Allegations and political commentary surrounding foreign influence in Colombia's recent presidential election, featuring former Colombian President Gustavo Petro alongside imagery related to his successor, Abelardo de la Espriella. Photo: Geopolitical Economy Report.
By Ben Norton – Aug 20, 2026
Colombia’s ex President Gustavo Petro accused USA and Israel of meddling in the election to put in power far-right leader Abelardo de la Espriella, a pro-Trump US citizen and ally of drug traffickers.
The United States has a long history of meddling in the internal affairs of Latin America. But in recent years, US interference has become even more extreme and explicit.
And it is not just the US that is meddling in Latin American politics, but also Israel.
A case study of this foreign interference is the political situation today in Colombia.
Colombia has a new, multimillionaire, far-right president named Abelardo de la Espriella. He is a US citizen who voted for Donald Trump, and worked for years as a lawyer in Miami, Florida, defending drug traffickers.
De la Espriella has outsourced Colombia’s foreign policy to Washington, and he strongly supports Israel, while vowing to limit ties with China.
De la Espriella promotes US military bases in Colombia, and he announced, “I want Plan Colombia Two”.
He also called to “dollarize” the Colombian economy and adopt the US dollar as the country’s official currency.
Colombia’s former president accuses the US and Israel of stealing the election
The left-wing former president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, formally accused the US and Israel of meddling in his country’s run-off election, which was held in June.
De la Espriella was declared the winner by a tiny margin of less than 1 percent, amid widespread allegations of sabotage and extreme regularities.
Petro said the Colombian government had collected evidence proving that US and Israeli technology companies interfered in Colombia’s election in order to put De la Espriella in power.
Petro specifically named the Israeli firm BlackCore, which has been accused of meddling in elections in numerous countries.
Even the French government has said it gathered evidence proving that Israel’s BlackCore undermined elections in France, Scotland, and New York.
Heavy Rain Complicates Conditions for Earthquake Survivors in Colombia
De la Espriella did not hide the fact that he was conspiring with the US government in the lead-up to the 2026 elections.
In March, just a few months before the first round of the vote was held in May, De la Espriella traveled to Miami to meet with top US officials.
De la Espriella posted on Twitter a photo with US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and María Elvira Salazar, a far-right Congress member from Florida who has openly called for the US to overthrow the government of Cuba.
De la Espriella vowed that, when he became president, he would wholeheartedly embrace the US.
Colombia’s new US citizen president voted for Trump
Abelardo de la Espriella was naturalized as a US citizen in 2023.
In February of that year, De la Espriella published a post on Instagram writing:
After years of residing in the United States, I decided to become a citizen of this great nation.
Here my four children were born, and I have been very happy in these lands.
In the 2024 US presidential election, De la Espriella boasted that he voted for Trump.
After Trump was declared the winner, De la Espriella posted a celebration video on TikTok, in which he and his children danced to the song “YMCA”, which Trump often uses in his rallies. They waved US flags and moved their fists up and down, emulating the US president.
De la Espriella wrote, “Make America great again. Make Colombia great again”.
De la Espriella is a multi-millionaire. He earned much of his wealth by working as a lawyer in Miami, Florida.
He also earned notoriety for defending drug traffickers.
The New York Times acknowledged De la Espriella’s work for drug lords in a report in July, writing:
In Miami, Abelardo De La Espriella moved in the murky world of “white powder” lawyers — high-priced defense lawyers who help accused Latin American drug traffickers and others avoid harsh sentences by turning them into U.S. government informants or witnesses.
He employed a former trafficker from Colombia who, court records show, helped South Florida lawyers find such business.
In addition to the fortune that he made defending drug lords, the new Colombian president has a business that he modestly named after himself, called De la Espriella Style.
The company’s website is plastered with images of De la Espriella. He sells expensive men’s clothing, along with his books, music, poems, and even his own personal lines of rum, wine, and coffee.
De la Espriella is notorious in Colombia for his extreme narcissism and superficiality. He is first and foremost a social media influencer and celebrity, and has no political experience.
De la Espriella has done ads for Botox clinics, in which he bragged about his own face treatments. He was also lampooned for childishly sending out kisses to his supporters as hundreds of Colombians died in a devastating earthquake.
