The air in Cali tastes of diesel, wet sugarcane, and a quiet, collective holding of breath.
For more than a century, Colombian presidents have taken their oaths inside the neoclassical halls of Congress in Bogotá. High in the Andean cold, insulated by distance and stone, leaders swore themselves into office surrounded by the muffled murmurs of diplomats. But today, the center of gravity has shattered and shifted south. Learn more on a related topic: this related article.
In a university auditorium in Cali, ringed by eleven thousand heavily armed troops, drones banned from the bruised skies, and checkpoints that choke the avenues, Abelardo de la Espriella is taking the oath of office.
He calls himself El Tigre. Further analysis by The Guardian explores related perspectives on the subject.
To understand why a man bypasses the capital to be sworn in under the shadow of the western cordillera, you have to look at the dirt roads of Cauca and the cocaine-scarred valleys nearby. You have to understand the exhaustion of a country tired of bleeding.
For the past four years, outgoing president Gustavo Petro pursued a vision called Total Peace. It was an ambitious, deeply romantic notion: that decades of industrial-scale guerrilla warfare, drug trafficking, and rural extortion could be talked away. Ceasefires were signed. Negotiations were opened with the National Liberation Army, with cartel remnants, with dissident factions of the FARC who refused to lay down their weapons a decade ago.
Yet, on the ground, the reality looked entirely different.
Consider Mateo, a hypothetical coffee farmer whose groves cling to the steep hillsides outside of Cali. To Mateo, peace talks did not sound like reconciliation. They sounded like the rhythmic thud of boots at midnight, extortion demands slipped under his door by armed teenagers carrying assault rifles, and the suffocating realization that the state had retreated. Under the banner of dialogue, illegal armed groups expanded their reach, carved up smuggling routes, and turned rural communities into open-air fiefdoms.
The compromise had curdled. The voter base noticed.
When de la Espriella won a tight runoff election against the left, he did so not as a career politician wrapped in party machinery, but as an outsider fueled by a personal fortune and an unyielding message. He promised a return to iron-fisted authority. He promised that the velvet glove was coming off.
Choosing Cali for the inauguration is not merely a break with tradition; it is a deliberate theatrical provocation aimed directly at the insurgents. King Felipe VI of Spain sat in the audience alongside regional leaders like Argentina’s Javier Milei, watching a nation pivot violently to the right.
The ceremony itself is only the overture.
Once the applause fades in the auditorium, the new president plans to drive straight to a military battalion. There, surrounded by soldiers whose morale has cratered under years of defensive mandates and restricted movement, he will deliver his true inaugural address. The message is blunt and uncompromising: illegal armed groups must surrender unconditionally, or they will face the full, unmitigated wrath of the state as designated military targets.
There is no room left for ambiguity. The era of table talks is over. The era of the crackdown has begun.
Critics warn of the human cost. They point to the dark history of past militarized campaigns, the risk of escalating violence, and the ghosts of an internal conflict that has already swallowed generations. They argue that brute force has never permanently crushed an insurgency born of poverty and institutional absence.
Supporters, however, look at the blockades, the extortion, and the soaring homicide rates, and they argue that mercy has become an accomplice to chaos.
The sun beats down on the checkpoints outside the venue. Military helicopters chop the heavy afternoon air, casting fleeting shadows over the streets. Inside, a lawyer turned president tightens his grip on the podium, stepping into a storm of his own making, while millions across a fractured nation watch to see if the tiger can tame the jungle, or if the jungle will consume him instead.
Colombia's new president vows security crackdown against guerrillas and drug traffickers
This reporting provides a visual window into the heavy security deployment and the political climate surrounding the new administration's security-first mandate.
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