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Daniel Raisbeck is an independent policy analyst on Latin America.
How can a losing presidential candidate obtain 100 per cent of the vote [ [link removed] ] in dozens of voting booths across a country? Colombians have a term for this extraordinary case of voter unanimity: “voto fusil,” or voting at gunpoint.
The guns in question are, predominately, those of the FARC and ELN, Cuba-backed, Marxist-Leninist guerrilla groups that, under the outgoing, extreme left-wing president Gustavo Petro, have had carte blanche to wreak havoc across the countryside.
According to the Ombudsman’s Office, the FARC, ELN, and other “armed groups” threaten over 70 [ [link removed] ] per cent of Colombia’s municipalities. Since their control over the cocaine trade is their main source of revenue, they have been keen to uphold the new status quo, one in which the total area planted with coca leaf—the main natural ingredient for cocaine— is at an all-time high, at nearly 300,000 hectares [ [link removed] ].
Hence the guerrilla groups’ outspoken support [ [link removed] ] for the status quo candidate and Petro’s dauphin, Iván Cepeda, a Marxist and lifelong politician whose father, a Communist Party apparatchik, was such a staunch FARC ally that an entire “urban front [ [link removed] ]” still bears his name.
According to an independent report [ [link removed] ] by Fundación Misión Colombia Transparente, the gunpoint tactic gave Cepeda some four million votes across areas under the armed groups’ direct control. This left the pro-Hugo Chávez, pro-Fidel Castro ticket within a whisker—less than one percentage point—of winning the June 21st runoff election.
Alas, it did not suffice. Abelardo de la Espriella, a popular, conservative defense lawyer and political outsider, is now Colombia’s president-elect.
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During the campaign, the global press often described De la Espriella as a blend [ [link removed] ] between El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele and Argentina’s Javier Milei. There is some truth to this. Bukele-like, De la Espriella, who bears a physical resemblance to the Salvadoran strongman according to some, promised to fight drug traffickers and criminal bands indiscriminately. He also pledged to build “mega-prisons” to house convicts in a country where, like El Salvador pre-Bukele, the prison system is a springboard for further crime.
Yet Colombia’s institutions are stronger than El Salvador’s, and De la Espriella is unlikely to send the army into Congress or change the constitution at whim to remain in power. He openly campaigned, in fact, to uphold the constitution, which does not allow re-election (and which Petro failed [ [link removed] ] to overturn).
Like Milei, De la Espriella attacked career politicians, a popular target. He also pledged to cut back the state— much bloated under Petro’s fiscal deficits and record debt levels— by 40 [ [link removed] ] per cent. At one point, he even expressed support [ [link removed] ] for a plan to get rid of 136 government agencies and cut spending by 4 per cent of GDP, drafted by yours truly [ [link removed] ].
And while Milei portrays himself as a lion to his supporters, De la Espriella nicknamed himself “El Tigre,” a feral reference that outraged the Bogota-based, soft-left intellectuals who, perched in the interior highlands, regard the new president as an outré, beyond the pale “costeño” (an inhabitant of the Caribbean coastal region).
Predictably, the intelligentsia did not perceive that, after four years of Petro’s economic stagnation and the breakdown in basic security, most Colombians cared little for traditional candidates’ “modest stillness and humility.” Rather, they welcomed a leader willing to “imitate the action of the tiger” against the ruling communists.
If you read The Economist, however, you will be told that the key to understand De la Espriella’s rise is—who else?— Donald Trump. Colombia’s president-elect, in fact, is “the Trumpiest [ [link removed] ]” of the new Latin American lot of right-wing leaders according to the magazine’s ‘Insider’ podcast.
There are some similarities. Both succeeded in the private sector before mounting an upset against the establishment as total political outsiders. And both have a penchant for showmanship; De la Espriella sings opera and ballads in self-financed music videos.
While Trump is amused by the “Tiger” nickname and seems to think [ [link removed] ] De la Espriella won because of his endorsement, the reality is that his strongest influence on the Colombian election was indirect. Petro and the Colombian left lost the election, I would argue, in the early hours of January 3rd. It was then when Trump gave the green light for Operation Absolute Resolve [ [link removed] ], the spectacular mission in which Delta Force operatives seized Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s tyrant, from his Caracas hideout. Hours later, Maduro was facing trial for narco-terrorism at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Petro denounced [ [link removed] ] the operation as a flagrant violation of Venezuelan sovereignty. He had good reasons to be concerned: in the early 2000’s, he advised [ [link removed] ] Hugo Chávez, whom he called [ [link removed] ] a “great Latin American leader” upon his death in 2013. More recently, in 2024, Petro refused [ [link removed] ] to question Maduro’s blatant election fraud, which even the left-wing Carter Center called out [ [link removed] ] unequivocally.
With Maduro and his wife, Cilia, as inmates at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, the Colombian hard left lost a figurehead and crucial supporter, whose funds might have pushed Cepeda over the finish line.
More directly, the Trump administration placed [ [link removed] ] Petro and his wife, Veronica, under the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control list— otherwise known as the Clinton List— in October, 2025. This froze their U.S.-related assets and, politically, sent the message that Petro’s post-presidential future could resemble Maduro’s. Subsequently, Petro has spoken to Trump and asked [ [link removed] ] to be removed from the list. Non-interference in this year’s election was understood to be a condition toward that end.
Yet Petro openly campaigned [ [link removed] ] for Cepeda—which the constitution does not allow a sitting president to do— and has refused to recognize the election’s result, claiming [ [link removed] ] that Israel infiltrated the software used to tally the votes. So Petro might be dealing with U.S. sanctions for some time to come.
