Colombia presidential hopeful dies after June rally shooting

BOGOTA (AFP): Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe has died two months after being shot at a campaign rally, his family said Monday, as the attack rekindled fears of a return to the nation’s violent past.

The 39-year-old conservative senator, a grandson of former president Julio Cesar Turbay (1978-1982), was shot in the head and leg on June 7 at a rally in the capital Bogota.

Despite signs of progress in recent weeks, his doctors on Saturday announced he had suffered a new brain hemorrhage.

“Rest in peace, love of my life,” his wife Maria Claudia Tarazona wrote Monday morning in a post on Instagram.

“Thank you for a life full of love.”

Authorities have arrested six suspects linked to the attack, including the alleged shooter, a 15-year-old boy captured at the scene by Uribe’s bodyguards.

Following a nationwide manhunt, police announced the arrest of an alleged mastermind behind the attack, Elder Jose Arteaga Hernandez, alias “El Costeno.”

Police have also pointed to a dissident group of the defunct FARC guerrilla group as being behind the assassination.

The attack on Uribe, a leading candidate ahead of the 2026 presidential election, has reopened old wounds in a country wracked by violence.

His own mother, journalist Diana Turbay, was killed in a botched 1991 police operation to free her from cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar’s Medellin cartel.

Four presidential candidates were assassinated during the worst phase of violence in the 1980s and 1990s under Escobar, who terrorized citizens of Bogota, Medellin and elsewhere with a campaign of bombings.

Sad day for Colombia

“Today is a sad day for the country,” Colombian Vice President Francia Marquez said on social media.

“Violence cannot continue to mark our destiny. Democracy is not built with bullets or blood, it is built with respect, with dialogue.”

Uribe has been a strong critic of Colombia’s first left-wing president, Gustavo Petro, who has sought in vain to make peace with the country’s various remaining armed groups.

He announced in October that he would seek to succeed the term-limited Petro in the May 2026 presidential election.

Uribe was elected to Bogota’s city council at age 26, later becoming its youngest-ever chairperson and then the mayor’s right-hand man.

In 2019, he unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Bogota, but three years later, he was elected a senator — receiving the most votes of any candidate in the country.

He took a seat with the conservative Democratic Center party, founded by former president Alvaro Uribe, no relation.

“Evil destroys everything, they killed hope. May Miguel’s struggle be a light that illuminates Colombia’s rightful path,” former president Uribe wrote on X.

In recent months, Petro, a former left-wing guerrilla, has been accused of dialing up the political temperature by labelling his right-wing opponents “Nazis.”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a frequent critic of the leftist Petro government, demanded justice following the announcement of Uribe’s death.

“The United States stands in solidarity with his family, the Colombian people, both in mourning and demanding justice for those responsible,” Rubio said.

Uribe leaves behind a young son and three teenage daughters of his wife, whom he had taken in as his own.