Colombia’s New Right?

In Colombia, a country still reeling from the aftermath of a fifty-two-year armed conflict, the central threat to Gustavo Petro’s presidency is the perception of rising violence and insecurity. With Petro’s “Total Peace” agenda in limbo after the Ejército de la Liberación Nacional (National Liberation Army, ELN) bombing in the eastern region of Catatumbo, the right-wing opposition has sought to mobilize voters on a renewed security agenda. As María Fernanda Cabal, a potential 2026 presidential candidate and current senator from the Centro Democrático (Democratic Center, CD) party tweeted recently, “Today more than ever, Colombia is experiencing one of its deepest crises due to the insecurity that plagues us under the extreme left government of Gustavo Petro. All in the name of Total Peace and misnamed social reform.”  

The opposition’s message—that Petro’s bet on peace negotiations has worsened security conditions—has revived a militaristic vision of the state, one which advocates for military confrontations with guerrillas such as the ELN and dissidents from the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC) and a restart to the civil war. The main source of this rhetoric has been the right-wing “Uribismo” movement, which came to dominate national politics after Álvaro Uribe Vélez’s presidential victory in 2002. For the Centro Democrático party, which Uribe founded in 2013 after the end of his second term, the promise of security remains central. 

Uribismo has undoubtedly been the most influential political phenomenon in Colombia in the past three decades. By the start of the century, Uribe consolidated the wide spectrum of the political right through a synthesis of authoritarian security, neoliberal technocracy, and alliances with military and powerful economic sectors. With a combination of urban and rural support, he rode on the promise of a smaller and more efficient state. Security would boost investor confidence, and this in turn would generate employment and development. His diagnosis transformed the political space of the right in Colombia and bears important lessons for the consolidation of right-wing power today.

Uribe’s discourse of law and order aligned with the global war on terror championed by George W. Bush. The US-led “War on Drugs” was thus closely tied to Uribe’s security project, bringing together a heterogeneous coalition that transcended the traditional parties and became the dominant axis of national politics. But Uribismo is more than a government or party. It is a political narrative that capitalizes on fear and uncertainty in a society marked by violence. As peace became a more viable alternative to endless war, this narrative became increasingly unsustainable. 

The trajectory of Uribismo was thus upended by the Colombian government’s peace agreement with FARC in 2016, which ultimately reshaped the country’s political structure. Since then, Uribismo has attempted to redefine its political relevance in the midst of a fragmented right and in the aftermath of political protests which facilitated Petro’s rise to power in 2022. Amid triumphs of the right around the globe, Uribismo is now again undergoing a major reinvention, grounded in a promise of security but wrestling with the place of Uribe himself. 

The capture of the right

Álvaro Uribe Vélez’s rise to the presidency was the result of a long political career dedicated to championing security and technocratic efficiency. From his first public positions in Medellín in the 1980s until his arrival to the presidency in 2002, Uribe built a coalition that redefined the right-wing space in Colombia. The interests of legal and illegal actors, alongside the repeated failures of a peace process with the FARC and the global war on terror, meant that the discourse of democratic security resonated in diverse sectors of society.

In 2002, Uribe won the presidency in the first round of elections with an astounding 53 percent of the vote, forgoing a runoff. At the start of the campaign, he polled at 2 percent. Uribe had begun his political career in Antioquia with the Liberal Party in the 1980s. He served as the mayor of Medellín from 1982 to 1986, and later as a senator (1986–94) and governor of Antioquia (1995–97). As a senator, he pushed through Law 100 of 1993, a neoliberal reform to the health system that promoted privatization. But it was when Uribe became governor of Antioquia in 1995 that he sharpened his focus on security. Under the presidency of the liberal Ernesto Samper (1994–1998), Uribe created “security cooperatives,” the so-called Convivir, which served as a base for right-wing paramilitarism to take power in the country’s territories and challenge the guerrillas. The failed peace process with the FARC under the government of Conservative and elite politician Andrés Pastrana, coupled with the military strength of the guerrillas, generated a climate of despair, creating a favorable climate for Uribe’s candidacy. His hard-line discourse contrasted with the historical perception of state weakness. 

Scholar Gutiérrez Sanín explains the success of Uribismo through its ability to articulate dissimilar interests under a common agenda. Uribe became the “hinge” between formal and informal power, gaining the backing of cattle ranching unions such as Fedegán, which enthusiastically supported his candidacy and still hold prominent positions within Uribismo today (one of the CD’s presidential candidates is the wife of Fedegán’s current president). Key support also came from neoliberal technocrats, who held positions in his first cabinet. Juan Luis Londoño, a star figure of Colombian neoliberalism who pursued reforms of the health and social security system, served as Uribe’s Minister of Health. These figures were joined by high-ranking military officers, businessmen, paramilitaries, and powerful actors in drug trafficking sectors.¹ The promise of security was the articulating axis of this coalition, guaranteeing stability for economic investment and weakening insurgent actors. Uribe’s alignment with US anti-terrorist strategy after 9/11 secured Washington’s financial and military backing and consolidated Democratic Security as the pillar of Uribe’s government.

