The Man Who Could Keep Colombia’s Left in Power

World

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June 18, 2026

Presidential candidate Iván Cepeda talks to The Nation about US interference, his far-right opponent’s narco-paramilitary ties, and the unfinished business of the Petro government.

Senator Iván Cepeda, presidential candidate for the Pacto Histórico, speaks during a closing campaign rally in Bogotá, Colombia, on Saturday, June 13, 2026.

(Nathalia Angarita / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The Pink Tide that first pulled politics leftward throughout much of Latin America in the 2000s took a bit longer to reach Colombia. Dominated for decades by a right-wing ruling class that accepted massive US military aid to carry out bloody campaigns against armed left-wing rebels, coca farmers, and many, many civilians, Colombia remained what Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez once called the “unsinkable aircraft carrier” for US interests in Latin America at a time when many neighboring countries launched bids for national autonomy and progressive governance.

That changed four years ago, when former leftist guerrilla Gustavo Petro and his Pacto Histórico movement captured the presidency. Since then, Petro has led a pragmatic, social-democratic administration, raising the minimum wage, introducing pro-worker labor reforms, overseeing land redistribution, increasing spending on public education, and bringing down poverty rates. He has also taken principled stances against Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip, breaking relations with Israel and drawing the ire of Donald Trump, who last year canceled Petro’s visa to the United States after he attended a pro-Palestine rally in Manhattan. Just last week, a scheduled meeting in New York between Petro and Mayor Zohran Mamdani was spiked in the face of pressure from the Trump administration.

With Petro constitutionally barred from running again, Pacto Histórico has chosen Senator Iván Cepeda as its candidate in this year’s presidential election. A longtime human rights advocate, Cepeda has spent much of his career seeking justice for victims of the state-sponsored extermination of thousands of leaders of the left-wing alliance Unión Patriótica, including his father, Senator Manuel Cepeda, who was gunned down in 1994. He is pledging to continue the advances achieved under Petro and pursue peace negotiations with the country’s various armed groups. A truck driver near Bogotá summed up Cepeda’s campaign to The New York Times : “He wants to help the common people, so the rich aren’t always calling the shots.”

On May 31, Cepeda came in second in the first round of presidential elections to far-right populist candidate Abelardo de la Espriella. The two will now face each other in a runoff on Sunday, June 21. At stake is whether the country will treat its turn to leftism as a fluke and revert to a violent and unequal status quo ante, or continue its path to a more equal, dignified, and independent future.

In advance of the runoff, Micah Uetricht and Alex Caring-Lobel spoke with Cepeda about US meddling in Colombia’s democratic process, his far-right opponent’s narco-paramilitary ties, and how his government plans to fight neoliberal austerity with republican austerity.

Alex Caring-Lobel: You’re heading a broad coalition against the far right. How does your leftist background inform your approach to coalition politics? And why is this political tradition more capable than the center in defeating reaction?

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Iván Cepeda: I come from a political tradition deeply rooted in our nation’s history. What we are today, the Pacto Histórico, is the result of the historical evolution of the struggles—social, political, and cultural—that we’ve waged during the last century, or even longer.

So these are not improvised ideas. What we are defending is a historical accumulation. It’s not merely the accumulated legacy of the left but of various political left-wing currents and social movements comprising a wide range of forces, peoples, communities, traditions, and forms of resistance. This political and popular resistance—without wishing to draw smug comparisons to others on our continent—is distinguished by its survival in the face of extremely intense criminal practices and persecution. We even maintain that Colombia has witnessed genocides in the plural—not just one but several genocides against indigenous peoples, against political formations.

And in this long, historic process, we’ve come to acquire a cultural heritage, a way of seeing the world shaped by our political plurality. So the vision that we defend today is not the work of a single candidate or even our political leader, President Petro, but rather corresponds, as I said, to a long-standing tradition.

Within this tradition, we have also developed a political vision of alliances—party alliances, political movement alliances, but also class alliances, social alliances. And today we’ve come to the end, or are coming to the end, of our first progressive administration, whose track record could certainly b…