When Colombian President-elect Abelardo de la Espriella takes office on August 7, his inauguration will mark more than the beginning of a new administration. It will represent a sharp break with the leftist presidency of current President Gustavo Petro and a promised return to the traditional Christian and conservative principles that have long shaped Colombian public life.
De la Espriella’s victory is also part of a much larger political realignment sweeping Latin America – one that has accelerated since President Donald Trump’s historic comeback victory in 2024 and has now carried conservative and center-right leaders to power throughout the region.
De la Espriella defeated leftist Senator Iván Cepeda by less than one percentage point, a margin of roughly 251,000 votes, in a runoff election on June 21. Trump endorsed de la Espriella after the first round, praising him as an “intelligent, strong and tough leader” prepared to confront a “radical leftist Marxist.” Like Trump, de la Espriella is a political outsider who built a career in business before jumping into the political arena.
When Colombian voters headed to the polls this year, they were choosing not only between two candidates, but between two competing visions for the future of their country. Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president, leaves office after four years of ambitious progressive reforms and mounting concerns about crime and the growing power of guerrilla and criminal organizations.
De la Espriella campaigned on restoring order, reviving the economy, cutting government spending, ending negotiations with armed groups, and rebuilding Colombia’s historically close relationship with the United States. He has proposed high-security prisons modeled after Nayib Bukele, his counterpart in El Salvador, a renewed offensive against narcotraffickers and guerrillas, market-oriented labor reforms, and sharp reductions in public spending.
At the center of his campaign were five pillars: faith, family, work, property, and security. He presented them not merely as campaign slogans, but as a moral compass for his government.
That message resonated because Colombia’s election did not occur in isolation. Throughout Latin America, voters have increasingly rebelled against socialist governments, economic mismanagement, violent crime, uncontrolled migration, and political establishments that seem either unable or unwilling to address them.
Argentina fired the starting gun in 2023 with the election of Javier Milei, who launched an aggressive campaign to shrink the state and openly aligned himself with Trump. Ecuador reelected Daniel Noboa in 2025 on a platform centered on confronting drug gangs and attracting private investment. Bolivia then ended nearly two decades of rule by the left-wing Movement Toward Socialism with the election of Christian Democratic Party candidate Rodrigo Paz.
In Chile, conservative José Antonio Kast took office in March following a campaign dominated by crime, illegal immigration, and national order. Peru then elected conservative Keiko Fujimori, who is scheduled to take office on July 28.
These leaders are not identical. Some are libertarians, others traditional conservatives, and still others pragmatic center-right reformers. But their victories reflect a common verdict from voters that socialist politicians and policies have failed to live up to their promises.
Crime has been an especially powerful force behind the change. Extortion, drug trafficking, organized gangs, illegal immigration, and public disorder have pushed voters toward candidates willing to talk in tough terms about public safety. Economic stagnation and frustration with entrenched political elites have reinforced that backlash.
Trump’s political resurrection has given this movement a powerful model. His 2024 victory demonstrated that a conservative leader could withstand years of political and legal attacks, rally voters against an entrenched establishment, and return to power on a platform of national sovereignty, economic renewal, public safety, and traditional values.
The trend is therefore not simply a matter of Latin American politicians copying Trump’s rhetoric. His return to the White House altered the political environment throughout the Western Hemisphere. It gave conservative movements a friendly partner in Washington and showed voters that the left’s hold over major institutions was neither permanent nor inevitable.
De la Espriella fits naturally within this new political era. Nicknamed “The Tiger,” he built an outsider movement in less than a year, spoke bluntly about the failures of the political class, and promised to use the full power of the state against guerrillas, narcotraffickers, and organized crime. His victory returns one of Washington’s most important traditional partners in South America to conservative leadership after four turbulent years under Petro.
But de la Espriella’s movement also possesses a distinctly Colombian character. His frequent references to Álvaro Gómez Hurtado demonstrate that his conservatism is rooted in the nation’s own Christian history.
Gómez Hurtado was a conservative statesman, Catholic intellectual, presidential candidate, and one of the leaders of Colombia’s 1991 Constituent Assembly. He also co-founded Sergio Arboleda University in Bogotá as an institution dedicated to humanist education and the principles of Christian civilization.
De la Espriella studied law there and has repeatedly described Gómez Hurtado, who was assassinated in 1995, as one of his great teachers.
During his election-night victory speech in Barranquilla, de la Espriella recalled an oath he had previously taken before a bust of Gómez Hurtado at Sergio Arboleda University, his alma mater. He then reaffirmed his “solemn commitment of absolute loyalty to the 1991 Constitution.”
De la Espriella also called the slain statesman his mentor in the defense of democracy and institutions.
For Gómez Hurtado, culture was not peripheral to politics. It was the foundation on which political institutions rested. He believed that a free society depended not merely on written constitutions and elections, but on the moral formation of its people.
In an interview in the early 2000s, Cardinal Pio Laghi, then one of the Catholic world’s leading authorities on education, explained that Gómez Hurtado’s view had been inspired by Pope John Paul II – especially the pope’s insight that “a faith that does not become culture is not fully accepted, not entirely thought out, not faithfully lived.”
That insight helps explain why de la Espriella placed faith and family beside security, work, and property as his guiding lights. His campaign argued that Colombia’s crisis cannot be solved through economic policy or policing alone. Lasting reform also requires restoring the cultural foundations that give law, freedom, and national life their purpose.
Professor Giacobbe Gasparo Provenzano, a lawyer and economist, said de la Espriella “understands the need for a firm foundation for reform, championing natural law rooted in Christian values over shifting legal trends.”
In this sense, the president-elect’s invocation of Gómez Hurtado is not merely nostalgic symbolism. It signals an ambition to reconnect Colombia’s future with its Christian and Western inheritance.
The task ahead will not be easy. De la Espriella won by the narrowest of margins, lacks an automatic congressional majority, and has already encountered resistance from established conservative leaders. His preferred candidate for president of the Colombian Senate was defeated on July 20, offering an early reminder that even right-leaning lawmakers will not automatically fall in line behind the new government.
Colombia’s armed groups, drug networks, bureaucracy, and organized political left will not quietly accept his promised transformation.
Yet those obstacles are precisely why his victory has generated excitement among conservatives far beyond Colombia. On August 7, another major Latin American nation will turn away from the left and toward order, faith, private property, national sovereignty, and renewed partnership with the United States.
Colombia’s political transformation is part of something larger. From Buenos Aires to Santiago, Lima, Quito, La Paz, and now Bogotá, voters are signaling that the continent’s conservative traditions are not relics of the past. They may instead be the foundation of its future.
Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian, and researcher.
