Colombian Leader's Body Photos Signal Shift in Power Projection Tactics

In Colombia, a regional leader named De La Espriella has shared video footage of himself alongside the bodies of those killed or captured by state forces — a deliberate act of political theater that places raw violence directly into the public feed. This is not an isolated provocation; similar displays have emerged in the United States and El Salvador, suggesting that the performance of lethal power has become a governing strategy across the Americas. What is new is not that states kill, but that their leaders now choose to pose, record, and share — transforming the dead into instruments of po