Trump’s new “Donroe Doctrine [ [link removed] ]” has not only seen action in Colombia. In October, 2025, the U.S. Treasury propped up the Argentine peso and approved an unprecedented, $20 billion currency swap line [ [link removed] ] for Argentina through its Exchange Stabilization Fund. This de facto bailout of the Milei government also had an electoral effect, helping pro-Milei parties avoid a Peronist victory—anticipated in several polls [ [link removed] ]— in the parliamentary election.
As a tactic to boost a regional ally electorally, Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s Argentina gambit paid off. Strategically, though, saving the Argentine peso is a disservice to Argentines. Recall that Milei won the 2023 election with the promise to dollarise the economy [ [link removed] ] and shut down the central bank, a measure that— if implemented at the time— certainly would have produced single-digit annual inflation by now.
Dollarised Panama, for instance, constantly produces inflation levels below [ [link removed] ] those of the United States, a testament to the virtues of impeding politicians and bureaucrats from meddling with a national currency.
By contrast, Milei and his finance minister, Luis Caputo, have opted for exchange rate controls— an initial “crawling peg [ [link removed] ]” followed by a band [ [link removed] ] mechanism— and constant central bank intervention in the currency markets. Although this policy— coupled with timely fiscal discipline— did prevent a bout of hyperinflation in early 2024, the government can now only tout single-digit monthly inflation levels, which leave the annual figure above [ [link removed] ] the level of Haiti (ca. 20 [ [link removed] ] per cent at the time of writing).
According to some commentators [ [link removed] ], the Latin American left has not won an election since Trump put an end to USAID, an agency that, among numerous other “DEI” projects, was funding a “transgender opera [ [link removed] ]” through a Colombian university. Whether or not the cause-effect relationship stands, the fact is that voters in both Chile and Peru also rejected hard left candidates.
In Chile, conservative José Antonio Kast’s landslide win against a communist-backed opponent and ensured the survival of Chile’s current constitution, which dates from the Pinochet era— though with subsequent reforms— and is arguably the region’s best in terms of the defence of property rights and the promotion of economic growth. For Chile’s extreme left, dismantling the constitution [ [link removed] ] has been a priority since the 2019 “social explosion” (estallido social), a bout of urban terrorism disguised as a popular protest movement.
In Peru, a razor-thin margin ensured the return of what is now the Fujimori dynasty, as Keiko, the daughter of former president-turned-dictator Alberto Fujimori, won the presidency in her fourth consecutive attempt. Less heralded, though perhaps more significant, was Keiko Fujimori’s extension [ [link removed] ] of Julio Velarde’s tenure at the head of Peru’s central bank.
Since the early 2000’s, Velarde has led the only Latin American central bank whose low inflation levels are comparable to those of dollarised Panama, Ecuador, and El Salvador. Along with Fujimori’s free market reforms, this is why Peru, a semi-dollarized economy— dollars can be used for all transactions save the payment of taxes— has continued to prosper despite political chaos [ [link removed] ] and nine different presidents in the last twelve years.
Trump should take heed if the Donroe Doctrine is to have any lasting impact beyond the election victories of like-minded, often charismatic candidates in nations with clearly fickle electorates. Especially in countries like Venezuela and Argentina, the poster children [ [link removed] ] for why Latin America should have no central banks at all, dollarisation is the one structural measure that future left-wing governments will not be able to undo.
As Ecuadoreans proved under Rafael Correa, a Chávez acolyte who wielded power from 2007 to 2017 and failed [ [link removed] ] to de-dollarise, a strong currency is always more popular than the ruling populist. And, unlike socialism, it is actually benevolent in the long run.
What we’re reading
Taking a Churchill pill. Whooooooo remembers Anthony Scaramucci? For the [ [link removed] ]Mad About Churchill [ [link removed] ] Substack [ [link removed] ], the Wall Street trader turned Donald Trump spokesperson turned podcaster suggests the Greatest Briton saw the Anglo-American ‘special relationship’ not as a temporary arrangement but a lasting investment, stemming from his American ties and enduring the vastitudes of war. Despite current tensions, the US should uphold that commitment today.
Getting filthy wrong. Over at The Critic, Maxwell Marlow has argued [ [link removed] ] that Gary Stevenson’s Channel 4 documentary How To Get Filthy Rich substitutes political advocacy for sound economics. It lauds a wealth tax while dismissing criticism. Marlow believes Stevenson exaggerates that threat wealth inequality poses, overstates how much could be earnt from a wealth tax, and ignores evidence from those countries where wealthy individuals have been bumped into relocating.
Eat, shoots, and Reeves. In her day job at CityAM, Alys Denby, an [ [link removed] ]Economic Affairs [ [link removed] ] contributor [ [link removed] ], has made the case [ [link removed] ] that Rachel Reeves’s tenure as Chancellor of the Exchequer has been economically damaging. She has undermined business confidence through pessimistic takes on the public finances, broken tax promises and increased the cost of employment. She should be remembered for damaging prosperity. But don’t worry! Ed Miliband would be even worse.
A fridge too far. At the Wall Street Journal, Emma Camp has argued [ [link removed] ] that capitalism is often blamed for problems unrelated to it because people use the expression to describe the entire modern status quo rather than a free market system. Using the example of a popular video praising a 1958 refrigerator, the article challenges the idea that older products were inherently better and points out that competition and innovation have made consumer goods vastly cheaper.
The second most important South American read today. We couldn’t go by without mentioning the football. Look no further than Dominic Sandbrook’s tour-de-force [ [link removed] ] on the Anglo-Argentinian rivalry. The nation’s favourite historian argues the relationship encompasses two centuries of tensions, stemming from Britain’s failed invasions of Buenos Aires in 1806-07, through the Falklands to the ‘Hand of God’. However, alongside rivalry has existed considerable exchange and amity.
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