Uribe’s arrival to power marked at least two milestones in Colombian history. For the first time since 1958, the traditional Liberal and Conservative parties failed to capture the presidency. These two main parties, in fact, saw the largest losses in power in their history during the 2002 legislative elections.² The multiparty system which had been forged since the 1991 Political Constitution reached unprecedented levels of atomization: close to forty parties held seats in the Congress of the Republic.³ The Liberal Party and the Conservative Party, which had controlled the electoral arena until the early 1990s, had since their birth represented the interests of the country’s economic elites—landowners, coffee growers, businessmen and bankers.⁴ Uribismo was able to win over these elite sectors as well as average voters, updating traditional conservatism through an insistence on citizen security, economic development, and the efficient management of the state. Electoral analyses show that Uribismo achieved significantly better electoral results in municipalities that traditionally voted for the Conservative Party.⁵ Thus, Uribe and his supporters captured a large portion of the political space of both traditional parties, especially on the right, bringing together a movement tied to a tutelary figure.⁶  

The second milestone was Uribe’s position as a leader not only far from the traditional political class, but also one with a programmatic offer centered on the need to confront the insurgent groups that for decades had challenged state sovereignty. Although other governments had tried to resolve the conflict through different mechanisms—both confrontation and dialogue—they failed to achieve a long-lasting resolution. This failure on the part of the traditional political class catapulted Uribe to power as a charismatic leader independent of the traditional parties, campaigning on national security and drawing from a broad and heterogeneous support base.⁷  

Uribe’s social base of support included rural regions marked by historic state neglect and the violence of armed actors, such as the leftist FARC and ELN guerrillas. In these areas, Uribe-led security policies won support because they appeared to weaken the guerrillas. Uribe also attracted middle and upper-middle class voters in urban and rural areas who valued his ability to guarantee social and economic stability. Business and professional sectors were drawn to the promise of investor confidence, stability, and economic growth.⁸

Uribe’s economic policies sought to attract foreign investment and pursue labor flexibilization. His government implemented a series of liberalization reforms, opening up markets and promoting entrepreneurship in strategic sectors. While these policies spurred economic growth, they also generated inequality and labor precariousness. Growth was sustained by military power, but it did little to reduce social gaps. In addition, Uribe promoted trade agreements with various economic powers, consolidating a foreign policy aimed at integration into global markets. He projected an image of stability in the international arena, while also deepening the country’s dependence on foreign interests in security and trade.

Internally, tensions soon began to emerge between different factions of Uribismo’s support base. While neoliberal technocrats saw Uribe as a guarantor of economic stability, military sectors demanded a firmer commitment to the counterinsurgency struggle. These differences became more evident in the transition of leadership to a new generation of politicians, who struggled to maintain the Uribista legacy without replicating a centralized and confrontational style of government. Uribismo after Uribe needed to redefine itself in order to remain relevant in national politics.

Security complex

Security became the central axis of Álvaro Uribe Vélez’s policies, materializing in the so-called Democratic Security pact. The government pursued violent military confrontation against leftist guerrilla groups, such as the FARC and the ELN, while simultaneously promoting negotiations for the demobilization of paramilitary groups, such as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, AUC). These policies redefined the dynamics of war and politics in Colombia, marking a profound transformation in the relationship between the state and armed actors and reshaping the electoral landscape as a consequence. The left, which, under a new constitution during the 1990s had managed to gain a share of legitimate political power alongside historic rights, faced increasing stigmatization and threats. Some of these threats came from guerrilla groups that demobilized after peace negotiations with the national government in the late 1980s and early 1990s. After Uribe’s victory, both demobilized guerilleros and the political left were shunned from power.  

The emphasis on security was not an improvisation. From his time as mayor of Medellín in 1982, Uribe promoted initiatives such as Metroseguridad, a program to fund security forces through local taxes. His obsession with security took a personal turn after the murder of his father in 1983, during a kidnapping attempt attributed to the FARC. This event, according to his own memoirs, marked his life and intensified his conviction that guerrilla violence was the main obstacle to the country’s progress.⁹

