Colombia prepares to go to polls in election shadowed by resurgence of political violence

People hold candles and signs during a vigil in Cali this month for the journalist Mateo Pérez Rueda, who was killed by Farc dissidents. Photograph: Ernesto Guzman Jr./EPA View image in fullscreen People hold candles and signs during a vigil in Cali this month for the journalist Mateo Pérez Rueda, who was killed by Farc dissidents. Photograph: Ernesto Guzman Jr./EPA Colombia prepares to go to polls in election shadowed by resurgence of political violence Sunday’s presidential vote is contest between left and right – and between contradictory proposals for dealing with the decades-long armed conflict M ateo Pérez Rueda was one internship away from completing a degree in political science. The 24-year-old also worked as a bicycle delivery rider and sold fruit salads and juice to finance his passion: the Colombian independent digital magazine El Confidente . On 4 May he travelled to Briceño, in the western province of Antioquia, to report on the long-running conflict between the army, paramilitaries and dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc). The next day, he stopped responding to his parents. Three long days of agony followed, with relatives and friends pressing the authorities for information, until a humanitarian mission confirmed what many had feared: Rueda had been kidnapped, tortured and killed by one of the Farc dissident groups, known as the 36th Front. View image in fullscreen The photojournalist Jesús Abad Colorado speaks at a memorial service for Mateo Pérez Rueda in Medellín. Photograph: EPA His case became yet another symbol of the surging political violence that has reached its highest levels in a decade – and that has made the decades-long internal armed conflict central to this Sunday’s presidential election. The vote will be a contest between left and right – and two entirely contradictory proposals for dealing with the war that claimed nearly half a million lives. Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, who under the constitution cannot seek re-election, has backed the leftwing senator Iván Cepeda, 63, who is leading in the polls and is regarded as the architect of the government’s “total peace” effort to sign disarmament deals with all criminal groups. Many security experts consider the plan to have failed , noting that armed factions have taken advantage of temporary ceasefires to continue expanding, but Cepeda remains committed to the plan. View image in fullscreen A billboard for the far-right presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella in Cali. Photograph: Santiago Saldarriaga/AP The two main challengers, the far-right lawyer and “outsider” Abelardo de la Espriella, 47, and the rightwing senator Paloma Valencia, 48, promise a return to all-out war as soon as they take office. During the election period, there has been a surge in guerrilla attacks, homicides , kidnappings, forced displacement and massacres; and last year, the rightwing senator and presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe Turbay was shot durin