Pro-Trump candidate takes spotlight in Colombia's presidential race with vow of crime crackdown

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Bombastic pro-Trump lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella pulled ahead in Colombia’s presidential race in the first round of elections over the weekend, capitalizing on a growing appetite for crackdowns on criminal groups across Latin America.

Second-place finisher, progressive Sen. Iván Cepeda, and his ally, President Gustavo Petro, have questioned the election results, without providing evidence.

Cepeda on Monday called on de la Espriella to debate him ahead of their June 21 runoff. De la Espriella replied on X: “Are you ready, coward? … First, acknowledge the election results and let’s debate right now.”

De la Espriella rapidly gained traction ahead of Sunday’s election and won nearly 44% of the vote. Cepeda, who had consistently led polling, won less than 41%.

In the runoff, De la Espriella is expected to scoop up additional votes from Colombians who supported other conservative candidates in the first round.

Cepeda will face an uphill battle, said Sergio Guzmán, a political analyst. De la Espriella's win is "a shift in public opinion that is very difficult to overcome. So now Abelardo is emerging as the likely favorite to win.”

Markets in Colombia and the Colombian peso jumped on Monday, likely a product of de la Espriella’s proposal to roll back regulations on businesses and willingness to open the country to fracking — a sharp turn from Petro’s environmental agenda.

The 47-year-old De la Espriella, known as “El Tigre” or “The Tiger,” has never held office in Colombia and prided himself on living a luxurious life in Italy before deciding to run for president.

He pitched himself as an outsider who would cozy up to U.S. President Donald Trump and follow El Salvador President Nayib Bukele's war on gangs, which has driven down homicide rates but fueled accusations of human rights abuses.

“I will wipe out narcoterrorism and those who I've declared a military target like cockroaches, like rats. I will unleash upon them the wrath of God never seen before,” de la Espriella said in an interview with The Associated Press in the final stretch of the campaign, where he promised to open 10 mega-prisons to fight crime.

He joins a growing number of leaders across Latin America, from Chile to Honduras, seeking to latch onto the “Bukele model” as voters across Latin America are ditching leaders who pitched progressive policies aimed at addressing the root issues of conflict such as lack of opportunities for young people and corruption.

De la Espriella's supporters come from a wide range of backgrounds. Yolanda Peréz, a 64-year-old woman serving coffee in Colombia's capital, Bogotá, said with a wink the day before the election: “I'm thinking of voting for El Tigre.”

Miguel Maheca, a 20-year-old first-time voter, flashed his ballot to his mother as he strolled out of the polling station on Sunday, saying with a grin, “Love isn't what's going to make us safe in Colombia."

But experts say El Salvador's security successes will be nearly impossible to replicate in a country like Colombia, which is more than 50 times larger than the Central American nation and has many more armed groups fighting for territory.

The Trump administration is playing a more aggressive role in Latin America than any U.S. government in decades, putting mounting pressure on countries like Colombia, Mexico and Ecuador to crack down on crime.

De la Espriella made a name for himself as a lawyer defending high-profile clients such as former President Álvaro Uribe as well as controversial figures like Alex Saab, a close ally of Venezuela’s ousted president Nicolás Maduro who faces legal issues in the U.S.

The progressive Cepeda has promised to carry on his ally Petro's fraught plan to achieve “total peace” by negotiating peace pacts with guerrillas and criminal gangs.

Their political movement was born from a rejection by many Colombians of a militarized offensive by Uribe in decades past to beat back guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Thousands of civilians were killed by Colombian forces in a scandal known as “false positives.”

De la Espriella “represents a return to the paramilitary politics and drug-trafficking — a mafia-run, plutocratic and corrupt past that the country experienced during Álvaro Uribe’s two administrations,” Cepeda said on Sunday.

Petro, a former rebel, won Colombia's presidency in 2022, ending decades of domination by leaders from Uribe's political movement. He gained massive support from rural-dwelling, Indigenous and poorer Colombians who felt they had never been directly spoken to by the country's leaders.

Now that movement is backed into a corner.

“This is de la Espriella’s election to lose,” wrote Renata Segura, director of International Crisis Group's Latin America and the Caribbean Program. “Cepeda thought he could win appealing squarely to the left, and that proved to be a massive mistake. How he pivots in the next month will determine if he has any chance to win.”

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

This version corrects the spelling of the first name of the leading candidate to Abelardo.

