By Lilia Solano, EL PAÍS, September 6, 2026
(Translated by Eunice Gibson, CSN Volunteer Translator)
The government guarantees protection for the lives of all the people, and also of the people’s rights and liberties, as well as adherence to humanitarian norms.
In the first month of President Abelardo De la Espriella’s administration in Colombia, which began on August 7, 2026, what stood out was the three widely publicized military operations, accompanied by tough talking speeches. As to international relations, there was broad emphasis on our surrender of our sovereignty to the United States.
In keeping with his campaign promises, stressing his declaration of a “total war” on the armed groups, the President published a video on social networks that shows him walking along rows of dead bodies in white bags. According to his statement, they were the bodies of 23 guerrillas killed in the military operation in Amazonia, alleged to be terrorists. The President stated in a celebratory tone: “We are absolutely determined to destroy them. They are a cancer.”
The images of the President posing in the midst of the images of bags of dead bodies received indignant comments from the international press. We also heard criticisms by social organizations, academics, and the opposition. It looks as if the President’s Palace is inspired by Donald Trump, who shows images of boats with supposed drug traffickers attacked by United States Armed Forces in the Caribbean and the Pacific, while he boasts of a tough crackdown. This has served as a tenuous veil to try to justify the murder of 227 people. Human rights organizations like Amnesty International and the U. N. and experts in international law have denounced those events as extrajudicial executions and have demanded that such attacks be ceased.
The priority established by the Colombian government is one of military pressure and bombings. His announcement establishes a goal of 12 military operations before the end of his first 100 days. So far there have been three air operations in three weeks, which allows him to show more trophies of war: more than 20 dead and confirmation of the deaths of six children.
This won’t solve the underlying problems of violence and territorial control. Colombia’s recent history shows that the strategy of the tough crackdown has postponed for decades the middle and long-term solutions, and that the populations that have suffered the most from the violence and the conflict have insisted that the integrated presence of the government must be installed before any war. Armed Forces can accomplish military objectives in the short term, but that deepens the problems. Bombing is not governing. Military attacks have shown that they don’t achieve peace or resolve the violence. On the contrary, the State must guarantee protection of the lives of all the population and of their rights and liberties, as well as guaranteeing adherence to humanitarian norms that impose limits on the armed groups and on the Armed Forces.
The use of the Armed Forces is based on the law, and given that that has to be special, it can’t be turned into a form of political control. Government violence contradicts the principles of democracy and the Rule of Law. In Colombia, as has been pointed out, we have a long history of crimes by institutions and by agents of security. It’s worth remembering that between 1946 and 1958 the government used the police and armed civilians, the “pajaros” (“birds”) as a political instrument in the period known as The Violence, and set off a civil war with tremendous government repression after the murder of Gaitán, with nearly 200,000 killed.
During the years of 1960 to 1990, under the influence of the National Security Doctrine and the Cold War agenda, with the cooperation of the United States military, the Colombian government focused on attacking “The Enemy Within”. The Security Statute decreed in 1978 gave more authority to the Armed Forces. Shaded by the decree, they eliminated fundamental rights and carried out tortures, arrests, and extrajudicial executions against people that were tagged as enemies. The resort to government violence continued to be applied in the decade of the 1980’s. The political genocide of the Patriotic Union with the complicity of paramilitaries and agents of the government marks that period. The “false positives” under the policy of “Democratic Security” of 2002 to 2010, in the Uribe administration, gave priority to military offensives against the guerrillas and that priority generalized extrajudicial executions of civilians by members of the Army.
The history of violence demands that we take the role of drug trafficking into account, because its presence is being felt at all levels. The vast sums of money from drug trafficking have become the power that sustains the armed conflict. In turn, drug trafficking has financed politics, turning election campaigns into a formula for developing connections with the government and organized crime and thus has been able to affect territorial control with impunity, and with the complicity of security forces so they can advance their mafioso operations throughout the whole nation.
Given that the penetration of the financial power and violence of the drug traffickers has arrived at nearly every democratic institution, it presents a challenge of global magnitude, and will require a dedicated effort of political governance. It’s an effort in which the government, civil society, the private sector, academia, and the entirety of institutions can evaluate their decisions in the interest of the people as a whole. The priority is understanding that government is not offering a SHOW in the middle of bombings.