In May, Colombians will choose a successor to President Gustavo Petro, the first leftist leader in the country’s modern history. The results of that election will cement — or erase — Petro’s legacy at home, where voters will choose from a field including leftist Iván Cepeda, conservative Paloma Valencia and far-right lawyer Abelardo Gabriel de la Espriella.
In his nearly four years in office, Petro has struggled to implement the full breadth of his reformist program; he’s also faced low approval ratings. But as Colombia’s global representative on the world stage, he’s had an outsized impact, with combative speeches at the United Nations attacking governments who “applaud genocide” in Gaza and fail to deliver climate action.
