prison, according to documentation provided by COFAVID.

The photos were taken during a nighttime transfer. Under spotlights, a line of prisoners moves slowly forward in the darkness. They are extremely thin, just skin and bones. Some can barely stand on their feet, and look for help from the equally fragile bodies walking next to them. One needs to be supported underneath both arms to stay upright. Another seems unable to lift his head.

There has been no comment on the images from the government. After a few days, Minister Nataly Morillo, in an interview with the media outlet Visionarias, confirmed that the transfer had taken place. “Every person deprived of their liberty in the Encuentro prison is in their space, their environment, they have the areas they need, there is no epidemic in the penitentiary system,” she said.

State negligence and torture

The allegations concerning Encuentro have arisen amid a silent transformation of the Ecuadorian prison crisis. An investigation by Tierra de Nadie and Connectas led by journalist Karol Noroña found that in 2025 there were a record 1,220 inmate deaths, or more than three a day, one every seven hours.

In contrast to the years of gang massacres, many of these deaths were documented by the state as “natural” or stemming from “indeterminate” causes. The finding points to a shift in the prison crisis: inmates are no longer dying from organized crime violence alone. Now, they also die from illness, negligence and a lack of medical attention.

Accusations also point to alleged systematic abuse. Morales says that former inmates have spoken of daily punishments and degrading conditions. “Torture is continuous. There is a select group who is tortured on a daily basis,” she says. Among these alleged practices are inmates being woken up at dawn and submitted to physical and psychological aggressions. “They wake you up at three in the morning, throw water on you and put a gas mask on you. This has caused heart attacks,” she says. Morales says that inmates have even left the prison with permanent injuries. “We have one person who came out disabled after being struck on the spine with a club,” she adds.

Several testimonies describe extreme physical deterioration that fits with the photographs that were made public. “There is dengue, malaria, tuberculosis, malnutrition, dehydration,” Morales says. According to her, a lack of water is one of the primary problems in the penitentiary facility. “There’s no water there. They give you a tiny amount of water and that water is very contaminated. It comes out completely black, like chocolate, and that is the water they drink,” she says.

The availability of basic services was on the list of criticisms and warnings received when it was announced that the prison would be built in the middle of a protected forest that belongs to an ancestral Indigenous community. Towns nearby the prison have always suffered from a lack of potable water. Residents rely on tanker trucks and the river for their water supply, and the latter has now been polluted by the prison’s runoff.

Isolation and military control

Isolation is one of the characteristics that distinguishes Encuentro from other Ecuadorian prisons. Members of the military monitor and restrict travel down the road that connects nearby towns. Only inhabitants who have proven they are from the area are permitted to pass a military checkpoint. Families are not allowed to approach the facility’s perimeter nor request information on inmates. In this prison, inmates have no right to visits.

One of the few exceptions to this rule is the mayor of Guayaquil, Aquiles Álvarez, who has been incarcerated in Encuentro since February, despite never having been convicted of a crime. After outcry was raised by his family and defense team, authorities authorized a weekly video call under the supervision of penitentiary officials. After nearly four months of imprisonment, those close to him say he has lost more than 50 pounds.

The government, which denies the existence of any prison crisis or tuberculosis outbreak, justified the mayor’s drastic physical deterioration by saying that he was “watching what he eats,” according to Minister of the Interior John Reimberg. Later, those statements were qualified: officials said the mayor was carrying out a legal strategy. “Since Aquiles’ defense has not managed to get him out of jail, what do they tell him? Don’t eat. And he doesn’t want to eat,” said Reimberg.

Former vice president Jorge Glas, who was sentenced on charges of corruption and was one of the first prisoners to be transferred to the facility that authorities have dedicated to the fight against terrorism, has made similar allegations. Glas says he has not received adequate food and is suffering systematic torture.

Vivian Idrovo, coordinator of the Alliance for Human Rights Ecuador, says that prisoners have been a population that the state is willing to sacrifice. “They commit serious human rights violations to justify these cruel measures,” she says. In her eyes, the militarization of the penitentiary system has not managed to contain the advance of organized crime. “They focus on this population to cover up the inaction of the state in the fight against criminal economies, like for example, money laundering,” she says. “It is a dehumanization. The cruelty is exhibited, as if cruelty were an antidote to organized crime.”

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