Abelardo de la Espriella took office as Colombia's president on August 7, breaking with two centuries of tradition by holding his inauguration in Cali rather than Bogota, and used his first speech to promise an "all-out war" on drug cartels. Hours later, the United States (US) Department of State pledged $1bn in security assistance to the new government, a package that still needs approval from the US Congress, describing it as the start of a "new era" in bilateral relations aimed at combating organised crime and illegal immigration.

The result ends four years of Colombia's first leftist government. De la Espriella, 48, a self-styled outsider who calls himself "El Tigre" (The Tiger), narrowly defeated left-wing senator Ivan Cepeda in June's run-off, winning 12.96mn votes (49.7%) against Cepeda's 12.71mn (48.7%), a margin of just 252,000 votes out of more than 26mn cast. He succeeds outgoing president Gustavo Petro, whose "total peace" strategy of negotiating with armed groups and paying coca farmers to abandon cultivation is blamed by critics for last year's displacement of tens of thousands of people along the Colombia-Venezuela border. Before entering politics, De la Espriella built his career as a defence lawyer representing paramilitary figures, the same category of criminal he has now pledged to pursue. Addressing troops at a military base after the ceremony, he vowed to crush armed insurgents and defend democracy "by reason or by force," adding that under his watch there would "not be a single place in our territory where criminals can feel safe."

Petro has continued to question the result and says he does not recognise the incoming government. Fact-checkers found that several widely shared claims of fraud were false or insufficient to establish manipulation, and Cepeda himself later said there were no irregularities large enough to constitute fraud. He nevertheless called supporters to a parallel event in Barranquilla on inauguration day, and protesters gathered in several cities. Colombia's National Electoral Council has formally certified De la Espriella's victory. He takes office facing an opposition movement that disputes his legitimacy regardless.

De la Espriella's break with "total peace" is structural, not just rhetorical. He has pledged to shrink the Colombian state by up to 40%, revive the oil and gas sector, and lean heavily on vice president-elect Jose Manuel Restrepo, a former finance minister whose market credibility helped steady investors during the transition and who has already met US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington. The new government inherits a fiscal deficit its own finance minister, Miguel Gomez, puts at 7-8% of gross domestic product (GDP), well above the outgoing administration's official figure of roughly 5.5% and among the widest in Latin America. That gap sits against a 2026 national budget of some COP547 trillion ($142.2bn).

Lee Schlenker of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, who recently led a bipartisan US congressional staff delegation to Colombia, warned that the incoming government's plans for tackling coca cultivation risked repeating decades of poor results from fumigation and extradition-focused policy. He added that reviving an aggressive, Plan Patriota-style military strategy could end up strengthening paramilitary groups given how fragmented Colombia's security landscape has become, and that De la Espriella's pledges to slash spending and overhaul foreign relations would face real constraints from the country's courts, congress and oversight bodies.

Washington has moved fast to lock in the realignment. Among his first acts as president, De la Espriella confirmed Colombia would join the Shield of the Americas, the regional security partnership founded by US President Donald Trump, naming Medellin as its operational hub. The $1bn pledge marks a sharp reversal after a year in which Washington sanctioned the sitting Colombian president, revoked his visa, and saw calls from the presidential palace for American soldiers to disobey their commander-in-chief. The pivot places Colombia alongside Argentina's Javier Milei, whom De la Espriella has said he admires, and Chile's Jose Antonio Kast in a growing bloc of right-wing, US-aligned governments in the region, even as Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva loses regional allies. De la Espriella has also pledged closer military ties with Israel, reversing Petro's decision to sever relations over the war in Gaza. Attendees at the inauguration included then-acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche and Gianni Infantino, president of the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA).

De la Espriella's first governing test came not from the cartels he vowed to crush, but from the ground itself. On August 10, three days into his term, a magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck western Colombia, centred near San Jose del Palmar in Choco department, some 280km west of Bogota. Tremors were felt as far as Bogota, Cali, Panama and Ecuador, and more than 2mn people were exposed to very strong shaking, according to the US Geological Survey. Buildings collapsed in Cali and other cities, and Colombia's Geological Service called it the country's strongest earthquake in a decade. Death tolls were still climbing hours after the quake and had passed 80 in the latest reports. The figures remain provisional and are likely to rise as rescue efforts continue.

De la Espriella declared himself in direct command of the response, convened an emergency meeting with Colombia's National Disaster Risk Management Unit, and ordered a unified command post. He travelled to Pereira, one of the hardest-hit cities, with the message: "No estan solos. El Estado esta presente y actuando" (You are not alone. The state is present and acting). The government has declared a state of national disaster.

It is an awkward opening act for a president who campaigned on shrinking government by up to 40% and freezing next year's budget. A costly relief effort in Choco and the Eje Cafetero, both poor and already strained by conflict, will test how far austerity stretches before it collides with disaster response. With Petro still refusing to recognise his win, a competent recovery may do more for De la Espriella's legitimacy in his first days than anything in his inaugural speech.