Colombians bid farewell to presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe Turbay who died after being shot in Bogota in June
'The bullets that took his life not only broke the hearts of his family, they reopened the fractures of a country that has yet to find peace,' senate president Lidio Garcia said, referring to Colombia's long history of violence against politicians.
Uribe had become one of the strongest critics of Colombia's current government. In October, he joined the list of politicians seeking to replace Gustavo Petro, the first leftist to govern Colombia, in the May 2026 elections.
Uribe was shot three times, twice in the head, while giving a campaign speech in a park in a working-class Bogota neighbourhood. Authorities have arrested six people, including the teenager they say shot him, but they have not determined who ordered the attack or why.
The shooting, caught on multiple videos, alarmed Colombians who have not seen this kind of political violence against presidential candidates since Medellin drug lord Pablo Escobar declared war on the state in the 1990s.
Uribe's mother, well-known journalist Diana Turbay, was among the victims in that period. She died during a police rescue after being kidnapped by a group of drug traffickers led by Escobar seeking to block their extradition to the US.
'If my mother was willing to give her life for a cause, how could I not do the same in life and in politics?' Uribe, who was 5 when his mother was killed, said in an interview with a Colombian news outlet last year.
The senator's family said he was buried yesterday at Bogota's Central Cemetery. The cemetery is the oldest in the city and the final resting place of figures such as Liberal leader Luis Carlos Galan, who was shot dead in 1989 in Bogota.
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