In a nation long wearied by the gap between public promise and public ruin, a man who spent five years documenting that gap from inside a plush elephant costume took his seat in the Colombian Senate — still wearing the costume. Luis Carlos Rúa, known to hundreds of thousands as 'Elefante blanco,' won 124,000 votes while keeping his face hidden, a precaution born of death threats and a country where accountability can carry a mortal price. His swearing-in was at once absurd and earnest, a symbol insisting on being taken seriously — which is, perhaps, the oldest political gesture of all.
Colombia's Cartoon Crusader: Anti-Corruption Activist Takes Senate Seat in Elephant Costume
Rúa's father died in 2024 after falling on a potholed street, motivating his legislative proposal for municipal pothole repair budgets.
If you don't do things the way crooked people want, you're not welcome
Mark
Why did you wait until three days before the election to reveal yourself? Wasn't that risky?
Mimi
It was calculated. I needed enough time to prepare for the threats, to warn people close to me, to arrange security. But not so much time that the revelation became the story instead of the work.
Mark
You'd already received death threats once, in Pereira. What made you think running for office would be safer?
Mimi
It wouldn't be safer in the way you mean. But a senator has a platform, a position, visibility. You can't disappear a senator as easily as you can disappear a freelancer making videos. The costume itself became protection—it's hard to ignore, hard to silence.
Mark
The inauguration vote seems to contradict everything you've campaigned against. How do you reconcile that?
Mimi
I don't think it does. Sending state resources to a neglected region isn't waste—it's the opposite. But I understand why people see it that way. I'm not here to be pure. I'm here to do the work.
Mark
What happens when the costume comes off?
Mimi
It stays off most days. The costume is for specific moments, for when the message needs to cut through the noise. The real work happens in committee meetings, in drafting legislation, in the corridors. That's where the elephant matters least and the senator matters most.
Mark
Your father died because of a pothole. Is that what drives this, or is it something else?
Mimi
It's both. Personal and political are the same thing when you're talking about infrastructure that kills people. His death made it concrete for me. But I was already doing this work before he fell.
The Pulse
- A man in a pot-bellied white elephant suit squeezed past suited colleagues down the aisle of Colombia's Congress, making visible what political theater usually keeps hidden.
- The anonymity behind the costume was never a gimmick — death threats after Rúa exposed vote-buying in 2019 forced him to build an entire public identity around a character rather than a face.
- 124,000 Colombians voted for someone whose face they had never seen, a measure of how thoroughly distrust of traditional politics has outpaced trust in its practitioners.
- His father died in 2024 after falling on a potholed street — the kind of neglected infrastructure Rúa had spent years filming — and now a law bearing his father's name is among his first legislative goals.
- Already, critics are testing the costume's integrity: Rúa voted to relocate an entire presidential inauguration ceremony to another city, and the man who built his name on wasteful spending is now defending the decision.
In a nation long wearied by the gap between public promise and public ruin, a man who spent five years documenting that gap from inside a plush elephant costume took his seat in the Colombian Senate — still wearing the costume. Luis Carlos Rúa, known to hundreds of thousands as 'Elefante blanco,' won 124,000 votes while keeping his face hidden, a precaution born of death threats and a country where accountability can carry a mortal price. His swearing-in was at once absurd and earnest, a symbol insisting on being taken seriously — which is, perhaps, the oldest political gesture of all.
When 102 Colombian senators were sworn into office, one of them could barely fit through the aisle. Luis Carlos Rúa, 34, took his oath in the white elephant costume he had worn for five years while wading through mud at abandoned construction sites across the country — unfinished roads, bridges, schools, tunnels, hospitals — posting videos that drew hundreds of thousands of views and, eventually, 124,000 votes. He revealed his face only three days before the election. Until then, Elefante blanco had no face at all.
The anonymity had a history. In 2019, while working for the mayor's office in Pereira, Rúa recorded officials pressuring employees to deliver votes. He leaked the recording. Death threats followed. He left the city and rebuilt his work around a character — designed by an illustrator, sewn by a seamstress — because, as he explained, Colombia is not always welcoming to those who refuse to play along. He funded the operation through freelance work, crowdfunding, and the sale of plush elephant toys. It was never quite enough. A senator's salary, he reasoned, would let him do the oversight work full-time.
Political analysts read his election as a symptom of something broader: a public so alienated from traditional politics that it sent a masked man in a costume to the Senate rather than trust any of the available alternatives. 'Politics is seen as a corrupt exercise,' one analyst observed, 'and activists like him tend to attract a public increasingly connected through social media.'
