In the election campaign, Colombia’s president, Abelardo de la Espriella, promised a hard hand against crime and an intensification of the fight against armed groups.
These promises were attributed to part of their success in the last June election.
But the images he shared by De la Espriella in which he is seen walking among the bodies of alleged guerrillas killed in a military operation have generated debate and strong criticism.
The video caused controversy in a nation traumatized by decades of armed conflict and brutality committed by both insurgents, military personnel and paramilitaries.
In fact, on Thursday, September 10, a judge in Bogotá ordered the president to temporarily hide such publications, according to the news agency AFP, which accessed the document.
One of those who condemned those images was the Ombudsman, Iris Marín: “The State and the Government cannot enter into a competition to show who can be more cruel,” she said in a post in X.
“Even in war there are limits, and human dignity does not disappear with death.The images and symbols of public power also matter,” he wrote.
Precisely in what these images and symbols communicate could be the explanation of what De la Espriella is looking for with its security strategy.
The president released a first video following a Colombian military operation in the Guaviare in which 23 alleged Farc dissidents and two minors were killed.
The moment you see him walking among the corpses is part of a longer, slightly more than seven-minute material, in which he gives details of the military operations and of the insurgents captured and dropped.
“Showing that sends a message of strength and intimidation,” says political scientist Carlos Cortés.
Cortés sees in the images a consistency with the hard line of De la Espriella said he would adopt in safety.
He is thus out of the strategy of his predecessor, Gustavo Petro, who pledged to negotiate with armed groups to get out of the conflict.
Elizabeth Dickinson, an analyst at the International Crisis Group, has agreed that what the Colombian president seeks is “to emphasize an offensive narrative, to ensure control of the State.”
“The images show the state’s dominance over criminal actors,” the expert said.
For a significant part of Colombians, their main concerns are the challenges facing the country in matters of security and public order, according to surveys.
De la Espriella, since he was launched to the presidency, has shown himself in public events with anti-ball jerseys, behind armored atrials and entonating words against what he calls “narcoterrorism.”
Catalina Suárez, a political strategist, believes that this stage was never a coincidence: “Use symbols to show that it is not frightening.”
His walk among bodies emphasizes that image of a strong man with whom he won the elections and now wants to keep in government.
Many of his followers were pleased with the images, as evidenced by the numerous messages of support he received on social media.
But many other citizens and figures from the opposition challenged them harshly.
“We are witnessing media necrophilia,” said Senator María José Pizarro, of the Historic Pact, Petro’s party.
Claudia López, former mayor of Bogotá and former presidential candidate, referred to the controversy and said that “mafia-sound autoritarianism does not respect life or death.”
The debate gained another dimension when the Ombudsman spoke, calling for the State not to compete to demonstrate cruelty.
His position was answered by Interior Minister Rodrigo Lara Restrepo, son of the murdered Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, accused of a crime attributed to the Medellín cartel in Pablo Escobar's time.
“We regret (...) what we consider a sad mistake: to equate the state with drug-terrorist bands, as if competing in cruelty (...) The state fulfils a constitutional duty to combat the criminals who exercise terror,” he wrote.
Dickinson recalls that this kind of demonstrations of authority are not new in Colombia. “In the struggle against Escobar and the posters circulated images.
It was also made during the government of Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010). This type of images are used to send moral and normative messages to the public,” he adds.
The truth is that, despite the criticisms for the first video, two days later, De la Espriella re-published new images in which he saw him alongside other bodies after an operation in which Naín Andrés Pérez Toncel, alias Bendito Menor, his partner Angélica Tarazona, alias La Bebecita and two other people in La Guajira were down.
The exhibition of authority and hard hand is a phenomenon that has repeated on the continent in recent years.
El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, frequently shows images of alleged gangs imprisoned and subjected in mass in their fight against the mares.
Donald Trump has also shared videos of U.S. military attacks on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific waters.
“The American campaign, in which they essentially extrajudicially kill alleged drug addicts, opens the door, I think, to other behaviors that are repeated in the region,” Dickinson says.
“If the U.S. behaves like this, it lowers the standards for the rest,” adds the expert.
In the case of Colombia, where the product of the armed conflict of more than 60 years has lived the violence of guerrillas, cartels, paramilitaries and the army, Dickinson warns about the other face of this exhibition of power.
“In communities affected by the conflict, the images of De la Espriella are scary because they show a message that emphasizes the count of dead,” she said.
And it reminds that amplifying that message has led in the past to the deaths of innocent civilians and to an increase in state violence.
“I’m not saying that this happens now, but it can resonate like that in the Colombian context,” he said.
