Story written by CLAS Summer 2026 intern, Caleb Ferroniere. Caleb is an International Relations & Diplomacy major who is also minoring in Spanish.

On June 21^st, the right-wing candidate in the Colombian presidential election, Abelardo De La Espriella, was elected the president of Colombia. With over 99% of the vote counted, Espriella beat his left wing challenger Iván Cepeda by less than one percent of the vote, gaining around 49.66%. When he assumes the presidency, Colombia will join the growing number of Latin American countries led by a right-wing government.

Colombia has been a focal point in the U.S.; the country has formed a critical transit point and cultivator of marijuana and eventually Cocaine. Since its early days, the drug economy has become integrated into Colombia’s fraught political landscape, characterized by left and right-wing insurgency groups like FARC, a left-wing Marxist insurgency group that disbanded in 2016 and the AUC, a right-wing paramilitary group that fought against FARC and other left-wing groups.

Colombia’s current president, Gustavo Petro has been more progressive in his approach to drug and counter insurgency policy. He has attempted to negotiate peace and ceasefire deals with Colombia’s numerous insurgency groups, including the FARC offshoot, FARC-EMC. While initially successful, many of these deals have fallen apart and the number of insurgents in the conflict has increased. Since the peace deal with FARC in 2016, many splinter groups have formed, with offshoots that seek to continue armed insurgency. Petro has at times sought to redefine the terms of U.S.-Colombia extradition, including by promising to withhold extradition for those negotiating peace with the government. 

Petro has also positioned himself as one of the most prominent critics of Operation Southern Spear, the U.S. boat strikes that have killed over 200 since the first strike in September of 2025. This has been the hallmark of the dramatic militaristic turn in U.S. drug policy since the start of President Trump’s term in 2025. He has designated large drug trafficking organizations as terrorist groups, threatened to invade Mexico, invaded Venezuela, and decisively committed U.S. armed forces to the war on drugs. 

Espriella has promised to break with Petro’s model of ‘paz total’ or total peace and has even threatened to start Colombia’s own bombing campaign against drug traffickers in a similar model to Southern Spear. He wants to build 10 ‘mega prisons’ and relaunch military campaigns against armed groups in the country. Throughout his campaign, he has touted his close relationship with President Trump; he even has American citizenship. This would be in line with the right-wing ‘tough on crime’ policies of other countries in the war on drugs, specifically Ecuador and El Salvador.

El Salvador, under its current president Naib Bukele, began a countrywide anti-gang crackdown in 2019, following his election. He then declared a state of exception in 2022 following a surge in homicides. This crackdown, effectively militarizing law enforcement, has been largely successful in lowering the homicide rate but has seen rampant human rights abuses, the suspension of constitutional rights and the detainment of thousands of innocent people caught in these dragnets. Innocent people can be long detained with minimal evidence justifying their imprisonment. There remain accusations that reduced gang violence is due to negotiation with imprisoned MS-13 leaders, with the Bukele government bribing the gang to reduce its homicide rates. El Salvador has sought to quash any attempts to investigate, including denying extradition of MS-13 members to the United States where they might face questioning on this topic.

Similarly, in Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, elected president in 2023, has militarized the war on drugs and readily supported and cooperated with the United States in anti-drug operations. In 2024, Noboa called for a constitutional referendum to amend the Ecuadorian constitution’s prohibition on the extradition of its nationals abroad. The measure succeeded, and Ecuador has since extradited several high profile drug traffickers. In March, both countries launched a joint military operation against drug cartels designated as terrorist organizations. This came after Ecuadorians decisively voted against another constitutional referendum called by Noboa to allow the United States to station troops in the country. 

The United States has often shown the ability and desire to bend the politics of Latin America to its will. However, this trend spells worrying signs for people across the hemisphere. Since the war on terror, the United States has been trying to build a connection between terrorism and drug trafficking. It brought the DEA to Afghanistan to engage in militarized counterdrug enforcement then exported that model to Latin America, often with deadly results. It sought to build artificial connections between FARC and terrorist groups in the Sahel. Yet now this attempt has become national politics and official government policy of the United States.

Now, leaders like Noboa, Bukele, and the president-elect Espriella, legitimize this approach in their own countries. They leverage a public battered and exhausted by years of high homicide rates to build support for the marrying of law enforcement and military power. The creeping legitimacy of militaristic policing is now laid bare as these countries build cooperation with the United States (see Trump shipping migrants to El Salvador) and right wing governance models to export to their neighbors. These leaders now echo the language of the CIA and DEA when calling drug traffickers terrorists who deserve no due process.

Yet such an erosion of civil liberty will never stay compartmentalized to drug traffickers, as it didn’t stay just for terrorism. Bukele’s crackdown targets anyone perceived to have committed a crime, or those who have not at all. For the United States, the fallout from these policies will find their way back home. Killing fishermen, whether they were smuggling drugs or not, is a flagrant violation of due process. Civil protections in the U.S. have been eroded, as the military has taken an increasing role in anti-drug enforcement, and has sold increasing amounts of military grade equipment to police departments across the country.

Yet hardline crackdowns on drug smuggling are nothing new, it is a pattern repeated through decades. The boat strikes, despite killing hundreds, has not reduced the street price of cocaine. Cut off the head of a snake, and two more will take its place, but in the case of drug trafficking, those two will be more violent, innovative, and destructive than their predecessors. If matched with violence, there will only be more violence.