The personal runs deep in his legislative agenda. One of his first proposals would require municipalities to maintain dedicated budgets for pothole repair. He wants to name it after his father, Darío, who was 85 when he fell on a potholed street and died in 2024. The infrastructure failures he filmed were never abstract to him.
But the costume has already attracted its first contradictions. Rúa voted to relocate the presidential inauguration from Bogotá to Cali — a logistical undertaking for a single day — drawing immediate criticism from those who noted the irony. He defended the vote as a gesture of state presence toward a historically neglected region and promised the event would cost less than the previous inauguration. He also said he would attend dressed as Elefante blanco, and that his relationship with the new president would be the same it would have been with any winner: watchful, independent, and wearing a very warm costume.
On the day 102 Colombian senators took their oaths of office, one of them arrived in a pot-bellied white plush costume, navigating the narrow central aisle of Congress's ceremonial chamber with visible difficulty, squeezing past colleagues in tailored suits. The elephant—Elefante blanco, a reference to the term Colombians use for wasteful, abandoned, or useless public works—was Luis Carlos Rúa, 34, who had just revealed his identity three days before the election that sent him to the Senate with approximately 124,000 votes.
Rúa had spent the previous five years as an anonymous figure on social media, posting videos from construction sites across Colombia. He waded through mud and murky water that stained his costume, documenting unfinished roads, bridges, schools, tunnels, and hospitals—the infrastructure projects that the state had started and then abandoned. The videos attracted hundreds of thousands of views. Some projects were resumed. He became one of the most voted-for senators in the country without ever showing his face.
The anonymity was not a marketing choice. In 2019, while working for the mayor's office in Pereira, a city of nearly 500,000 people about 205 miles from Bogotá, Rúa witnessed the administration pressuring employees to secure votes for a candidate. He recorded a conversation and leaked it to the press. Death threats followed. He left the city. When he decided to continue exposing wrongdoing from Medellín, he did so through a character—commissioned from an illustrator, brought to life by a seamstress—because, as he put it, "here in Colombia, if you don't do things the way the crooked people want, you're not welcome." His first video posted in November 2021. The costume was extremely hot to wear. He kept a spare.
He funded his work through freelance jobs, the sale of Elefante blanco plush toys, and crowdfunding. It was not sustainable. Running for office meant a senator's salary, which would allow him to continue his oversight work full-time. He announced his candidacy in December but remained masked. Revealing his face just three days before the election, he said, gave him enough time to protect his own safety. He received at least one vote in almost all of Colombia's approximately 1,100 municipalities.
Political analyst Gabriel Cifuentes saw in Rúa's election something larger than one man in a costume: evidence of growing weariness with traditional politics and the rising influence of social media on electoral outcomes. "Politics is seen as a corrupt exercise," Cifuentes said, "and activists like him, who are not tied to political parties, tend to attract the attention of a public that is increasingly connected through social media."
One of Rúa's legislative proposals would require municipalities to allocate dedicated budgets for repairing potholes. He wanted to name it after his father, Darío Rúa, who was 85 when he fell on a potholed street and died in 2024. The personal and the political had merged in his work from the beginning.
But the new senator has already faced criticism. He cast a blank vote in the presidential runoff between the leftwing senator Iván Cepeda and the far-right millionaire lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella, who won. When De la Espriella proposed moving the presidential inauguration ceremony from Bogotá to Cali, 280 miles away, Rúa voted in favor. The proposal passed 58 to 30. Critics pointed out the contradiction: a man who had built his reputation exposing wasteful spending had just backed the relocation of an entire inauguration ceremony, with hundreds of guests and staff, for a single day. Rúa responded that he wanted to send "a signal of state presence in a region that has historically been neglected" and that the inauguration would cost less than Gustavo Petro's in 2022. He said he would attend De la Espriella's inauguration dressed as Elefante blanco. His relationship with the new president, he said, would be one of political oversight—the same role he would have played regardless of who won.
Notable Quotes
Here in Colombia, if you don't do things the way the crooked people want, you're not welcome.— Luis Carlos Rúa, explaining why he chose anonymity
Politics is seen as a corrupt exercise, and activists like him, who are not tied to political parties, tend to attract the attention of a public that is increasingly connected through social media.— Gabriel Cifuentes, political analyst
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Politics & Governance