Soldiers guard during the presidential election in Santander de Quilichao, Colombia, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Santiago Saldarriaga)

Supporters of presidential candidate Ivan Cepeda of the ruling Historic Pact coalition gather outside the polling station where he voted during the presidential election in Bogota, Colombia, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

Presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella of the Defenders of the Motherland movement addresses supporters from inside a bulletproof booth after leading the first round of the presidential election and advancing to a runoff in Barranquilla, Colombia, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

Supporters of presidential candidate Ivan Cepeda of the ruling Historic Pact coalition react as presidential election results are announced in Bogota, Colombia, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

Presidential candidate Ivan Cepeda of the ruling Historic Pact coalition addresses supporters after advancing to a runoff election in second place in Bogota, Colombia, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix) CORRECTION: Corrects Paloma Valencia to Ivan Cepeda, and photographer Jose Vargas to Matias Delacroix

Presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella of the Defenders of the Motherland movement addresses supporters from inside a bulletproof booth after leading the first round of the presidential election and advancing to a runoff in Barranquilla, Colombia, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Ivan Valencia)

Supporters of presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella of the Defenders of the Motherland movement celebrate election results in Barranquilla, Colombia, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

Presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella of the Defenders of the Motherland movement depart a polling station after voting during the presidential election in Barranquilla, Colombia, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Ivan Valencia)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The United States said Monday that it bombed radar and drone sites in Iran after Tehran shot down an American drone over the weekend. Iran then said it targeted American soldiers in Kuwait with missiles, which the U.S. says it shot down.

The nominal ceasefire between Iran and the U.S. has been repeatedly tested with such back-and-forth attacks, even as officials from both countries try to negotiate an end to the war. It’s not clear how close they are to a deal — and there is always the risk that an attack could derail those talks.

In the meantime, Iran has maintained its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, disrupting global energy supplies and driving up the price of fuel around the world, with far-reaching consequences. A cargo ship came under attack off Iraq Monday afternoon, the British military said.

Fighting has also escalated between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, despite their nominal ceasefire. Israel has extended its occupation deep into Lebanon, and Hezbollah — which joined the war in support of its main backer, Iran — continues to launch drones into Israel.

The U.S. military’s Central Command said it carried out the strikes in Iran on Saturday and Sunday around the city of Geruk and on Qeshm Island, hitting air defenses, a ground control station and two attack drones it said threatened ships in the region.

“The measured and deliberate strikes occurred ... in response to aggressive Iranian actions that included the shootdown of a U.S. MQ-1 drone that was operating over international waters,” Central Command said.

Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is at a trickle compared to before the war, with ship owners deterred by the risk of an Iranian attack. Only 36 ships transited the waterway in the seven days leading up to to Friday, a third of them carrying crude oil or petroleum products, according to Lloyd’s List Intelligence. That compares to an average of more than 130 ships per day before the war began.

Kuwait said its air defenses opened fire early Monday morning to intercept incoming drone and missile fire.

Around the same time, Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said it responded to an American attack without saying where, likely referring to the attack on Kuwait. In a statement carried by the state-run IRNA news agency, the Guard said that U.S. forces had targeted a telecommunications tower.

Kuwait is home to U.S. Army Central, the Mideast forward command for the Army.

Iranian state television shared footage of the ballistic missile launch, including a close-up showing a sticker on its body depicting a bruised U.S. President Donald Trump overlaid on a “closed” Strait of Hormuz with the caption: “Until the last American soldier leaves the region.”

Central Command said U.S. forces shot down two ballistic missiles Iran launched toward bases home to American troops. No Americans were hurt, it added.

The attacks represent the latest escalation between the U.S. and Iran. Over the weekend, the U.S. fired a missile into the engine room of a Gambia-flagged cargo ship trying to break its blockade of Iranian ports.

On Monday, a cargo ship off Umm Qasr, Iraq, was struck by a projectile that caused a “large explosion,” the British military said. It offered no other details and no one claimed the attack, though Iran previously has attacked ships off Iraq.

A trickle of ships has made it out of the strait, through which a fifth of all traded oil and natural gas once passed, but pressure continues on global energy supplies, as well as on chemical fertilizer. That has led to fears of food shortages. The Gulf region produces 30% of globally traded chemical fertilizers.

Trump met with advisers on Friday but has yet to decide on whether to move ahead with a deal to extend the ceasefire and reopen the strait. Iran has said the deal had not been finalized.

The U.S. and Israel launched the war with strikes on Iran on Feb. 28. Trump has offered shifting goals for the conflict, although preventing Iran from building a nuclear weapon is among them. Iran has insisted its nuclear program is peaceful, though it has enough highly enriched uranium to build several nuclear weapons, should it choose to do so.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance suggested last week that negotiators are trying to strike general terms on Iran’s nuclear program, with the specifics to be hammered out in the ensuing talks.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei on Monday again accused the U.S. of “constantly” changing its positions.

“From the beginning, we knew — and we continue to know — that we are negotiating in an atmosphere of mistrust," Baghaei told journalists.

Trump expressed optimism about the talks in a post on his Truth Social platform early Monday in Washington.

“Iran really wants to make a deal, and it will be a good one for the U.S.A. and those that are with us,” he wrote. “Just sit back and relax, it will all work out well in the end — It always does!”

Demonstrators wave Iranian flags and flags of Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group during a pro-government gathering at Islamic Revolution Square in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, May 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)