Uribe’s arrival to the presidency coincided with a favorable international context. His discourse on the fight against terrorism found support from the Bush administration. Following the logic of the global war on terror, Uribe framed guerrillas as terrorist threats and thus successfully obtained military and financial support from the United States. The Democratic Security pact received a massive injection of resources through Plan Colombia, with a contribution of $7.5 billion in military and strategic assistance. The CIA and the Pentagon actively participated in designing operations to weaken the insurgency. This international support allowed for an unprecedented modernization of the Colombian military forces. At the beginning of his administration in 2002, military spending represented 3.2 percent of GDP, rising to 4 percent by 2010. In absolute terms, this implied an increase in the defense budget from 4.5 trillion pesos to 25 trillion pesos in just eight years, representing a nominal growth of 455 percent.¹⁰

The Democratic Security pact positioned war victories as governmental successes. The release of hostages, the death of guerrilla commanders, and the territorial recovery were all presented as irrefutable proof of Uribe’s diagnosis. These advances boosted civilian support, especially in the regions most affected by the conflict, where security conditions were perceived to have improved. The security policy also promoted civilian participation in intelligence work and territorial control, creating networks of informants and cooperators that encouraged citizens to provide information on suspicious activities. In residential neighborhoods, commercial zones, and highways, new civilian surveillance fronts arose, with some operating on a volunteer basis and others offering financial incentives to collaborators. Civilian participation in the war generated massive support for Uribe’s project, while reinforcing the idea that counterinsurgency was a collective responsibility. 

Uribe also established and visited community councils in remote regions, forming a line of direct communication with the people. Through these spaces, Uribe intervened directly in local decisions, ordering immediate actions to mayors and officials. These events helped his popularity, but they also promoted a model of personalistic and centralized government.

Although Democratic Security was presented as a success in military terms, it had grave consequences for human rights. Among its controversies was the “false positives,” scandal, in which at least 6,402 civilians were extrajudicially executed by members of the Army and presented as guerrillas killed in combat in order to inflate military effectiveness figures. The weakening of the guerrillas and the demobilization of paramilitaries reconfigured the conflict, but it failed to eradicate violence. New groups emerged in the territories left by the FARC and the AUC, disputing control of illegal economies. By the end of his term, although Uribismo had consolidated its political hegemony, structural challenges persisted in security and social justice that called into question the sustainability of his legacy.

In and out of power

Uribe’s second government (2006–2010) was marred by corruption scandals. The Administrative Department of Security illegally intercepted the phones of journalists, opposition politicians, human rights defenders and judges of the High Courts. The revelation of the “false positives” sparked criticism of the government’s security policy, and the Agro Ingreso Seguro scandal revealed that funds intended to support small farmers were diverted to large landowners and businessmen. The scandals led to numerous judicial investigations and convictions, from which Uribe could not escape. 

Uribe nonetheless sought reelection for a third term, an effort which required a constitutional reform. He advocated for a referendum, but it was declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court. Unable to run, Uribe supported the candidacy of Juan Manuel Santos, who ran with the endorsement of the Social Party of National Unity (Partido de la Unión por la Gente, Partido de la U) and won the election with 69 percent of the votes. In the legislative elections, Partido de la U consolidated its position as the leading force, winning 21 percent of the seats. 

Although Santos won Uribe’s support during the campaign, he broke from the Democratic Security policy in 2012, instead electing to begin rapprochement with the FARC.¹¹ This change in the government’s approach to the armed conflict created an irreconcilable rupture between the two leaders. In 2013, Uribe formed the Centro Democrático, which, while able to consolidate different parts of the party, showed early signs of a fracture within Uribismo.¹² The dispute between Democratic Security and a bid for peace fragmented the movement, with a technocratic faction aligning itself with Santos and a more conservative and rural base closing ranks with Uribe.¹³ In 2014, the Centro Democrático participated for the first time in Colombia’s national elections, coming in second. Óscar Iván Zuluaga, the CD candidate for president, was defeated by Santos in the second round. The electoral bases of Uribismo from 2002 and 2006—which brought together support from landowners, technocrats, urban and rural constituencies—had clearly begun to erode. Support declined dramatically in Bogotá, Cali, and Medellín. Parties such as Cambio Radical (Radical Change) and the Partido de la U withdrew their support to the Centro Democrático, and the technocratic factions of Uribe’s government exited, replaced by regional politicians.¹⁴

In Santos’s second term, from 2014–2018, the Centro Democrático under Uribe’s leadership formed the principal opposition against a national plebiscite to affirm the government’s peace agreement with the FARC in October 2016. In a major shock, the NO vote was victorious with 50.21 percent of the vote, compared to 49.78 percent for YES. The Santos government and the FARC were then forced to return to the negotiating table and signed another agreement in November, and the last years of the Santos administration oversaw the legislative process for the agreement’s implementation.

