In an extended interview on Noticias Caracol’s analysis program La Clave, Ricardo Calderón, director of the network’s investigative unit, laid out the case that the secret 2022 overtures his team documented between the Petro government and the Clan del Golfo were not empty exploratory talk — because, he argued, nearly everything the government’s peace envoy promised the criminal organization in private is matched, line by line, by what the state then did in public. The interview arrives roughly a month before outgoing President Gustavo Petro hands the Casa de Nariño (presidential palace) to president-elect Abelardo de la Espriella on August 7, and it reframes what began as a Colombian political scandal as a matter that Calderón believes will ultimately be examined in the United States.

The reporting rests on recordings from a September 2, 2022 meeting — three weeks into Petro’s term — in which the government’s alto comisionado para la Paz (High Commissioner for Peace), Danilo Rueda, met Luis Armando Pérez, alias “Jerónimo,” a commander of the Clan del Golfo, formally the Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia (AGC). In the audio, Rueda offers a mutual military standstill he calls a game of “congelados” (freeze tag), a halt to aerial bombardments, a purge of military and police intelligence, and relief on extraditions, with no equivalent commitments recorded from the criminal side. Finance Colombia has tracked the failures of the paz total (total peace) strategy across the Petro term; what Calderón emphasized on La Clave is corroboration — the method by which his team tested whether the promises became policy.

The Method: Promises Checked Against the Public Record

Calderón described a verification process he said took roughly eight months and drew on more than twenty sources. Rather than publish the audio and let it speak for itself, the unit says it cross-checked each recorded commitment against the government’s own subsequent conduct, using official responses obtained through derechos de petición (right-to-petition requests) to the Ministry of Defense. 

“What we did was cross every sentence of the conversation with what actually happened in the following years,” Calderón said, describing the core of the exercise as confirming that “they were fulfilled.”

“There may eventually be favoritism shown to a terrorist and drug trafficking group here, and those are cases that will be taken there.” — Ricardo Calderón, director of the Noticias Caracol investigative unit

He also addressed authenticity directly, given the current climate of manipulated media, a concern sharpened by Petro’s claim that material recovered in a separate case had been fabricated with artificial intelligence. Calderón said the unit obtained original voice samples and commissioned forensic audio analysis (peritazgo) to confirm the speakers before publishing, a step he described as slow but essential. 

His team, he said, also consulted officials from prior peace processes and former intelligence directors to establish where the legitimate boundaries of each official’s role lay. They concluded that in the cases of both Rueda and the intelligence chief, “there are things that crossed the line.”

Promise by Promise, Matched to What Followed

On bombardments, the recording captures Rueda telling the Clan del Golfo emissaries he had spoken with the minister and that orders had been given to stop planned strikes in the group’s areas. Days after the meeting, then-Defense Minister Iván Velásquez publicly announced a halt to bombings where minors might be present. According to Ministry of Defense figures cited by Noticias Caracol, no aerial bombardment was carried out against the Clan del Golfo for roughly two years afterward; the first did not come until late 2024.

In the officer corps, Rueda presents a “cleanup” of intelligence as evidence of good faith. On August 12, 2022 — three weeks before the meeting — more than 35 generals were retired in the largest single command shakeup in recent Colombian history, and further removals followed, reaching roughly 40 senior officers. Calderón said the unit focused on three colonels named in the conversation because Jerónimo specifically asked for their removal: officers who had served in Operation Agamenón, the multi-year spearhead against the Clan del Golfo. 

Their strategic roles, and the systematic drawdown of elite units trained by United States and United Kingdom agencies to pursue the group, were confirmed against the record; Calderón described a gradual but permanent dismantling of “the most experienced units” fighting the Clan del Golfo and the dissident groups.

On intelligence itself, Rueda is heard reassuring the emissary that the government was “dismantling intelligence.” Calderón said the paper trail of command changes and unit disbandments tracked that statement. On extradition, which is historically the Colombian state’s most effective instrument against cartel leadership, the recording shows Rueda accepting the group’s concerns as something that “gets done,” a concession Calderón and his sources characterized as far outside the mandate of a peace commissioner.

The macro-level corroboration, Calderón argued, is what the Clan del Golfo did with the space it was given. Drawing on Ministry of Defense data, Noticias Caracol reported that between 2022 and 2025 the organization’s membership nearly tripled, from 4,061 to 9,915 fighters, while its municipal footprint more than doubled, from 145 to 338 municipalities, even as, in Calderón’s words, the group “did nothing on peace.” InSight Crime has documented the same pattern of criminal expansion under permissive conditions, and Finance Colombia’s editorial analysis concluded that total peace had produced total chaos.

