The decision to hold a presidential inauguration outside the capital is rarely just a logistical choice. When Abelardo de la Espriella was sworn in as Colombia’s 61st president on August 7 in Cali, the venue itself—an arena rather than the halls of Bogotá’s Congress—signaled a recalibration of power away from the traditional institutions of the state 1. The military salute and religious invocations that framed the ceremony were not mere pageantry; they were the iconography of a leader positioning himself above the fray of partisan politics, a move that often precedes, rather than follows, the consolidation of executive authority.
The pattern is not unique to Bogotá. In Managua, Daniel Ortega has dispensed with pretense altogether, proposing a constitutional reform that extends presidential terms to seven years and bars opponents deemed traitors from elections 4. His July declaration that there will be no more elections was not a lapse into candor but a statement of intent. The mechanisms differ—a theatrical inauguration in Cali versus a blunt constitutional rewrite in Managua—but the underlying logic is the same: the executive seeks to redefine the rules of the game while in office, converting temporary incumbency into permanent structural advantage.
This is where the transnational dimension becomes critical. Authoritarian learning is not a metaphor; it is a practiced craft. When Venezuela’s government opened a U.S.-backed dialogue with a faction of the opposition on August 6, the exclusion of María Corina Machado was not an oversight 6. It was a calculated move to legitimize a process while ensuring that the most credible democratic alternative remains outside it. Similarly, Colombia’s formal entry into the Americas Counter-Cartel Coalition and its authorization of joint U.S. military operations, announced days after the inauguration, suggests a security-first framing that can expand executive power under the guise of necessity 9. The rhetoric of fighting narcoterrorism, like the rhetoric of national security elsewhere, is a flexible instrument.
The comparison with Nicaragua and Venezuela must be made carefully, as the contexts are distinct. Colombia remains a functioning democracy with a free press and an independent judiciary, and de la Espriella’s government has not yet moved to dismantle them. But the trajectory of institutional erosion is rarely linear, and the early signals—the choice of venue, the embrace of military symbolism, the rapid alignment with a U.S.-led security coalition—merit scrutiny. What matters is not whether Colombia is becoming another Nicaragua, but whether the incentives that protect democratic resilience are being weakened.
The Ceuta crisis offers a parallel lesson in how external pressures can be converted into domestic political capital. Spain’s diplomatic confrontation with Morocco, with some 5,000 migrants remaining in the enclave, has exposed divisions within the EU 3. Italy’s decision to maintain Schengen controls with Spain is a reminder that solidarity is often the first casualty of crisis 8. For governments facing legitimacy challenges, the migrant question provides a ready-made narrative of threat, one that can justify exceptional measures and centralized authority.
The unresolved question is whether the democratic actors in these countries—opposition parties, civil society, the press—can adapt to a landscape where the executive controls the narrative and the security apparatus. The U.S. court ruling allowing social media addiction lawsuits to proceed is a reminder that accountability mechanisms can still function, but they operate slowly and unevenly 5. The stakes are not abstract. In Michigan, a progressive primary victory suggests that democratic coalitions are still capable of mobilizing, but the energy required to sustain them is finite 12.
The tradeoff facing citizens in Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and beyond is stark: accept the consolidation of executive power as the price of stability, or defend institutions that may seem inefficient but remain the only bulwark against arbitrary rule. The ceremony in Cali was a signal, not a verdict. But signals, repeated often enough, become structures.