All preparations are in place for the United States to attack Venezuela militarily. It’s no longer about psychological warfare, paranoia, exaggeration, or alarming metaphors. There are only a few days left until the first cannon fires in the land of Bolívar and the storm unleashes that will lead to hell for the nations. Colombia has also been hit by hurricanes. The far right is calling for the prosecution of President Petro and dreams of seeing him held in an American prison under any pretext.
Everything that happens in Venezuela will affect Colombia. The attack on Peter’s life and liberty would be felt throughout the continent. Last Thursday, U.S. Army Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the launch of Operation Southern Spear in an offensive against drug trafficking in Venezuela, Colombia, Cuba, and Mexico, a prelude to more difficult days for diplomacy. A severe test for democracy on the continent. A new international order is being rewritten with fire, sticks, and tariffs.
Secretary Hegseth’s statement is yet another in the US government’s upwardly mobile and inflammatory narrative, with President Trump waging a personal campaign to overthrow President Nicolas Maduro, the head of the drug-trafficking cartel. It is also a response to the call by rebel and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Colina Machado for foreign interference in her country. Only 20 years ago, Álvaro Uribe, under the pretext of militarily defeating the FARC, demanded the same of Colombia.
The declaration of war is also another step in the campaign to overthrow the democratic government of Gustavo Petro, which President Trump has accused without any evidence of allowing drug trafficking to grow in Colombia and punished him with unilateral measures such as revoking the country’s accreditation in the fight against drug trafficking, revoking visas to enter the United States and putting it on the Clinton candidate list. Petro is being punished for his independence in managing international relations, his condemnation of genocide in Gaza, his rejection of military aggression against Venezuela, and his refusal to lease border areas for that purpose.
The announcement of Operation Southern Lanza came just four days after the fourth summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States and the European Union (CELAC-EU) was held in Santa Marta, Colombia, in the Caribbean. The summit brought together nine heads of state, six vice presidents, 23 foreign ministers and other senior officials under the leadership of President Petro and European Council President António Costa. The leaders of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and Spain’s Pedro Sánchez, who ignored calls from the United States to disrupt the summit, were notable. After a day of deliberations, a 52-point communiqué negotiated over three months was issued as a clear message to Washington, China and Moscow, defending democracy, free elections, human rights, the legitimacy of multilateralism, international cooperation, sustainable development, respect for national self-determination, and rejection of “the threat or use of force, or any action inconsistent with international law and the Charter of the United Nations.”
The summit was held despite bets on failure by the US government, which wants to isolate Petro and reduce its international profile in a campaign to undermine Petro’s image and growing global leadership. There was a clear media onslaught to tell the story that the talks were a failure. Indeed, it was an event that galvanized Colombian diplomacy, allowing both regions to advance in building a new, more just international order and a peaceful world, and to confront the superpowers in a veiled manner.
The ideological debate in Santa Marta was shaken by the magazine’s publication. changea report reveals an artificial intelligence-generated photo in the hands of a White House adviser that shows Presidents Petro and Maduro wearing the orange jumpsuits of American prisoners. And it is clear that the author of the so-called “Trump Doctrine” is Bernie Moreno, a Republican congressman from Colombia, an ally of the Colombian Conservative Party.
The photo was an attack on Mr. Petro’s dignity, and he reacted forcefully on Sunday night at the Colombian state’s amnesty event for the victims of the UP massacre, committed between 1984 and 2002 by paramilitary groups, a corrupt political class, and corrupt members of the civil service. “And isn’t it the worst kind of violence to try to take a democratically elected president to prison in a foreign country, the United States? Because you would rather die in combat on a street corner than be a prisoner in a foreign country,” Petro said.
While neighborhoods are in flames, Colombia’s sovereignty is threatened, and the life and freedom of the president is in greater danger than ever before, the traditional political class talks about the presidential election as if the country is in a capsule, as if what happens outside doesn’t matter and as if the president’s life doesn’t matter to them. While they talk about coalitions and strategies, erect fences, conduct investigations, and new characters jump into the political debate, the far right searches for a narrative and candidate to defeat Petro.
The right thing to do is to hide what is happening in the Caribbean, minimize the threat, and convince public opinion that deporting, imprisoning, and killing Mr. Maduro, and in the process Mr. Petro, is the necessary extreme solution, but it may not have great consequences. Denying a huge list of negative impacts on Colombia and the region. The aim is ultimately to capitalize on the return to power of a vengeful ideology in which fear of Trump aligns with and worships the superpowers, overrides culminating government reforms and social progress, and prioritizes war.
What is clear so far is that the discourse of the democratic left, supported by Petro’s work, has transformed the Historical Concordat into the country’s first political organization, transformed the traditional historical parties into a minority, and forced César Gaviria, Álvaro Uribe, Andres Pastrana, Germán Vargas Lleras, and a long list of the ideological minor names and surnames, to form a coalition government. Pose for a photo. Meanwhile, the left has demonstrated in opinion polls that it is connected with the majority of its supporters, winning 2.7 million votes in an unusual election and predicting a passage to the second round and eventual victory.
How are they going to defeat the left from the right? I see the answer. It is to resort to old formulas calling for foreign military intervention, to annihilate left-wing presidents such as Allende, Roldos and Torrijos, and to impose a new era of far-right governments that obey, do not seek, do and blindly obey their continental masters. There is no doubt that removing Petro from political committees is a key way for the right to return to power and talk about defending democracy, while Colombia slides deeper into further hatred, polarization, new wars, and the plundering of freedoms. The gunpowder is ready and a new social tinderbox is about to explode on the continent.
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