Former mayor and campaign aide shot dead in Colombia’s Meta region

# Former mayor and campaign aide shot dead in Colombia’s Meta region

Event date: 2026-05-16

A former mayor allied with presidential candidate Abelardo de La Espriella and one of his aides were shot dead in Colombia’s heartland, according to local authorities.

AP reports that Rogers Devia and Eder Cardona were killed in a rural area of Cubarral, a municipality Devia governed from 2020 to 2023. The killings were described as the latest incident of political violence in a region contested by armed groups.

The Public Defender’s Office in Meta said the deaths could threaten political rights and democratic participation ahead of Colombia’s presidential election on May 31. That warning makes the attack about more than two individual victims; it points to the climate in which campaigning is taking place.

De La Espriella’s National Salvation Movement is one of several contenders in a race that could go to a runoff in June if no candidate clears 50 percent. In that context, violence aimed at someone close to a campaign can have a chilling effect well beyond the immediate area.

The AP report says the region is contested by two groups labeled as terrorists by the U.S. government and by a third group, a FARC splinter. That backdrop helps explain why a rural attack can be so hard to prevent and why local officials reacted so quickly.

Colombia’s Interior Minister Armando Benedetti said investigators did not yet know why Devia was attacked. He also said police had recently stopped an attack against a staffer for another candidate in the same city. That suggests the threat environment around the campaign was already active before this killing.

The source excerpt does not identify the attackers, say whether they belonged to any group or provide a motive. It also does not state whether the campaign itself had received additional security. Those limits are important and respected here.

Even so, the event is a serious warning sign. Political violence in Colombia has often been concentrated in rural regions where armed groups, criminal networks and local disputes overlap. An attack on a former mayor and campaign ally fits that pattern and raises the question of whether the election can proceed safely in contested territory.

For voters, the killings are a reminder that campaigns in some parts of Colombia still take place under threat. For authorities, the immediate job is to determine whether this was an isolated attack, a targeted political killing or part of a broader campaign of intimidation.