Sondra Macollins Garvin is a criminal lawyer who aspires to the presidency of Colombia in 2026 as an independent candidate. With a distinctly feminine vision of renewing traditional political life, Macollins is known for having defended such controversial figures as former drug trafficker Carlos Lehder — Pablo Escobar’s partner in the Medellin Cartel — and alias Martin Sombra, one of the most sinister figures of the now-defunct FARC.
She speaks to us from Santa Marta, the Colombian city where she was born 50 years ago, and sketches a panorama of today’s Colombia following the term of the first leftist president, Gustavo Petro, whom she openly questions, although she is also highly critical of traditional politicians, who have made corruption and violence common characteristics of public life in the South American country.
As an independent pre-candidate, Macollins is running in next year’s presidential elections through the mechanism of popular endorsement. In this regard, the candidate already has 800,000 pre-audited signatures, although she hopes to reach a million when the period ends — on Dec. 16 — to present these endorsements, which would be 400,000 more than what electoral law requires.
The aspiring candidate to become Colombia’s first woman president in 2026 criticizes the “alpha male” politics that have always been characterized by destroying what the predecessor did, even if it was good, and describes the country as “a building under construction that every four years starts the work again from level one.”
Sondra Macollins, an independent pre-candidate for the Presidency of Colombia
Although Sondra Macollins’ name is not new in Colombian politics — she already sought to run for the House of Representatives in 2022 with the endorsement of the Conservative Party — it was five months ago that the name of this lawyer, with nearly 30 years of experience as a criminal attorney, jumped into Colombia’s public sphere.
Until then, Macollins was known for having defended figures as complex and significant in the darkest chapters of the country’s recent past as former drug trafficker Carlos Lehder, one of the leaders of Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel in the 1980s and 1990s, and alias Martin Sombra, a guerrilla fighter with 35 years of criminal life who admitted in 2022 to having trained more than 700 minors during his years as a member of the now-defunct FARC.
When attorney Macollins decided in June to take the leap into politics, she chose one of the two options “when one is a citizen,” as she describes it: Complain or do something for the country. “After 50 years of complaining, I decided to put on the jersey for the country and offer my ability, my experience, and my vision of the country to do things differently.”
The presidential hopeful defends a feminine vision of power: “It is an important moment for women. We are the majority in Colombia, and it is time to bring our feminine vision to a country that needs it so much, one so battered by violence and corruption — two things in which women are pioneers in not engaging: We are not violent, and we are not corrupt.”
Macollins: Understanding crime to combat it
Beyond a feminine perspective — so far unprecedented in the Colombian presidency — Sondra Macollins claims that in her professional work she has had the opportunity to gain an insight that should help solve the country’s structural problems. In this sense, although she acknowledges that four years is too little time to change things, she argues that it is necessary to understand criminality in order to combat it.
“A country with a high crime rate is not that way just because. It’s because there is a huge gap of social injustice that the State does not address. Most people who break the law do so due to complex circumstances such as need, because they have no other option, and because there is an absence of values and principles that the state must learn to provide,” she said.
Macollins criticizes the statements of some, like her fellow pre-candidates, who claim that criminality must be eliminated “with bullets,” which does not work to achieve that goal “if we do not attack the cause that generates criminality.”
With a diagnosis of the problem that might appear close to that of Gustavo Petro’s government, Macollins nonetheless is very critical of these three and a half years of “disastrous” government. In this regard, she harshly criticizes the policy of dialogue with criminal groups that has not produced the expected results.
“We must understand how these structures operate, how they introduce illegal money into the formal economy, and confront them forcefully in order to dismantle them,” she argues, emphasizing that “this is the only way to neutralize the criminality that so afflicts Colombia.”
Thus — she says — the duality between confronting criminality and carrying out social functions is the path “to end the vicious cycle of violence that Colombia suffers.”
Recovering Colombia as an ally of the rule of law and overcoming polarization
Moreover, Macollins maintains that Gustavo Petro’s years in office “have dragged the country’s image through the mud,” and she commits to restoring Colombia’s image on the international stage “as a country aligned with the rule of law.”
From the defense of her “totally independent” pre-candidacy, she also questions traditional politics, which offers only polarization but — she says — lacks practical solutions for the country. In this regard, Macollins rejects the traditional political view that divides between left and right in an attempt to “distinguish between heroes and villains.”
“People are very tired of those roles. I believe the ideological issue has become very blurred: People from both the right and the left end up fighting over leaders they don’t even know, who play with people’s minds and needs. In the end, the needs of people on the right and on the left are the same: To put food on the table, have work, have security, and opportunities,” she asserts.
The enemy, then, is not — she says — someone who thinks differently. “For me, the villain is poverty, insecurity, the lack of opportunities, also for us women,” she argues. While she advocates for respect in political competition, she also emphasizes that “60% of people are fed up with polarization, and what is needed is to give them an opportunity to be in the center.”
