Bogotá, Colombia – More than a year after senator Miguel Uribe Turbay was shot at a campaign rally in Bogotá, his family, friends and former teachers met on Wednesday, October 7 at the Cosmos Hotel in Bogota’s Chico III neighborhood, with 700 attendees.
President Abelardo de la Espriella made a surprise appearance at the event, and received the Center’s First Leadership Award.
“I am sure [Miguel] would have made a great president, and I told him when I visited him at the hospital. In the midst of my presidential aspirations, I said ‘If Miguel stands up from that bed, I will come out, campaign for him, and abandon my campaign,’” the president said.
Speakers also included Harvard public policy professor David King, Colombian Tourism Minister Mauricio Gomez Amin, and the late senator’s sister, Maria Carolina Hoyos, and father, Miguel Uribe Londoño.
“The principles that inspire this Center are relevant far beyond Colombia. For the Center, and for Miguel, courageous leadership is the ability to understand the risks, prepare meticulously to face them, and act when one’s purpose demands it,” said King, who taught Uribe Turbay at the Harvard Kennedy School while he completed his Masters in Public Administration in 2021-22.
King is also the director of Harvard’s bipartisan program for newly elected leaders of the U.S. Congress.
The professor structured Uribe Turbay’s legacy around five pillars: values, purpose, freedom and democracy, consistency and resolve, and solidarity.
A legacy turned in the classroom
The Center is led by Uribe Londoño and his wife, Delia Jaramillo. Its cofounders include Ramiro Avendaño, president of the television channel Canal 1, and its aim is to train young Colombians in values, public service and democratic principles.
According to Uribe Londoño – who goes by Miguel, the Father – the project began in the hospital.”For four days we prayed together, and that prayer became purpose,” he told the audience. The Center’s mission is to keep his purpose alive, to make sure his absence does not turn into oblivion, and that “no other family has to live through the pain we have lived.”
Uribe Turbay was the grandson of Julio César Turbay, president from 1978 to 1982. His mother, journalist Diana Turbay, was kidnapped in 1990 by drug lord Pablo Escobar to deter Colombia from signing an extradition agreement with the U.S., and then later killed during a botched rescue mission on January 25, 1991.
Uribe was five years old at the time of his mother’s kidnapping, and is survived by his son, Alejandro Uribe Tarazona, 5, his wife Maria Claudia Tarazona, and his step-daughters.
“Miguel didn’t die. Miguel was killed. He was killed for being brave, killed to try to silence all of us, to intimidate all of us,” said Avendaño. He further described the Center as a commitment “so that we don’t let ourselves be intimidated.”
Uribe Turbay was a presidential hopeful and former Senator who was shot on June 7, 2025 by a 14-year-old hitman as he was delivering a speech at a rally convened during the early days of Colombia’s presidential race.
De la Espriella ultimately won the electoral race on June 21, 2026.
The late senator was hit at least twice in the head and once in the leg, and died of his injuries on August 11, 2025, aged 39. His was the first killing of a Colombian presidential hopeful since 1990, when three candidates were assassinated during that year’s campaign.
“When I think of Miguel, the simplest things come to mind: that smile that made my days brighter, daily messages telling me ‘I love you, Dad’, how he took my hand when we were in a car together,” said Miguel the Father.
Following his son’s death, he ran for president under the Colombian Democratic Party, after clashes with his son’s Democratic Center party. He came in eighth place, with 0.12% of the vote, 28,657 votes.
He has now been appointed by De la Espriella as ambassador of Colombia to the UK.
An unresolved
Uribe Londoño announced the Center’s creation on August 27, 2026, saying it would be an ecosystem of leadership training for the next generation, which should, in his view, understand their leadership positions as social responsibility rather than a title.
“A courageous leader is someone who acts like Miguel Uribe Turbay: making difficult decisions in a way that remains defensible years later before the victims, before justice, and before history,” he said.
The Summit’s central panel, moderated by Uribe Turbay’s sister Maria Carolina, brought together Uribe Londoño, Tourism Minister Gómez Amín, and Gilda Pabón, president of financial firm Coltefinanciera.
They discussed what brave leadership means in practice; making hard decisions, holding to convictions even when they come at a cost, and rebuilding trust in a polarized country.
Uribe Turbay was one of former President Gustavo Petro’s staunchest critics, qualifying his Total Peace policy as a method of providing “total impunity” to criminals.
Read more: Abelardo de la Espriella begins to dismantle Colombia’s peace process
Wednesday’s event comes as the case over his murder continues in the courts. Prosecutors say the attack was ordered by FARC dissident group Segunda Marquetalia, which hired the teenage gunman.
Most recently, a judge sentenced Simeón Pérez Marroquín, who used the nom de guerre “El Viejo”, to over 22 years in prison after he accepted, through a plea deal, his role in organizing and coordinating the attack. Per the Attorney General’s Office, Pérez Marroquín acted as the intermediary between those who ordered the killing and the group that carried it out.
Prosecutors also say Pérez Marroquín tracked Uribe Turbay since March 2025, when the senator was watched and photographed at a meeting in southwest Bogotá.
The Center’s opening also comes as violence against community leaders in Colombia continues. The Ombudsman’s Office recorded 90 social leaders killed between January and July 2026, along with 77 massacres that left 300 people dead.
One of the most emotional moments came from actress Paola Turbay, Uribe Turbay’s cousin, as she recalled a message he had sent her just 24 hours before the attack, asking if he could call. “That call never happened, and it’s probably the missed call I’ve regretted the most in my life,” she said, holding back tears.
Featured image: President Abelardo de la Espriella (L) and Miguel Uribe Londoño (R) at the Summit for Brave Leadership
