Colombia is a country that has long been a laboratory for human suffering, a place where the cycles of violence are as predictable as the seasons. Now, with a presidential election looming, the nation finds itself once again confronting its own reflection in a shattered mirror. The latest eruption of brutality, a horrifying crescendo of massacres and displacement, is not merely a tragic hiccup in the democratic process. It is the logical conclusion of a state that has abandoned its monopoly on violence, ceding ground to the very forces it claims to oppose.
Let me be clear: this is not a crisis. It is a chronic condition. The peace accords with the FARC, that great hope of the bien-pensant international community, have unravelled like a cheap suit. Dissident factions, drug cartels, and the ever-present ELN have filled the void with a savagery that makes the old war look almost gentlemanly. And now the candidates for the presidency offer us the same tired platitudes: more security, more negotiations, more hope. It is a farce. One cannot negotiate with a hydra. You cut off one head, and two more grow in its place, each more voracious than the last.
Consider the parallels to the late Roman Republic. There, too, violence became the primary means of political expression. The optimates and populares alike used street gangs and legionnaires to settle scores. Elections were a blood sport. And what was the result? The end of the Republic and the birth of an Empire. In Colombia, we see the same pattern: the state’s authority leaks away like water from a cracked pot, and in its place, we have warlords, paramilitaries, and narco-traffickers. The presidency is a bauble, a shiny object to distract the masses while the real power is wielded by those with the guns and the money.
But let us not be naive. The violence is not simply a result of criminality or ideological feuds. It is a symptom of a deeper intellectual decadence, a failure of the Colombian elite to imagine a nation that is more than a battleground for their own rapacious appetites. They speak of reconciliation while hoarding land and resources. They condemn violence while funding the very groups that perpetrate it. And the poor, the campesinos, the indigenous communities: they are the grist for this mill, their lives disposable in the endless calculus of power.
What, then, is to be done? The answer is not more technocratic reforms or international hand-wringing. It is a stark reckoning with the nation’s identity. Colombia must decide whether it wishes to remain a failed state masquerading as a democracy, or whether it will embrace the difficult, bloody work of building a state that actually commands allegiance. This is not a matter of policy. It is a matter of national will. And I see little evidence that such a will exists.
The election will come and go. A new president will be sworn in, and the violence will continue. That is the grim arithmetic of this place. But perhaps, if we are lucky, the horror will finally wake us from our complacent slumber. Perhaps we will realise that the fall of Colombia is not a distant possibility, but a present reality, a tragedy unfolding in slow motion before our eyes. Or perhaps we will continue to avert our gaze, like good Romans at the games, and wait for the next spectacle.