Colombia president provokes disgust by posing with bodies of ‘terrorists’

Still from video posted on social media by Abelardo De La Espriella (centre). Photograph: Abelardo De La EspriellaView image in fullscreenStill from video posted on social media by Abelardo De La Espriella (centre). Photograph: Abelardo De La EspriellaColombia president provokes disgust by posing with bodies of ‘terrorists’Abelardo De La Espriella posts video of himself with rows of body bags as performative populism continues to sweep Americas

Colombia’s hardline president, Abelardo De La Espriella, has provoked outrage after posting a video on social media in which he strides through rows of white body bags that he says contained the corpses of 23 “neutralised” guerrillas.

De La Espriella took power last month vowing “all-out war” against illegal armed groups and he published the footage on Thursday in an apparent attempt to show he was fulfilling that pledge.

Read more“I promised to confront terrorism without hesitation and I’m keeping that promise,” the far-right politician wrote above the video. “I did not come to play nice with murderers, extortionists and child recruiters. I came to defeat them … Long live Christ the king!”

Celebrating the military operation in the Colombian Amazon during which the 23 alleged terrorists were killed, De La Espriella declared: “We are utterly determined to destroy you, who are a cancer.”

The body bag footage, set to a stirring Hollywood-style score, was condemned by human rights activists and the president’s political opponents.

Iván Cepeda, the leftwing candidate beaten by De La Espriella in June’s election, wrote on X: “He strolls among the bags with the corpses. He nearly treads on them with contempt. He calls himself a Christian but in reality he’s an unscrupulous being lacking the slightest sense of humanity.”

View image in fullscreenIván Cepeda at a campaign rally in Bogotá in June. Photograph: Mauricio Dueñas Castañeda/EPAThe leftwing lawmaker Daniel Monroy accused the president of “necropolitics”. He wrote: “This is one of the most bizarre things we’ve seen. Strolling among the dead, while invoking the name of God, just to justify an unnecessary spectacle.”

De La Espriella’s predecessor Gustavo Petro tweeted: “This is called turning death into a trophy – something only soulless people can do … The soulless find it easy to kill for the sake of killing.”

De La Espriella hit back at his critics, posting: “Forgiving terrorists is God’s business. Sending them to meet him – if that’s where they’re headed – is the president’s job.”

De La Espriella’s post captured the bellicose and performative political zeitgeist sweeping the Americas, where a growing number of rightwing populists are seeking to woo voters with promises of ferocious, TikTokable crackdowns on crime.

The genre has been pioneered by El Salvador’s authoritarian president, Nayib Bukele, with slick videos of his notorious mega-prison, and Donald Trump, who has repeatedly published footage showing alleged drug boats being blitzed in the Caribbean and Pacific.

Ahead of Brazil’s October elections, several candidates are promising lethal attacks on the drug traffickers who control Rio de Janeiro’s favelas. “We’re going to stain the ground red with the blood of these lowlifes,” one candidate, Renan Santos, said recently, promising “a bloodbath” if he won power.

Flávio Bolsonaro, the main challenger to the leftwing incumbent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has vowed to wage war on “narco-terrorists”, although he and close allies have themselves been accused of having ties to organised crime. “Criminals will be taken out of circulation, either standing up or lying down,” Bolsonaro has said.

In Rio, Felipe Curi, a former police chief running for congress, has posted AI-generated videos depicting him shooting armed men in the favelas. Campaign propaganda features his image superimposed on pictures of the corpses of some of the 122 people killed during the city’s deadliest ever police raids. “I arrest crooks,” Curi boasts in one video, “and I neutralise them if they react.”