Let us not mince words. Colombia is a nation built on a foundation of blood. The brutal civil war that has consumed generations is not a backdrop to this presidential election; it is the election.
Every vote cast in the coming weeks is a bullet fired in a conflict that has raged since la Violencia, a war that has mutated from conservative-liberal massacres to drug cartel feuds to Marxist insurgencies. The current peace process with the FARC, fragile and imperfect, now hangs in the balance. Candidates offer two visions: one of continued negotiation, the other of military iron fist.
Neither is morally pure. This is the tragedy of Colombia: a country forever choosing between evils. The UK, with its history of colonial extraction in South America and current trade ambitions, watches with hawk eyes.
But we should do more than watch. We should recognise that our own peace, our own prosperity, is tied to the fate of this Andean state. Remember the Fall of Rome?
The periphery always collapses first. Colombia’s election is not a local squabble. It is a weather vane pointing to the storm ahead.