As economist Guillermo Maya noted in his column in El Tiempo, although the Right won handily in Colombia’s recent presidential elections, representing continuity, on June 17, 2018, Colombian politics nevertheless changed as well. Iván Duque — until recently, a little-known protege of former right-wing president Álvaro Uribe whose working life has been spent at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington — and Gustavo Petro, the left candidate and former mayor of Bogotá, made it past the first round on May 27 into the runoff vote, with Duque taking 54 percent and Petro 42 percent in the second round.

The election results were remarkable in several ways. For one, it was the first presidential election since the ratification of the peace accords between the government of Juan Manuel Santos and the country’s largest and oldest guerrilla insurgency, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), signed in November 2016. The agreement marked a historic milestone, promising to end the decades-long civil war in which 250,000 people died and close to 8 million were displaced.

Yet few of its provisions have been implemented in the last year and a half, and under Duque, the accords will now be subject to dramatic revision. In some respects, the election marked a continuation of opposition to the peace accord, led by Uribe, which narrowly defeated the Yes campaign, led by Santos and supporters on the center-left, in the October 2016 referendum.