On a TV show, De la Espriella even demonstrated sociopathic tendencies when he recalled how, as a young man, he entertained himself by blowing up cats with explosives.
Colombia invites in the US military
Abelardo de la Espriella supports the US military hosting military bases in Colombian territory.
He has called for what he calls Plan Colombia Two, referring to the billions of dollars the US government gave to Colombia in the 2000s to wage a brutal war of extermination against left-wing armed groups. Many thousands of people were killed during Plan Colombia, including not only militants but also many peasants, Indigenous leaders, and labor organizers who were targeted by far-right paramilitaries and death squads sponsored by the Colombian government — and sometimes by US corporations.
When De la Espriella worked as a lawyer, he defended not only drug traffickers, but also far-right paramilitary groups and death squads.
Mere days after De la Espriella’s inauguration this August, Colombia signed an agreement with the Pentagon, allowing the US military to enter its territory.
US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth boasted, “Colombia is officially joining the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition (A3C)”.
The idea that De la Espriella is dedicated to fighting cartels is outlandish, given he made a career for himself as a lawyer who defended drug traffickers.
US supports drug traffickers in Latin America
This is one of many examples of how the US government supports some of the worst drug lords in Latin America, while cynically claiming it is fighting cartels.
US government intelligence agencies have acknowledged that Álvaro Uribe, the right-wing former president of Colombia, was a drug trafficker.
A declassified DIA cable recognized that Uribe was a “close personal friend of Pablo Escobar” who was “dedicated to collaboration with the Medellín cartel at high government levels”.
The US government strongly supported Uribe when he led Colombia between 2002 and 2010. This was the height of Plan Colombia, and the George W. Bush administration considered the drug trafficker Uribe to be a key ally in its so-called “War on Drugs”.
US government support for right-wing drug-trafficking leaders in Latin America has remained consistent and bipartisan over decades, but it has intensified under Trump — and particularly under Marco Rubio, a neoconservative hawk who serves as both secretary of state and national security advisor.
In 2025, the US government blatantly meddled in Honduras to put in power another far-right, pro-US, pro-Israel, anti-China leader, Nasry “Tito” Asfura.
As part of the US electoral interference operation, Trump officially pardoned and released from prison one of the worst drug traffickers in modern history, the right-wing former dictator of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH).
JOH had been imprisoned for trafficking tons of cocaine and machine guns. His conservative National Party used drug money to rig elections in Honduras.
Today, Honduras is governed by the same National Party. Asfura is a close ally of the cocaine kingpin JOH. The US government supports all of it.
The same thing is happening in Ecuador, which is run by a right-wing dictator, Daniel Noboa.
Noboa has banned the main opposition party, of the leftist Correísta movement, so he can run in elections with no effective political opposition.
Noboa is the son of the richest billionaire oligarch in Ecuador, and his family is deeply involved in drug trafficking. The president’s family firm, Noboa Trading Co., ships cocaine in banana crates from its private ports.
Noboa is likely the most powerful drug trafficker alive today. And he has the full, unflinching support of the US government.
Like De la Espriella, Noboa has given the US military carte blanche to carry out operations in Ecuadorian territory. The Pentagon has launched armed raids in Ecuador, in the name of supposedly fighting “drug trafficking” — while the country is led by a drug trafficker.
Also like De la Espriella, Noboa is a US citizen. The dictator of Ecuador was born in Miami, Florida and educated in the United States.
Just a few weeks after his inauguration in late 2023, Noboa traveled to Miami, Florida so his wife could give birth to his third child on US soil. Like the children of De la Espriella, those of Noboa are also US citizens.
This is deeply ironic, given that Trump has boasted that he is trying to abolish birthright citizenship in the US. The Trump White House vowed to end what it calls “birth tourism”.
But when right-wing leaders from Latin America fly to Florida so their wives can give birth in the US, guaranteeing citizenship to their children, the Trump administration strongly supports it.
Colombia recognizes Israel’s occupation of Golan Heights and Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara
Another factor that unites these far-right US-backed leaders in Latin America is that they all are closely allied with Israel.
They stand in stark contrast with the left-wing presidents in Latin America, who strongly support Palestine.
Colombia’s left-wing former President Gustavo Petro condemned Israel for committing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza.
