The white elephant in the Colombian Senate

“El elefante en la habitación” is the Spanish phrase corresponding to the Italian “l’elefante nella stanza”: an obvious problem that people prefer to pretend does not exist, to avoid further disruption. “El elefante blanco” is another phrase that translates similar expressions in English and French into Spanish, referring to something that has cost a great deal but is of no real use. In Colombia, the new Senate was sworn in; amongst the 102 elected members were 69 men, 32 women and, indeed, a white elephant. In reality, he was a man too, but dressed in a white stuffed elephant costume with a prominent belly, which caused him some difficulty moving around the chamber. That had been the costume and identity with which 34-year-old Luis Carlos Rúa had campaigned and been elected, with 124,000 votes. He was one of the candidates with the most votes.

 

Yet, just three days before the vote, he revealed his identity. He was, however, an influencer who was already very well known, having racked up hundreds of thousands of views over the past five years by denouncing on social media a host of extremely costly and useless public works – some of which had even been abandoned. In short, white elephants.  “It was spectacular because nothing like it had ever happened anywhere else in the world,” said Rúa. “No senator had ever taken their seat in that way.” From subsequent sessions onwards, he began to dress normally, but he wanted to make a splash with his debut.

 

In 2019, Rúa was working for the local council in Pereira, a city with a population of nearly 500,000, situated some 330 kilometres from Bogotá. He reported that, during that period, he witnessed the administration putting pressure on staff to secure votes for a particular candidate. Rúa recorded a conversation, leaked it to the press and was forced to leave the city after receiving death threats. He then moved to Medellín and decided to continue speaking out against injustices, but anonymously because “here in Colombia, if you don’t do things the way the corrupt want you to, you’re not welcome”. He therefore commissioned an illustrator to design the elephant, had it made by a seamstress, put it on, and in November 2021 posted his first video, exposing an unfinished road.

Since then, he has created dozens of them, on bridges, in schools, in tunnels and in hospitals. All narrated in a distorted voice, and sometimes showing Elefante Blanco making his way through the mud or wading through the murky water that stains his white plush costume. That’s why Rúa always keeps a spare one to hand. “It’s terribly hot inside, but I have to do it anyway because I go to places where the state doesn’t go,” he says. To fund his work, he has taken on freelance jobs, sold Elefante Blanco soft toys and run crowdfunding campaigns, but the situation had become unsustainable, and in the end he decided to stand for election so that he could continue with a senator’s salary.

“Revealing my face just three days before the election gave me the time I needed to ensure my safety,” he explained. One of his first proposals is now a bill that would oblige local councils to allocate specific funds for repairing potholes. The law would be named after his father, Darío Rúa, who died in 2024 at the age of 85 following a fall on a road full of potholes.

 

The senator stated that he had cast a blank ballot in the presidential run-off between the left-wing senator Iván Cepeda and the right-wing millionaire lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella, who won. “I am neither left-wing, right-wing nor centrist. I am independent,” he explained. However, his was one of 58 votes in favour – with 30 against – of De la Espriella’s proposal to move Friday’s presidential inauguration ceremony from Bogotá to Cali, 450 kilometres away. To those who criticised him for having now endorsed precisely the sort of waste he used to denounce, he replied that he wanted to send “a signal of the state’s presence in a historically neglected region” and that, even with the change of venue, the inauguration would cost less than the one held when the left-wing President Gustavo Petro took office in 2022. In any case, he will also turn up at the presidential swearing-in ceremony dressed as a white elephant.