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

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. 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. …