Under Petro, Colombia broke off formal diplomatic relations with Israel. His government also joined a case in the International Court of Justice, which was introduced by South Africa, which charges Israel with genocide.
De la Espriella has done the exact opposite. He has been as pro-Israel as possible.
A day before his inauguration, De la Espriella met with the foreign minister of the Israeli regime, Gideon Sa’ar.
The Israeli official praised De la Espriella as his “friend”, and a “determined and inspiring leader”.
“The golden age in relations between Colombia and Israel begins today”, declared Israel’s foreign minister.
One of the first things that De la Espriella did after he came to power, just three days into his term, was to officially recognize Syria’s Golan Heights as supposed Israeli territory.
This decision blatantly violated international law. Israel has illegally occupied Syria’s Golan Heights since 1967.
Former President Petro publicly condemned the announcement, saying the Colombian people do not support Israel’s illegal occupation.
Only one other country on Earth recognizes the Golan Heights as Israeli territory: the United States.
The US made the decision to do so in 2019, during Trump’s first term as president. The Israeli regime responded by honoring the far-right US president, opening a new colonial settlement in occupied Syrian territory, in flagrant violation of international law, called Trump Heights.
That was not all. On the day of De la Espriella’s inauguration on 7 August, the very first thing that Colombia’s Foreign Ministry announced was that it recognized Morocco’s control over the occupied Western Sahara.
Western Sahara is territory that has been illegally occupied by the Moroccan monarchy for decades, in blatant violation of international law.
The indigenous inhabitants of Western Sahara are the Sahrawi people, and they have established their own government, called the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), under the leadership of a revolutionary, anti-colonialist, left-wing political party called the Polisario Front.
The SADR is a member of the African Union, and it is recognized by dozens of UN member states.
However, the US has put significant pressure on countries to end their diplomatic recognition of the SADR.
Under De la Espriella, Colombia has declared that it no longer recognizes the SADR.
Colombia very likely made this decision at the request of the US and Israel.
In 2020, the first Trump administration successfully pressured the Moroccan monarchy to normalize relations with the Israeli regime.
In return for Morocco recognizing Israel, the Trump White House announced in 2020 that the US would formally recognize Morocco’s supposed sovereignty over the illegally occupied Western Sahara.
Colombia vows to reduce ties with China and withdraw from the Belt and Road Initiative
Under the leadership of the US citizen De la Espriella, Colombia has also vowed to reduce its ties with China.
China is the top trading partner of South America, and it even overtook the United States as the number one trading partner of Colombia. But like the other right-wing leaders of Latin America, De la Espriella has reassured Washington that he will rebuke Beijing.
Under the previous left-wing President Petro, Colombia had moved much closer to China. Petro traveled to Beijing and announced that his country would join the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a global infrastructure project.
The new administration in Colombia has done precisely the opposite.
This August, the US Senate held a hearing for the Trump administration’s new ambassador to Colombia, Nate Morris.
Morris revealed that De la Espriella had promised the Trump administration that he will withdraw Colombia from China’s BRI.
A US senator asked Morris about the memorandum of understanding (MoU) that Colombia had signed under Petro, to join the BRI, and this is what he said in the hearing:
I’ve been very encouraged by the president-elect (De la Espriella) and his commitment to withdraw from that MoU.
And I believe, obviously, that I think all nations have to make a decision, that it’s either the United States or China.
The message coming from Washington reflects Cold War logic: All the countries around the world have to pick a side, you’re either with the US, or you’re with China; you cannot have good relations with both.
The new right-wing leaders in countries like Colombia, Ecuador, and Honduras have made it clear where their true loyalty lies.
Benjamin Norton is the founder and editor of the independent news website Multipolarista, where he does original reporting in both English and Spanish. Benjamin has reported from numerous countries, including Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, Colombia, and more. His journalistic work has been published in dozens of media outlets, and he has done interviews on Sky News, Al Jazeera, Democracy Now, El Financiero Bloomberg, Al Mayadeen teleSUR, RT, TRT World, CGTN, Press TV, HispanTV, Sin Censura, and various TV channels in Mexico, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Benjamin writes a regular column for Al Mayadeen (in English and Spanish). He was formerly a reporter with the investigative journalism website The Grayzone, and previously produced the political podcast and video show Moderate Rebels. His personal website is BenNorton.com, and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.
