By Julia Symmes Cobb
TUBARA/JUAN DE ACOSTA, COLOMBIA, June 19 (Reuters) - At first glance, these neighboring municipalities set along Colombia's sweltering Caribbean coast have much in common. Single-story homes with outdoor rocking chairs cluster around town squares and residents time their outings to avoid the midday heat. Mango trees line streets where schoolchildren dawdle home.
But Tubara and Juan de Acosta, both near port city Barranquilla, diverge sharply when it comes to Sunday's presidential
election, which pits conflicting visions for Colombia's future against one another.
In Juan de Acosta, where murders and extortion have spiked as drug trafficking increased along its coastline, right-wing candidate Abelardo De La Espriella got 55% support in the first round. He has pledged to bring the hammer down on armed groups and criminal gangs.
Next door, Tubara backed leftist senator Ivan Cepeda with just under 60% of their votes. His socially focused message resonated there, with promises to expand reforms to healthcare, pensions and education.
De La Espriella, 47, a lawyer and businessman with no prior political experience, has deployed military-style visuals and rhetoric. He refers to himself as "the Tiger," calls his political movement "Defenders of the Homeland," and salutes at rallies and in publicity, despite never having served in the military.
His pledge to crack down on crime gave him a lead of several points over Cepeda in the first round and recent polling has him eight points ahead for the second.
The spike in murders and extortion is out of character for Juan de Acosta, said Nicanor Alba, as he chopped and bagged pork ribs for customers at his butcher stand near the town's plaza.
"You set up your business and tomorrow they come and say 'if you don't give us 50,000, 30,000 or 40,000 (pesos), it's over,'" said Alba, whose own brother was murdered five years ago.
He said several friends and neighbors have fallen victim repeatedly to extortion. He said he was shocked by recent homicide figures.
"That had never been seen before in Juan de Acosta, it's a bunch of people," said the butcher, who plans to vote for De La Espriella.
DRUG TRAFFICKING
Juan de Acosta's road connections to the interior of the country combined with its coastline have made it a "strategic point" for drug traffickers, said Colonel Eddy Sanchez, police commander for Atlantico province.
Two criminal groups -- Los Pepes and Los Costenos -- ave historically operated in the municipality, including selling drugs, Sanchez said. Recently the country's largest crime gang, the Clan del Golfo, has arrived as well.
"The Clan del Golfo uses this municipality as a platform to reach maritime areas and, using speedboats, ship drugs abroad," Sanchez said.
"Of course, that leads to issues of violence," he added, though he said murders have fallen from 15 in 2025 to just 2 in 2026 so far, the municipality's historic average. Police have classed 14 of last year's murders as contract killings.
Tubara, by contrast, had no murders in 2025 and has recorded only one so far in 2026, Sanchez said.
"It's a territorial dispute, where some gangs are trying to enter the municipality while others are trying to push them out to fully control local drug trafficking," said Oscar Andres Arteta, Juan de Acosta's interior secretary, adding local government and police are working together to fight extortion.
Juan Gabriel Coronel, who sells meat, ice cream and dry goods at a small store in Juan de Acosta, plans to vote for De La Espriella in the hopes he can curb violence and extortion. But he also wants a change for his health.
"I had a liver transplant 17 years ago and have never been denied my medication in that time," said the 42-year-old, a client of a healthcare provider which the government took over in 2024 because of alleged care failures. For the last six months, Coronel said, he has had to pay for the medication out of pocket.
GET OUT THE VOTE
In a field of 13 candidates, Cepeda, 63, the son of a murdered communist leader, won all but one Caribbean province in the first round.
He needs to increase his numbers there and in capital Bogota to have a shot at winning the run-off, said Luis Fernando Trejos, a politics professor at the Universidad del Norte.
The leftist will need 2.5 million to 3 million additional votes to win, he added. De La Espriella, who had about 700,000 more votes than Cepeda in the first round, will also need to increase his voter share. More than 41 million Colombians are eligible to vote but just under 24 million participated in the first round.
Both candidates have secured backing from various political powerbrokers on the coast, Trejos said.
De La Espriella has taken pains to emphasize that he was raised in the inland Caribbean city of Monteria. His campaign billboards feature his tiger alter ego dressed in a Barranquilla soccer jersey and read "Abelardo is coastal like you. .... Coastal votes coastal."
He has also accused Cepeda of planning a massive vote-buying operation on the coast, which Cepeda's campaign has vehemently denied.
Cepeda voters in Tubara have been working to increase turnout.
Clara Algarin, a clinical psychologist and former city councilor, has been arranging transport for voters who could not reach polling stations for the first round, she told Reuters.
Algarin admires current leftist President Gustavo Petro's expansion of free public university for undergraduates and the 230,000 peso ($66) per month state pension he instituted for people who were unable to save for retirement, including her own mother.
"My mother worked as a domestic servant from the age of 16. She never had the possibility of being paid a pension before," said Algarin.
Her husband Javier Gomez runs a bakery, on whose porch hangs a bright Cepeda banner. He said he was happy to pay his employee the 23% increase in the minimum wage for this year instituted by Petro.
"The work that (the employee) does deserves the payment of a living wage," Gomez said as he took a break from packaging fresh bread.
($1 = about 3,500 pesos)
(Reporting by Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by David Gregorio)
