Abelardo De La Espriella is a Colombian lawyer, businessman, and politician born on July 31, 1979, in Bogotá. He grew up in Montería, a city in the department of Córdoba, in northern Colombia, where his father ran for governor in 1997.

In 2002, he founded his firm, De La Espriella Abogados, with offices in Colombia and the United States. As a litigator, at 47 years old, he is one of the contenders in the race for the Colombian presidency, which will take place this coming May. Within the National Salvation Movement, he has presented himself as a figure aligned with the political line of what Argentine political scientist Agustín Laje has called the New Right: socially conservative, pro-life and pro-family, and pro-free market in economic matters. For these and other positions, which he even brandished before running for office, he has become a true terror to the Colombian left.

His campaign has been characterized by a strong presence on social media, where he criticizes political correctness and brings the image of the tiger to the forefront as a symbol of ferocity and courage. De La Espriella is an outsider, in the same way that Javier Milei was in Argentina and Donald Trump in the American political landscape.

His public appearances, which have resonated strongly with the poorest segments of Colombian society, have had to take place under tight security and behind bulletproof glass, due to the country’s still-present history of political violence. And in that vein, following the example of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, he has promised to improve public safety.

In public, De La Espriella has championed symbols such as the military salute to extol the role of the national security forces that have fought against drug trafficking and communist guerrillas for decades. His political proposals favor downsizing the state, lowering taxes, and eliminating labor and business regulations.

On the other hand, his critics have accused him of having served as legal counsel to Alex Saab in the past, the Colombian businessman who was the Chavista Minister of Industry and National Production, indicted in the United States for money laundering under Nicolás Maduro’s presidency.

De La Espriella has responded to the accusations by emphasizing that he stopped being Saab’s lawyer about seven years ago and has not spoken to him since.

For some, it may seem contradictory that the presidential candidate, a staunch critic of the Venezuelan dictatorship, had such a relationship with Saab. In response, De La Espriella calmly explains that Saab, whom he didn’t know, came to his office asking to hire him as a lawyer to handle civil and criminal cases in Colombia. When asked what he did for a living, he replied that he worked in the construction industry in Venezuela.

Two years later, De La Espriella learned that Saab was an ally of the Chavista regime. He sat Saab down in his office and said, “Alex, you know my position regarding the Maduro government. Is it true or not [that you work with them]?” He replied no. A year later, Saab asked for a meeting and confessed that yes, his ties to Maduro were real.

In his duty as a lawyer, De La Espriella suggested he cooperate with U.S. authorities. But Saab always postponed that cooperation. A year and a half or two years after that process, he stopped being his lawyer.

This professional episode has not diminished De la Espriella’s rise in the most recent polls for the presidential elections, which place him as the clearest contender against the socialist Iván Cepeda.

Could this be the next link in a trend in which governments across the Americas are aligning themselves with the ideals of freedom and abandoning socialism in recent years? Let’s remember that in November 2023, Milei broke the Jordan River of Latin American politics by winning the presidential elections in Argentina. The momentum continued in 2024 with José Raúl Mulino’s victory in Panama. That same year, Bukele was re-elected in El Salvador with 84.6% of the vote. Trump entered that picture of the Americas shifting to the right in November. Ecuador re-elected Daniel Noboa of the National Democratic Action party as president in 2025. Bolivia made a significant electoral shift after almost 20 years of Movement for Socialism (MAS) governments; and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines did the same, after 25 years of the leftist Unity Labour Party. In Honduras, the conservative Nasry Asfura won the elections; and the same occurred in Chile with José Antonio Kast.

This Sunday, March 8, 2026, Colombia elected its new Congress for the 2026-2030 term. The legislative elections closed at 4:00 p.m., and the country elected the new members of the Senate and the House of Representatives. With 99.14% of polling stations reporting, the National Salvation Movement obtained more than 698,000 votes.

While this wasn’t everything that De La Espriella’s political force had hoped for, it could be the political seed of what is to come in May during the presidential elections.