Colombia President Abelardo De La Espriella

Colombia’s hardline president, Abelardo De La Espriella, provoked widespread disgust after sharing a video on social media in which he walks past rows of white body bags he said held the corpses of 23 ‘neutralised’ guerrillas. He took office last month following a June election victory over leftwing candidate Iván Cepeda, having pledged an ‘all-out war’ against illegal armed groups. The footage was published on Thursday and accompanied by a message in which De La Espriella stated he was fulfilling his promise to confront terrorism without hesitation. He added that he did not come to ‘play nice with murderers, extortionists and child recruiters’ and declared his mission to defeat them, ending with ‘Long live Christ the king!’ In the video, set to a Hollywood-style score, De La Espriella celebrated the military operation in the Colombian Amazon during which the 23 alleged terrorists were killed, saying they were ‘a cancer’ that must be destroyed. Human rights activists and political opponents swiftly condemned the footage. Iván Cepeda, the defeated presidential candidate, wrote on X that the president ‘strolls among the bags with the corpses’ and ‘nearly treads on them with contempt’, accusing him of lacking humanity despite invoking Christianity. Leftwing lawmaker Daniel Monroy labelled the act ‘necropolitics’, describing it as one of the most bizarre things he had witnessed, criticising the president for walking among the dead while invoking God’s name to justify a spectacle. Former president Gustavo Petro also reacted, calling the act ‘turning death into a trophy’ and suggesting only ‘soulless people’ could find it easy to kill for the sake of killing. De La Espriella responded to critics by asserting that forgiving terrorists is God’s business, while sending them to meet him, if that is their fate, is the president’s duty. Analysts noted the post reflects a broader performative political trend across the Americas, where rightwing populists use slick, social media-friendly content to shows hardline security policies. This trend was pioneered by El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele through videos of his mega-prison and echoed by Donald Trump, who has shared footage of alleged drug boats being destroyed in the Caribbean and Pacific. In Brazil, ahead of October elections, several candidates have made similar pledges, including Renan Santos, who vowed to ‘stain the ground red with the blood of these lowlifes’ if elected. Flávio Bolsonaro, challenging Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has promised war on ‘narco-terrorists’, despite allegations linking him and allies to organised crime, stating criminals will be removed ‘either standing up or lying down’. Felipe Curi, a former police chief running for congress in Rio de Janeiro, has used AI-generated videos showing him shooting armed men in favelas, with campaign material superimposing his image over photos of the 122 people killed in the city’s deadliest police raids, claiming he ‘arrests crooks’ and ‘neutralises them if they react'.