Riding on this wave of backlash against the peace deal, in May 2018, CD candidate Iván Duque, supported by Álvaro Uribe, won the presidential election. Uribe was reelected as Senator, and the Centro Democrático obtained 16 percent of seats in the Senate. At the regional level, the Centro Democrático electoral performance faltered, a trend which continued in 2019 and 2023. Some have argued that the party’s focus on national security is unable to meet local demands. Uribe’s centrality in the party may have also prevented the rise of local leadership and organizational structures outside of the main cities.¹⁵ These problems came to a fore in  2022, when the Centro Democrático failed to present a candidate for the presidential elections. The party only obtained 9.5 percent of seats in the legislature. ¹⁶ This dramatic fall from power precipitated a new electoral wave in Colombia: the triumph of a leftist candidate, Gustavo Petro.

Uribismo after Uribe?

Several factors contributed to the rise of Petro. After the signing of the FARC peace accords, former guerrillas were permitted to form a party—eventually named Comunes (Communes)—that participated in national and regional elections. The agreement also established the Opposition Statute, which grants rights and guarantees to political parties outside of the governing coalition. In 2021, the government passed a reform that would guarantee sixteen seats in the legislature to victims from areas most affected by the armed conflict. Together, these changes—the result of a fragile peace negotiation—boosted the performance of the left and promoted the peace agenda overall. 

Meanwhile, Iván Duque’s fledgling government was struggling to hold onto power. A national strike in opposition to his security and austerity policies wracked the nation in 2019 and 2020. Then, the pandemic exacerbated widespread discontent with the government, which came to a fore in 2021 with a massive outbreak of protests, the largest seen in the nation in decades. Duque also lacked a coalition to support his policies in Congress, and the Centro Democrático leaders had been linked to drug trafficking groups. Facing criminal proceedings for bribery and fraud, Uribe was also detained and resigned from Congress in 2020.  The government’s abandonment of the peace deal, the assassinations of social and labor leaders, and repressive police activity sparked popular mobilizations across the country.

The Pacto Historico (Historical Pact), led by Petro, offered a left-wing response to this collapse of the right. With Uribismo failing to present a candidate for the elections, Rodolfo Hernandez, a businessman from Bucaramanga, represented a fractured right. While Hernandez attracted support through his opposition to Petro, during the campaign, he made efforts to distance himself from Uribismo, instead presenting a more “populist” and anti-incumbent option.¹⁷ Hernandez favored the Santos peace process, and his campaign utilized social media to mobilize a voter base disenchanted with politics as usual.¹⁸  Without a candidate and in the face of Petro’s triumph, the Centro Democrático became one of several opposition parties in the government. Although the cornerstone of its discourse continues to be security, the party issued a strong warning: the arrival of “Castro-Chavismo” would usher in a socialist government that would be the enemy of private property. But the fact that not all Centro Democrático members voted against the Petro government’s Total Peace plan illustrated major fractures in the party, which extended across social and economic issues.¹⁹ With the end of the FARC, the natural enemy of the right disappeared. Social demands found greater echo in political institutions, weakening the warlike banner of Uribismo. 

The future of Uribismo’s relationship to Uribe is also an open question. One faction of “Institutional Uribismo,” represented by leaders such as Duque, has sought to cultivate new leaders while maintaining Uribe’s legacy. Other parts of the party are more critical of a continued dependence on Uribe. Even so, “Uribismo without Uribe” has yet to fully take shape, as the movement continues to be cohered by Uribe himself. Meanwhile, contemporary Uribista figures, such as Cabal, have doubled down on anti-communist rhetoric naming the left as a threat to the established order.²⁰ The election of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil has served as a reference for a sharper right-wing discourse, where threats from Venezuela and the defense of private property of landowners and ranchers appear as key points of his 2026 platform.²¹ The victory of Donald Trump has also highlighted a global crisis of democratic institutions.  But the issues that made Uribismo relevant in the Uribe era remain present, as the demand for heightened security finds popular resonance amid the partial failure of the Petro government’s Total Peace efforts. Nonetheless, Colombia’s right wing today suffers from an absence of the unifying leadership once held by Uribe. This absence has prevented the consolidation of a European, Brazilian, Argentinean or Salvadoran style ultra-right in the country.

Uribismo, which once represented the dominant political force in Colombia, today faces a structural crisis calling into question its long-term viability. Its ability to build a broad, security-centric, technocratic coalition around a war of counterinsurgency has lost traction in a political scenario where security is no longer the only priority of the electorate. But a year ahead of the next presidential election, Uribismo’s central ideology remains crucial not only in the mounting opposition to Petro’s government, but also the right-wing turn across the region, which has increasingly touted a militarized approach to crime, migration, and border security. Despite its electoral and programmatic decline, Uribismo continues to be a reference point for these conservative and reactionary sectors. Its ability to survive will depend on if the movement takes on contemporary issues of economic inequality and instability. Almost a quarter century after Uribe’s triumph, will Uribismo manage to consolidate power amid a seismic transformation of the global right?