How Colombia’s President Reached an Uneasy Détente with Donald Trump
Earlier than the current name, Petro’s contact with Trump got here largely within the type of trash speak on-line. “From the primary day of Trump’s authorities, there was by no means any communication with us,” he informed me. “If two Presidents don’t talk, the governments fill that vacuum with one other drive.” Firstly of Trump’s second time period, the U.S. deported Colombian nationals in shackles on army planes, and Petro prohibited the plane from touchdown in Colombia. In a Twitter alternate that stretched on for many of a day, Trump ranted at Petro and threatened sharp tariffs on Colombian exports, whereas Petro likened himself to a rebellious, doomed hero of Gabriel García Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude.”
Petro lastly assented, after a number of former Colombian Presidents provided to assist easy issues over, and the connection calmed down. However the episode prefigured Trump’s dealings with leaders of different nations, from Canada to Panama. “I assumed all of the Presidents have been going to do the identical,” Petro mentioned, recalling his preliminary defiance. As an alternative, they largely selected to appease the U.S.
The current name took place on the urging of Senator Rand Paul, of Kentucky. The timing was not auspicious. The night time earlier than, Petro had gone on X to reject accusations that he was concerned in narcotrafficking, writing, “The title that Trump assigns me as an outlaw of the drug commerce is a mirrored image of his senile mind.” However Petro informed me that Trump had struck a light-weight tone once they spoke. “He didn’t need to become involved in substantive discussions,” he mentioned. “He merely needed to construct communication.” When Petro insisted that the accusations of his involvement within the drug commerce have been false, Trump was solicitous: “He mentioned, ‘You’re surrounded by lies, identical to me.’ ”
Affinity will go solely to this point. Within the forthcoming assembly in Washington, Trump is prone to insist that Colombia supply coöperation on immigration and pure sources, two areas during which he and Petro have strikingly totally different views. In Petro’s telling, right-wing politicians all through the world have cynically used immigration as a wedge situation. “The worry of foreigners is similar as what existed in Germany relating to the Jews,” he mentioned. “What it generates are far-right political proposals,” which “come up from worry and lies.”
An attendee seems on on the rally in Bogotá, on January seventh.
Trump can be prone to demand that Petro and Delcy Rodríguez tackle the Ejército de Liberación Nacional, Colombia’s largest guerrilla group. The E.L.N. controls a lot of the border between the 2 international locations, along with massive parts of Venezuela’s inside—together with the realm the place its precious minerals are concentrated. The E.L.N. operated with Maduro’s approval, and is believed to have allies within the Venezuelan safety forces. Trump’s intervention is unlikely to succeed until the E.L.N. will be introduced underneath management.
Petro informed me that he needed to supply Trump a deal. “I’m going to suggest the alliance you need, however on the premise of fresh vitality,” he mentioned. He recalled writing to Trump a while in the past, proposing a “Pact of the Americas” to assist remedy environmental crises. Petro didn’t suppose that Trump learn the letter, however he nonetheless hoped to make a persuasive pitch. “We’d push the local weather disaster additional again,” he mentioned. “It will be a service to humanity.” If that failed, he mentioned, he would emphasize that he and Trump have been aligned towards narco gangs: “You don’t have a greater warrior in Colombia towards drug trafficking than me. Thirty-five per cent of the Senate ended up in jail because of me. I denounced the mafias that ruled Colombia.”
It was not misplaced on Petro that Trump has withdrawn from each international initiative on local weather change and conservation. “Trump’s imaginative and prescient is to grab oil, seize coal,” he mentioned. He recommended that it was an inevitable impact of capitalist consumption. “The concept of personal property has led them to suppose that oil and every thing underground belongs to the landowner,” he mentioned. “That doesn’t exist in Latin America. And when Trump says, ‘We took the oil,’ ‘They stole our oil,’ and so forth., these are phrases which can be steeped in that tradition.”
He recommended that the U.S. was dismantling the worldwide system out of tension. “When the US begins to worry shedding international management to China, the desperation to regulate coal and oil reserves will increase exponentially,” he informed me. In Venezuela, the place China is the most important purchaser of oil, the competitors between the 2 superpowers had change into strikingly direct. If it wasn’t dealt with fastidiously, Petro mentioned, “a world struggle will get away.”
