Far-right President Abelardo de la Espriella says he will wage a ‘counterrevolution’ against cultural institutions.
Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella has launched a cultural “counterrevolution,” removing dozens of exhibits from the National Museum and prompting widespread protests and comparisons to former U.S. President Donald Trump.
De la Espriella, a conservative Trump ally, framed the purge as a bid to shield cultural institutions from what he calls “atheist social communism.”
The removed displays covered the history of social movements, including feminist and LGBTQ+ activism, as well as Colombia’s episodes of political violence.
Civil‑rights groups, artists and students have denounced the action as censorship, warning that vital chapters of Colombian history could be erased. On Wednesday, dozens of demonstrators gathered outside the museum in downtown Bogotá, where riot police guarded the entrance.
“I find it outrageous that they want to erase part of our history,” said Azul Riascos, a history student. He argued that the government is promoting a vision of Colombia as exclusively white, Catholic and Spanish‑speaking, which marginalizes Black, Indigenous and LGBTQ+ communities.
Gimena Sanchez‑Garzoli, the Andes director at the Washington Office on Latin America, linked the move to a broader trend among Trump‑aligned governments importing U.S. political narratives. She noted that Trump has also clashed with Smithsonian museums, with the White House issuing a report labeling the National Museum of American History’s leadership as radical and ordering corrective signage—an effort that has yet to materialize.
Anthropologist Arturo Sanabria, speaking at the protest, described the purge as a form of neocolonial intervention, accusing the government of adopting “imported narratives about terrorism and about being ‘woke.’”
Culture Minister Paola Holguin announced that the government is reviewing and redesigning exhibitions and curatorial practices at other museums under her ministry’s oversight. Meanwhile, the Foreign Ministry renamed a courtyard previously honoring an Indigenous leader, calling the change part of the president’s campaign against “woke” ideology.
Political scientist Estefania Cardozo, standing outside the museum, called the effort “a cultural battle that probably doesn’t exist. It is inventing one to erase identities that cannot be erased because they already exist.”
