Miguel Uribe Turbay, the provident presidential candidate whose brilliant political career truncated a murder

Miguel Uribe Turbay, grandson of former president Julio César Turbay and son of journalist Diana Turbay, grew marked by the violence that snatched her mother’s life and forged in him a strong vocation of public service.

Catholic convinced, defender of life and energetic critic of the causes that, in his opinion, threatened the future of Colombia, became one of the most visible young voices of national politics.

His passage through the Council of Bogotá, the candidacy for mayor and his work in the Senate reflected the commitment of a man who made the defense of life, security and justice the meaning of his career.

That trajectory was brutally interrupted on August 11, 2025, when he died two months after being shot during a campaign act, tragically and prematurely closing the story of a leader with presidential future.

On June 7, Miguel Uribe received two shots in the head and one in the leg in the Bogota neighborhood of Modelia, where he carried out a political activity as part of his campaign as a candidate. Minutes later, the hitman committed by the attack, which turned out to be a minor.

So far four more people have been captured, but it has not yet found the intellectual author of the attack. The Prosecutor’s Office continues to handle several hypotheses, and although one is the possible implication of the second Marquetalia – part of the Dissidencies of the FARC – no armed group has attributed the magnicide.

A shocked society

The death of the Senator of the Democratic Center Party has strongly hit Colombian society, who already suffered the magnicides of political leaders such as Jorge Eliécer Gaitán (1948), Rodrigo Lara Bonilla (1984), Luis Carlos Galán Sarmiento (1989), Bernardo Jaramillo Ossa (1990) and Carlos Pizarro Leongómez (1990).

Miguel Uribe was born in Bogotá on January 28, 1986. He was grandson of former president Julio César Turbay and son of the journalist Diana Turbay, who was kidnapped and killed by the Medellín poster on January 25, 1991, in an attempt to avoid an agreement between the United States and Colombia to extradite drug traffickers.

Diana Turbay died at age 41, when Miguel was 4 years old, a fact that has increased shock in the country, since the candidate of the Democratic Center has died at age 39, leaving her son Alejandro, 4 years old.

As indicated The website of Uribe Turbay, the circumstances in which his mother died forged in him “a firm conviction of fighting violence and narcoterrorism, and inspired him to dedicate his life to public service.”

At the same time, on the family, his care fell to the father, Miguel Uribe Londoño, and in his “grandmother Nydia Quintero de Balcázar, founder of the Solidarity Organization for Colombia”.

Miguel Uribe’s political career began in 2012 when he was elected councilor of Bogotá by the Liberal Party. In 2019 he tempted the City Hall, although without success. However, he already stood out as one of the young figures of Colombian politics and was elected senator by the Democratic Center in 2022, being a strong critic of the government of President Gustavo Petro.

Likewise, in 2016 he married María Claudia Tarazona, with whom she had little Alejandro, and assumed the paternal role of the three daughters that his wife has of a previous relationship.

Miguel Uribe and Catholicism

Those who knew him affirm that Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay was a Catholic, a faith that was instilled in the family and that he was reflected during the more than two months that the candidate spent interned in the Santa Fe Foundation.

In addition to the visit of the archbishop of Bogotá, Cardinal Luis José Ruedio Aparicio, during the first days A Maronite priest He entered the senator’s room to administer the holy oils and place a relic of San Charbel on his body.

To this would be added masses and prayers of the Rosary on the outskirts of the foundation attended by family members.

His grandfather, former president Turbay, was the son of an immigrant from Lebanon, where the Maronite Catholic rite and devotion to San Charbel come.

The faith has been the support of the Uribe Turbay family and his wife María Claudia, as he expressed in his account of X every time he asked Christ for a miracle that took out his husband from the critical state in which he had stayed following the shooting.

His position in favor of life

Just as he struggled for the security and peace of Colombians, Miguel Uribe also participated in the initiatives in favor of the defense of life, as in the convention of 2024.

“He was very clear about the issue of being against abortion,” recalls Jesús Magaña, director of the United Citizen Platform for Life.

Speaking to ACI Prensa, he said that Miguel Uribe contacted this citizen platform when he was a candidate for mayor of Bogotá and signed the pact for life, “which is a document that we prepare precisely for the candidates, so that they commit themselves to the fact that, if they get to win, they promote public policies that defend and promote life.”

While Uribe did not win, contact with united for life was maintained. “With him we were talking a lot. He advanced a lot in his conception about the need for the defense of life from the moment of conception,” said Jesús Magaña.

When he nominated the Senate, Uribe Turbay once again signed the pact for life and entered the provida bench once he was chosen for the 2022-2026 period.

During the electoral campaign, Uribe He affirmed to the newspaper El Tiempo that I did not agree with abortion, because “there are many other possibilities to give opportunities to families.”

On child teenage pregnancy, the Catholic politician said that the State must support minors “to finish their schools or university. We also need responsible parents and an adoption campaigns.”

“He was closely linked to the Provida bench,” said Magaña, “supporting the initiatives to defeat projects in favor of abortion and euthanasia that sank in Congress for the action of the province bench.”

He also supported the bills presented to defend life and motherhood.

“He was a man who lived with great passion and with great intensity his political vocation, which was gradually understood and more and more the importance of the province struggle and who committed himself in all the measures of his possibilities with her,” he added.

The Provida leader recalled that he had a meeting with the senator days before the fateful attack in the Modelia neighborhood.

In that meeting, Miguel Uribe talked about his presidential candidacy. Magaña, meanwhile, spoke to him about the demographic winter that comes over Colombia due to the decline in birth.

“Miguel was super interested. He understood the seriousness of things when I told him that we were in 1.6 children per fertile woman, when we should be in 2.2 per woman, and that we approached dangerously to the figure of 1.3 children per woman, a figure that means that there is a position of no return of the country, which only solves with a great migration or immigration,” he said.

He indicated that Senator Uribe “summoned his campaign team to start working a proposal that would be included in his program” and that would implement if he arrived at the government.

“We can say that he was a man whose commitment to life was growing, increasingly passionate, more and more in love with Colombia, his future, his childhood, of children to be born,” he added.