Jobs, Cash and Coffins: How Colombia’s Clans Win Elections

OVEJAS, Colombia—Juliana Escalante García has a standout resume for a budding politician: She has a master’s degree from a premier French university, speaks multiple languages and was a top aide to Colombia’s finance minister.

But what’s more likely to secure victory for her and dozens of other candidates in Sunday’s congressional election is their membership in rural family clans that have for decades run home districts like fiefs. Her family—and others like it in Colombia and across Latin America—have been mired in corruption...