Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: Colombians ready for presidential elections, the United States indicts Cuba’s former president, and Bolivia is rocked by disruptive antigovernment protests.

As Colombians prepare to vote in first-round presidential elections on May 31, political debate has focused largely on public insecurity. Last week, assailants on motorcycles gunned down two campaign workers for right-wing candidate Abelardo De La Espriella, a gruesome echo of the killing of presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe Turbay last year.

Journalist Mateo Pérez Rueda was also killed this month after being detained by a guerilla group. And the International Committee of the Red Cross announced that in 2025 Colombia experienced its worst humanitarian situation in a decade.

Outgoing left-wing President Gustavo Petro pledged to reduce violence in Colombia. One of his main campaign promises was to negotiate with armed groups, a strategy he dubbed “total peace.” Petro’s chosen successor, presidential candidate Iván Cepeda, has been reluctant to criticize that approach, even though it has repeatedly broken down.

Polls overwhelmingly show Cepeda in first place, followed by De La Espriella and right-wing senator Paloma Valencia, suggesting one of the challengers might proceed to a June 21 runoff alongside Cepeda. Candidates must earn at least 50 percent of the vote to avoid the runoff.

De La Espriella and Valencia argue that Cepeda is weak on crime. They have even suggested that he would allow crime groups to kill them, which he denies. Cepeda “is the heir of the government that helped the [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC,] and the guerillas,” De La Espriella toldSemana magazine last month.

Both right-wing contenders have called for Colombia’s security forces to enter into more frontal combat with armed groups. They say the country should seek assistance from the United States in this effort, calling for a new version of the Plan Colombia bilateral security program of the 2000s and early 2010s.

On foreign policy, both candidates have also signaled that they would walk back Petro’s steps toward multi-alignment and reprioritize relations with the United States. They would similarly abandon Petro’s moves to speed Colombia’s transition away from fossil fuel production, which has served as a pillar of the president’s international environmental policy.

Valencia, the protégé of former President Álvaro Uribe, has tacked closer to the political center than De La Espriella, choosing a more centrist running mate and pledging to staff her government with some center-left figures.

De La Espriella has advocated an austere economic program, saying he will cut government spending by 40 percent. A political outsider, De La Espriella has drawn parallels to Argentine President Javier Milei. His vow to build new large-scale prisons, meanwhile, has invited some comparisons to Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.

Cepeda has offered few specifics about his platform other than saying he would build on Petro’s project of social inclusion. As Colombia’s first left-wing president, Petro staffed his government with people from marginalized backgrounds and worked to implement progressive tax and pension reforms, although some were reversed or suspended by the courts.

In January, Petro hiked Colombia’s minimum wage by more than 23 percent via presidential decree. Such moves explain many Colombians’ enduring support for Petro, according to localanalysts, despite the major shortfalls of his security policies.

It is unclear which factor—violence, social reforms, or something else—will win out at the ballot box. A smattering of polls in recent weeks yielded contradictory predictions about who might win in a second-round matchup against Cepeda. Early this month, polls also suggested that around 28 percent of Colombian voters were still undecided, leaving space for last-minute surprises.

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Friday, May 22: Mexico City hosts a European Union-Mexico summit.

Monday, May 25, to Friday, May 29: The United States and Mexico hold a round of negotiations as part of a review of their trilateral trade deal with Canada.

Sunday, May 31: Colombians vote in first-round presidential elections.

Monday, June 1: Countries sending teams to the World Cup hit a deadline for announcing their full squads.

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U.S. indicts Raúl Castro. On Wednesday, the U.S. Justice Department announced criminal charges against former Cuban President Raúl Castro. A U.S. aircraft carrier arrived in the Caribbean. And U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio released a Spanish-language video message to Cubans criticizing their government and proposing a “new relationship” with the United States.

Taken together, the steps—which all came on the anniversary of Cuba’s independence—represent a major escalation in Washington’s pressure campaign against the island.

Trump has suggested the economic and political changes he seeks in Cuba can be achieved through negotiations. But U.S. military forces also cited a U.S. indictment as the legal justification for their raid and capture of then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January. Some Republican lawmakers are calling for a similar fate for Castro, FP’s Rachel Oswald reports.

The indictment of Castro—for murder and conspiracy to kill U.S. citizens—relates to his role in the 1996 Cuban government shooting down two civilian aircraft sent to the island by a Miami-based volunteer group called Brothers to the Rescue. Cuba, led at the time by Castro’s brother Fidel, claimed the planes violated its airspace and were conducting covert operations.

Peru polling update. More than four weeks after the first round of voting in Peru’s presidential election, authorities confirmed on Sunday that left-wing candidate Robert Sánchez would advance to a June 7 runoff against right-wing frontrunner Keiko Fujimori.

Though Peruvian voters are familiar with four-time presidential candidate Fujimori, Sánchez is a lesser-known face on the national scene. He rose to prominence in part because he is backed by jailed former President Pedro Castillo. An Ipsos poll over the weekend found that Fujimori is slightly more popular among voters than Sánchez, but 12 percent said they were still undecided.

One of Sánchez’s first steps since making the runoff has been appointing former Economy Minister Pedro Francke, a moderate who served under Castillo, to lead his economic team. The gesture was meant to appease voters worried about the country’s macroeconomic stability.

Colombian folk music icon. This week, Colombians are celebrating the life of singer and songwriter Totó la Momposina, who died on Sunday at 85. Totó, as she was widely known, was born in a small town in northern Colombia and embraced local Afro-Colombian and Indigenous rhythms such as cumbia, porro, chalupa, mapalé, and gaita—bringing them first to Bogotá and then to the world.

Totó lived in France and Cuba, made the album The Live Flame with British musician Peter Gabriel’s record label, and was part of the Colombian delegation that accompanied Gabriel García Márquez to receive his Nobel Prize in 1982. She won multiple Latin Grammy awards and remained rooted in traditional music styles. Totó’s biographer dubbed her “our barefoot diva.”

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Dissatisfaction with Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz’s policies has escalated into major street blockades across the country, only six months into Paz’s term. The government said at least three people have died after emergency vehicles were barred from reaching hospitals. On Wednesday it appealed for regional support at an emergency meeting of the Organization of American States.

The center-right Paz took office amid an economic crisis last November, pledging to turn the country around. The global energy crunch triggered by the Iran war made his pro-market reforms more painful for consumers in Bolivia, which imports around half the gasoline it consumes.

Meanwhile, small landowners criticized a land reform law that they said would make them more vulnerable to buyouts. In recent weeks, teachers began protesting for higher salaries, and the protests have grown from there.

Bolivia’s unions and Indigenous movements are experienced in bringing parts of the country to a standstill to voice their dissatisfaction with policies. Although former President Evo Morales’s political movement is weak at the ballot box, it still has some ability to mobilize on the street.

A judge ordered Morales’s arrest last week for failing to appear in court as part of a trial on human trafficking charges. As of late Thursday, he was still at large.

The disruption in Bolivia was so great by Thursday that the United States, the European Union, and dozens of former Latin American presidents issuedstatements calling for restraint. Some bank branches closed in La Paz, an international soccer game was canceled in the area, and Argentina flew in supplies.

In response to protesters’ demands, the Paz administration reversed its land classification law, called for dialogue, and said a cabinet shakeup was in the making. But by Thursday afternoon, that had not calmed the blockades.