“My brother was murdered for not paying an extortion payment…in front of his children,” Edilma Martinez Flores said at a support centre for displaced people in Bogotá.
She fled her home on the outskirts of Cali, in the south-west, after armed criminal groups handed out leaflets ordering residents to leave or face violence.
“We had no choice but to leave our things behind. They started placing bombs along the routes people travel.”
Edilma is far from alone, and experiences like hers are why insecurity is dominating voters’ minds in Sunday’s key presidential election.
Colombia’s six decades of conflict between armed groups, the state, and cartels have killed hundreds of thousands of people.
It isn’t new, but illegal armed groups have roughly doubled their membership in the last five years.
These include Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) dissident factions, the National Liberation Army (ELN), and the Clan del Golfo, who have expanded their control of rural areas key to drug trafficking and illegal mining.
A brutal offensive between the ELN and FARC dissidents near the Venezuela-Colombia border last year displaced tens of thousands of people.
The two presidential candidates have starkly different visions for tackling this violence, in a campaign marked by the assassination of a presidential candidate, homicides, kidnappings, and bombings.
Left-wing senator Iván Cepeda is seen as the “architect” of the current president Gustavo Petro’s “total peace” strategy, prioritising negotiation with armed groups. Critics say it has failed and let armed groups exploit ceasefires to expand their control. Supporters argue it prevents a larger loss of life.
He also played a key role in the 2016 peace deal, which disarmed thousands of FARC fighters.
He has pledged “social transformations that the country urgently cries out for” while promising to “take stock” of the peace strategy and “make the necessary changes”.
His challenger is a conservative outsider, right-wing businessman and lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella, who calls himself El Tigre (The Tiger in English). He’s been endorsed by Donald Trump and is a US citizen. The signature outfit for him and his supporters is the Colombian football shirt, which the left has accused him of politicising.
He has promised 10 mega-prisons, a tough military crackdown, and an end to negotiations with armed groups, saying he has the “balls” to take them on.
“Any criminal who does not surrender will be taken down,” he has promised.
For many Colombians, how this issue is tackled will have a huge impact on their lives.
