Colombia's 2026 Election Tests Whether Peace Can Fill Its Own Gaps

Colombia's June runoff unfolds amid a stubborn reality: the 2016 peace deal ended the FARC guerrilla but not the drug trade it controlled. Dissident factions and the ELN now manage coca fields and trafficking in abandoned territories. The next president confronts a structural problem—formal peace never restored state authority over key rural regions—leaving violence persistently rooted in economic voids the accords left unfilled.