Colombians voted for a new Congress on March 8 in an election that stretched across thousands of rural towns and villages, where geography, infrastructure and the legacy of armed conflict continue to shape how citizens participate in democracy.
“I don’t like politics,” said Silvia Bedoya, 52, a resident of San Pedro de los Milagros in the mountains north of Medellín. “Instead of uniting people to move the country forward, it tends to divide us.”
Despite that frustration, Bedoya said voting still matters. “If you vote, at least you have the chance to raise your voice about something you don’t like,” she said. “If you don’t vote, you just have to accept what happens.”
More than 40 million Colombians were eligible to vote in the elections, with 13,493 polling stations installed nationwide, including 7,482 in rural areas, according to the National Registry Office. Security forces said they deployed 120,000 police officers across the country to guarantee the vote in the nation’s 1,104 municipalities.
The scale of the operation reflects the logistical challenges of voting in rural Colombia, where many communities remain separated by mountains, unpaved roads and long travel distances.
In San Pedro de los Milagros, a cattle-farming municipality in the Andean department of Antioquia, voters arriving at polling stations described a mixture of civic duty, skepticism toward politicians and concern over the country’s economic and social problems.
Mauricio Martínez, 47, declined to say who he supported, but emphasized the importance of participation. “Voting is the greatest right and duty we have as citizens,” he said.
Others said their choices were shaped by dissatisfaction with the government of President Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president, whose progressive agenda – including a major land reform program – has drawn both support and criticism in rural areas.
Maicol Jovani Sepulveda, 28, said he voted for the right-wing Democratic Center (Centro Democrático) party after losing faith in promises he believed would help young people. “I believed they were going to help us study,” he said. “But I didn’t receive a scholarship and I couldn’t go to university, so I was disappointed.”
The Democratic Center won more than 40% of the vote for both the Senate and the House of Representatives in San Pedro de los Milagros, a 24% increase from 2022. Across the department of Antioquia, it was also the most voted list with over 31% of votes, followed by the ruling leftist Historic Pact (Pacto Histórico) coalition with 16%.
Some voters in the town said their support for the right reflected growing frustration with Petro’s government. Among them was María Regina Avendaño Muñoz, 63, who said she cast her vote for Centro Democrático after feeling disappointed with the administration: “I’m very sad because he promised change and convinced many young people and teachers who voted for him.”
Beyond individual concerns, analysts say structural barriers have long shaped political participation in rural Colombia.
Rural voters play an important role in Colombia’s political landscape. Although the country’s largest voting blocs are concentrated in major cities, the countryside has long been central to debates over land ownership, security and development – issues that have shaped the country’s decades-long armed conflict and remain at the center of national politics.
“When we talk about political participation, we’re really talking about processes of democratization – who gets to speak and under what conditions,” Bladimir Ramirez Valencia, a professor at the University of Antioquia’s Institute of Regional Studies who works with farmers’ organizations, told Latin America Reports.
Historically, he said, rural communities have faced both violence and logistical obstacles that limit their ability to vote. About 75% of the victims of Colombia’s armed conflict have been civilians, many of them farmers, according to historical estimates.
Distance alone can also be a barrier. “For many communities, polling stations used to be three or four hours away,” Ramírez said. “Bringing voting sites closer to those places is fundamental.”
Authorities expanded electoral infrastructure for the 2026 vote, increasing the number of polling stations by 5,5% in rural areas compared with the previous 2022 election.
In some regions of Antioquia, Ramírez said, rural residents traveled to voting sites on foot or by chiva, the brightly colored buses that connect remote villages with municipal centers.
Recent government policies may also be shaping political engagement in the countryside. Programs related to land reform, land restitution and rural development have helped strengthen the government’s legitimacy among some farming communities, Ramirez said. “When farmers feel they are being heard and see policies reaching their territories, that can influence how they participate politically.”
Still, rural voting patterns remain complex and vary widely by region. “You can find campesino families involved in social movements defending their land,” Ramírez said. “But when elections arrive, they still vote for traditional parties.”
Across Colombia’s countryside, the election reflected both deep skepticism toward politics and the determination of rural voters to take part in a democratic process that has historically been harder to reach in the country’s most remote regions.