BOGOTÁ, Colombia -- After Trump administration ally Abelardo de la Espriella is inaugurated Friday as president, he promises to launch an offensive using aerial bombardments and new prisons to corral cocaine-trafficking groups that nearly doubled in size under the current leftist government.
The U.S. has said it would help the right-wing lawyer-turned-politician, a challenging undertaking in a large country with powerful, heavily armed militias that have grown rich from the surging cocaine trade. De la Espriella's inauguration is being held in an auditorium in Colombia's third-largest city, Cali, a symbolic break with tradition that reflects his pledge to govern from the country's far-flung regions instead of the capital, Bogotá.
"We're going to restore sovereignty and protect our citizens from crime and narco-terrorism," de la Espriella said recently. "Colombia once again has authority, order and hope."
Under the departing President Gustavo Petro, a former leftist guerrilla, the government embarked on simultaneous peace negotiations with about a dozen narco-trafficking groups to urge them to disarm and abandon drug smuggling. But under his Total Peace initiative, the groups grew from 15,120 to 28,802 members four years later, said a report released this week by Ideas for Peace Foundation, a Bogotá policy group.
Coca-leaf farms, which cultivate the prime ingredient in cocaine, now cover an area nearly the size of Rhode Island. Clandestine jungle labs produce more than 3,300 tons of cocaine annually, nearly nine times what United Nations researchers say was produced in 2012, when the U.S. and Colombia had dramatically reduced coca crops with aerial fumigation. And despite the Trump administration's bombing of drug boats, cocaine still flows in large quantities to Europe and the U.S., American and European officials say.
"Total Peace handed over territory to the criminals," said Medellín Mayor Federico Gutiérrez, who has supported de la Espriella's rise.
Petro counters that his government seized more cocaine than any other while extraditing 800 suspected criminals to the U.S. and other countries. "If the U.S. government once more imposes violence on the eradication of [drug] crops, there will be an increase of violence in the country," he warned in a post on X last month. He added that the "worldwide demand for cocaine isn't the fault of my government."
De la Espriella is an unlikely figure to take on the fight against cocaine. The 48-year-old lawyer has defended underworld figures, among them Alex Saab, a Colombian businessman whom U.S. officials accuse of laundering money for then-Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro.
Maduro, now jailed in New York after U.S. commandos seized him in a lightning operation on Jan. 3, says he is innocent of cocaine trafficking. Saab, extradited from Venezuela in May, pleaded not guilty in a Miami courtroom.
De la Espriella, a political novice who formed his own political party, shot out of nowhere by promising to resolve street crime in the cities while beating back narco-militias listed as terrorist groups by the U.S., including the Gulf Clan in northern Colombia and the National Liberation Army along the Venezuelan border.
De la Espriella said he is going to order planes carrying drugs out of Colombia to be shot down and for drug boats leaving from both the Caribbean and Pacific coasts to be sunk, a policy in line with President Trump's. American military drones and planes have destroyed dozens of suspected drug boats, killing more than 220 crew members.
De la Espriella also pledged to begin fumigating coca fields, which Petro had said covered about 626,000 acres, as early as Sunday.
"And I'm going to give the order to bomb narco-terrorist camps, using the technology available to avoid even the least impact on the civilian population," he told Caracol radio. "But the bombings resume."
De la Espriella has been a welcome sight for the American administration after Petro traded barbs with Trump. He joins five other conservative, pro-U.S. leaders elected from Chile to Honduras in a little more than a year. The U.S. said it would send a large delegation to the inauguration, including acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and a range of senior drug policy officials.
"We have a clear, prioritized agenda ready for day one: commit to an aggressive target for reduction in coca cultivation," F. Cartwright Weiland, head of the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, told U.S. lawmakers in June. That includes the use of eradication drones, he said.
To critics of the Petro government, no episode better captured the failings of his policy toward armed groups than the 2024 release of a powerful drug commander known as Calarcá, whose real name is Alexander Díaz. Captured at an army checkpoint, he was soon freed because an arrest warrant had been suspended so he could participate in the Total Peace talks.
"He kills people, he recruits children, he traffics drugs," said former army general Jorge Ricardo Hernández, who was told to release Díaz. The drug commander's group went on to down a Black Hawk helicopter, killing 13 police officers, last year.
De la Espriella said his government will end talks with armed groups, which he called a "false peace process." He is now warning Diaz and other commanders that it's time to surrender.
"To those violent outlaws, I have a clear message: your time is up," he said in a recent speech. "Any outlaw who refuses to surrender will be killed. Don't say I didn't warn you."
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