Colombia, once a recent example of resilience and growth, is now dangerously approaching the edge of collapse. At the beginning of the 21st century, it went from being a narco-state to a regional model of security, investment, and modernization. The road was difficult, but it was worth it: Colombia restored its image, conquered markets, and regained hope. Today, that effort has been dynamited by the irresponsibility of a generation that, from the comfort of democracy, handed the country over to ideological populism while ignoring the Venezuelan example. In less than four years, Colombia has gone back decades. Violence has returned, the economy has deteriorated, the international image has declined, and institutions have fractured. The price of a bad election can be a lost generation. Colombia is, once again, a warning for Latin America.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Colombia was besieged by organized crime. Pablo Escobar and the Medellín Cartel established a regime of terror that neutralized the State and waged open war against judges, politicians, journalists, and civilians. Mass kidnappings, car bombs, and territorial control by drug trafficking turned the country into a lawless land. Investment fled, tourism was unthinkable, and Colombians lived between fear and resignation.
With the arrival of Álvaro Uribe in 2002, Colombia began an unprecedented institutional reconstruction. His democratic security policy weakened the FARC and allowed the State to recover territory. Homicides and kidnappings declined, and ordinary citizens were able to walk without fear again. Investor confidence returned. Under Uribe, the economy grew at an average annual rate of 4.5%, free trade agreements were signed, and an era of unprecedented business expansion began. Colombian companies started conquering the continent: Grupo Éxito expanded into Brazil and Uruguay; Bancolombia acquired banks in Panama, Guatemala, and El Salvador; Grupo Nutresa purchased firms in Mexico, the United States, and Chile; Ecopetrol internationalized and issued shares in New York.
Juan Manuel Santos, despite his break with Uribe, maintained economic openness and achieved the country’s greatest diplomatic milestone: the signing of the peace agreement with the FARC in 2016, which earned him the Nobel Peace Prize. Colombia joined the OECD and was admitted as a global partner of NATO in 2018, while consolidating its image as a modern, stable, and promising country. However, the increase in public debt under Santos is another warning for our country: it planted the social discontent that would come later. Under Iván Duque, macroeconomic stability was maintained despite the pandemic and growing unrest, especially among young people.
In 2022, history changed. For the first time, Colombia elected a left-wing president: Gustavo Petro, a former M-19 guerrilla member with a refounding discourse and a permanent rhetoric of confrontation. What followed was a systematic dismantling of accumulated progress. Economically, the country fell into stagflation: low growth, high inflation, declining foreign investment, and public debt already exceeding 66% of GDP. The fiscal deficit reached -6.8% in 2024, and inflation climbed to 13.1%, the highest in two decades. The cost of this debt has turned Colombia into one of the most expensive countries to finance, to the point that credit rating agencies have removed its investment grade. Meanwhile, Guatemala, if we do things correctly, is only one step away from achieving it.
Institutionally, Petro has strained the democratic system with arbitrary reforms and threats of a constituent assembly. Less than a month ago, an assassination attempt against presidential pre-candidate Miguel Uribe Turbay evoked the worst years of political violence. Corruption scandals and ministerial crises complete the picture of a government that has confused change with destruction.
This is not only the story of Petro, but of collective forgetfulness, ideological blindness, and contempt for experience. Stumbling over the same stone is a tragedy, and allowing it while knowing the cost of getting back up is pure negligence.
Socially, the deterioration is alarming: more than 950,000 people affected by armed conflict in just the first four months of 2025; massive displacement; closure of more than 1,200 healthcare providers; and collapse in key regions such as Catatumbo and the Pacific coast. With more than seven million displaced people, Colombia is the fifth country in the world in this category, after Ukraine. This beautiful country has once again become a battlefield.
Internationally, isolation is evident: rupture with Israel, speeches indirectly supporting Hamas, rapprochement with Iran, clashes with Emmanuel Macron, and sanctions from the United States that have included tariffs, visa revocations, and loss of market confidence. The relationship with Argentine president Javier Milei has turned into a spectacle of ideological insults. Colombia, once respected, is now viewed with disdain and marginalization.
This disaster is not the work of chance, but of a democratic decision. Many young Colombians — educated in democracy and without direct memory of the horrors of narco-terrorism — decided to ignore history and be seduced by siren songs. They rejected the legacy of their parents and grandparents, dismissing it as “neoliberalism,” “clientelism,” or “old politics,” and voted for radical change. The same could happen in New York if they elect radical socialist Zohran Mamdani. Foolishness is not exclusive to Latin Americans. But that change arrived in the form of ruin. It is tempting to destroy when one does not understand the cost of building. That generation did not live through the dark years, did not understand what it meant to rebuild a country from chaos, and today pays — alongside everyone else — the consequences of its decision.
History offers a clear mirror. Countries such as Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Armenia, and Georgia experienced communist oppression and learned from it. Today they lead economic growth in Eastern Europe. They adopted economic freedom, trade openness, institutional respect, and international integration. They became engines of innovation, investment, and prosperity. They learned through the hardest path, but they learned.
Meanwhile, Latin America repeats the cycle. Countries trapped in the narrative of the Puebla Group — Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba — have embraced socialist rhetoric only to end up, once again, in institutional crises, structural impoverishment, and authoritarianism disguised as social justice. And in Spain, the European example that should serve as a warning, parties such as the PSOE, Podemos, and their allies have shown an increasingly clear tendency to dismantle democracy from within. That progressivism is often the Trojan horse of state control and censorship.
Those who do not know history tend to repeat it. Colombians were once seen as pariahs, yet they rose again through admirable effort… and still, the majority led by the young chose to fall once more. This is not only the story of Petro, but of collective forgetfulness, ideological blindness, and contempt for experience. Stumbling over the same stone is a tragedy, and allowing it while knowing the cost of getting back up is pure negligence. Colombia today does not only face a crisis: it faces a judgment of its own conscience. And Guatemala, if it does not learn from this case, may be the next to repeat it.