Rescuing what is positive from the Petro government and implementing it
Asked about the social reforms that the Petro government tried — with little success — to implement, Macollins considers that the failure of the current administration has been in execution. “They have been more activists than technicians, and that has prevented good ideas from being carried out,” she laments.
In this regard, she acknowledges that some government proposals were good, but criticizes the poor implementation of many of these ideas in more than three years in office. “I want to rescue a couple of things that have only been executed at 2% and that should help bring well-being to an important sector.” In this regard, she supports deepening the current government’s proposals in the education sector and in police salaries.
“In education (there is much more to implement), such as the STEAM screens or maintaining the ranking system to improve teachers’ conditions,” she notes. She likewise supports completing Petro’s government project to increase police salaries and match them to the minimum wage.
“The governments we have always had are egotistical, narcissistic, and do not work for the general well-being but to leave their mark in history. I will come in to analyze what comes from previous governments and from this same government in order to achieve the greatest well-being,” she says, referring to a different way of governing and understanding the role of the leader in a country that limits presidential terms to only four years.
5M hectares of perennial oilseed production to fight against illicit coca crops in Colombia
Among her proposals, one that Sondra Macollins wants to highlight beyond the fight against insecurity — and precisely to cut off the supply to illegal armed groups — is a program for the countryside.
“The countryside is very important in the social structure of our country: Our wealth is in the countryside,” she says, adding, “and in this regard, we have a program to ensure that 5 million hectares of arable land in Colombia will be dedicated to perennial oilseeds — plants that live many years and produce edible vegetable oils.”
The presidential hopeful argues that this “major industry already has significant progress in the country with 600,000 hectares of African palm, 79,000 more in avocados, and nearly 25,000 hectares in coconut.” Nonetheless, she aims to expand such crops to “5 million hectares to ensure that farmers can make a living from their legal production.”
Regarding the 253,000 hectares currently planted with coca, Macollins says that “the plant is not the evil. The evil is the final product that ends up in the hands of drug trafficking.” To prevent this, the pre-candidate proposes “buying these natural products from farmers to turn them into something that can be healthy for the country and for the world and take the business away from drug trafficking.”
Opposed to the controversial use of glyphosate as a method to eradicate illicit coca crops, she advocates for protecting nature and, by preventing the proliferation of illegal plantations, reducing the deforestation caused by these crops, many of which are located in remote areas such as the jungles or the Amazon.
Break with the ‘Venezuelan dictatorship’
Regarding Colombia’s relations with Nicolas Maduro’s government in Venezuela, although Macollins believes that “it will be resolved very soon because of the extreme position taken by the U.S. government,” the candidate advocates breaking any type of diplomatic or commercial relationship with this government, which she describes as a “dictatorship.”
However, she also argues that the government has a duty to defend and protect the interests of the millions of compatriots who have lived for decades in the neighboring country, while making clear the rejection of the Venezuelan government.
It is worth recalling that, although Gustavo Petro does not recognize Maduro as president after the 2024 elections, Colombia has important — even strategic — commercial plans, such as bringing gas from Venezuela through the La Guajira pipeline, although the viability of this project is highly questioned by experts who doubt the necessary technical aspects.
Knowing history to understand Colombia’s reality
As the defender of complex and controversial figures in Colombia’s recent history, such as Carlos Lehder and alias Martin Sombra, Sondra Macollins says it is necessary to know history to understand why “these kinds of people are produced: cruel war machines.”
“Knowing how these kinds of people are built is very important because that way we can correct the error as a society,” she says, adding that Colombia “must accept its responsibility in the entire process of creating paramilitary groups, guerrillas, and groups outside the ordinary legal system.”
On this issue, the presidential hopeful believes that the state must take responsibility for its failure and ensure resocialization programs for these criminals. “They are people who have a history and a time when the state should have ensured that these people would not become what Martin Sombra became. We must become aware and go to the deep Colombia where all these needs arise, which generate resentful people, people with mental problems, people who disconnect from reality and make this their struggle, without understanding that they are wrong”, she concludes.
To this end — she argues — the state must make them see their mistake and offer opportunities to leave criminality behind, and punish those who do not. On such cases, Macollins refers to recent incidents in which military bombings on criminal structures resulted in the deaths of several minors who had been recruited.
“We have many children like Martin Sombra in that process who, if they survive, in 40 years will probably become the Martin Sombra of their time, but most die and do not even reach adulthood. They are the most vulnerable victims, used by these groups, whom the state must rescue and reintegrate into society.”
Critical of the impunity that, she claims, resulted from the “disastrous” 2016 Peace Agreement with FARC, she argues for ending the guerrilla label for armed groups. “The agreement removed the guerrilla franchise from FARC. … The purpose of the guerrilla no longer exists; they had the opportunity and failed to change the constitutional status quo. … In Colombia, there are no guerrillas; there are criminal organizations that must be prosecuted with the full weight of the law through the ordinary justice system.”