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.

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.

Colombia at a Crossroads

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.

Polls overwhelmingly show Cepeda in first place, followed by De La Espriella and right-wing senator Paloma Valencia, suggesting one of the challengers might proceed to a June 21 runoff alongside Cepeda. Candidates must earn at least 50 percent of the vote to avoid the runoff.

De La Espriella and Valencia argue that Cepeda is weak on crime. They have even suggested that he would allow crime groups to kill them, which he denies. Cepeda “is the heir of the government that helped the [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC,] and the guerillas,” De La Espriella told Semana magazine last month.

Both right-wing contenders have called for Colombia’s security forces to enter into more frontal combat with armed groups. They say the country should seek assistance from the United States in this effort, calling for a new version of the Plan Colombia bilateral security program of the 2000s and early 2010s.

On foreign policy, both candidates have also signaled that they would walk back Petro’s steps toward multi-alignment and reprioritize relations with the United States. They would similarly abandon Petro’s moves to speed........

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