Two Investigations, One Thread

Calderón described the reporting as having “two legs.” The first is the Rueda audio. The second grew out of a parallel inquiry into the Dirección Nacional de Inteligencia (National Intelligence Directorate, DNI), the successor to the disbanded DAS, after the unit obtained conversations involving its then-director, Jorge Lemus. 

That strand placed Lemus, who was accompanied by the DNI’s counterintelligence chief, Ricardo Rey Rosanía, in an August 2025 meeting in central Bogotá with Edward Ferney Rincón, an emerald trader (esmeraldero) and confessed former narcotrafficker known as alias “Boyaco Sinaloa.” 

President Gustavo Petro in New York joining rally for Palestine. Photo credit: Colombia Presidency.

According to the recordings, the officials asked Rincón to use his contacts in Congress to advance the ley de sometimiento (criminal-submission bill) that then-Justice Minister Eduardo Montealegre had filed in July 2025, and to help arrange direct contact with alias “Chiquito Malo,” the Clan del Golfo’s top commander. The common denominator across both investigations, three years apart, Calderón said, was the Clan del Golfo.

The DNI thread also cuts against one of Petro’s signature security narratives. In the recording, the intelligence director’s own interlocutor dismisses the existence of the so-called Junta del Narcotráfico (Narcotics Trafficking Board), the Dubai-based cartel “board” that Petro has repeatedly claimed wants to assassinate him. Calderón noted that no intelligence agency, police, or prosecutor has validated the alleged plot, yet the government assembled an organizational chart around it — a construction that, he said, its own sources contradicted.

From Obstruction to Terror-Support: Why the Venue Shifts to Washington

The escalation Calderón stressed is jurisdictional. The United States designates the Clan del Golfo as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, and the US State Department has offered reward money for the capture of its leaders. 

Dismantling US- and UK-trained interdiction units in a manner that Calderón says was intended to benefit that structure is, in his framing, more than possible obstruction. “There may be favoring of a terrorist and drug-trafficking organization here, and those are cases that will be handled over there,” he said, pointing to the US. 

The same exposure, he added, attaches to the treatment of the dissident groups. Washington’s interest is not abstract: the US Drug Enforcement Administration has already opened a probe of Petro himself for alleged cartel ties.

The Fiscalía’s Silence

Against that backdrop, Calderón pointed to the inaction of Colombia’s Fiscalía General de la Nación (Office of the Attorney General). He noted that when the unit published the “computers of Calarcá” — which were files tied to a dissident commander — in November 2025, the Fiscalía had already held the devices for more than a year and a half. 

Had prosecutors acted, he argued, some of the individuals later shown to have participated in the killings of social leaders might have been captured: “in colloquial terms, we could have saved lives.” 

On the current matter, he said, the Fiscalía opened a preliminary inquiry into Rueda only in early July 2026 — days before the interview, and more than a week after the audio was published. This is a sequence he said “leaves many questions” about the office’s role. That inquiry names four former officials — Rueda, Iván Velásquez, Jorge Lemus, and Ricardo Rey Rosanía — over the benefits allegedly offered to the Clan del Golfo, and was assigned to the unit of prosecutors delegated before the Supreme Court of Justice.

A Four-Year Pattern, and a Government About to Change

Calderón placed the recordings inside a longer series of disclosures over the Petro term: the Calarcá computers, the emergency-management chats, and other episodes pointing to opaque contacts between senior officials and armed structures. As many as 22 regional peace tables were opened, he noted, on promises resembling those in the audio. The pattern lands at a moment of maximum political consequence: Petro, himself a former member of the M-19 (Movimiento 19 de Abril) guerrilla movement before its 1990 demobilization, is weeks from handing power to a successor who has staked his mandate on the opposite approach.

De la Espriella, who won the June 21 runoff over senator Iván Cepeda with running mate José Manuel Restrepo, has already issued a communiqué urging the vice-president-elect to investigate the disclosures and, if warranted, to refer them to US authorities. In his victory address he vowed that “there will be no zones off-limits to the State” and “no organizations above the Constitution and the law,” and he has said Colombia will join a regional counter-crime initiative promoted by Washington. 

Security analysts expect the peace zones established under the Ley de Paz Total (Total Peace Law), which carry no legal permanence beyond the current government, to be revoked after the August 7 handover. Petro has spent his final months pressing to formalize Clan del Golfo concentration zones before he leaves office.

Rueda’s Defense

Rueda, who surfaced only after the first report aired, has maintained that the encounters were preliminary, exploratory approaches involving promises that, by his account, were never fulfilled, and that no presidential decision was ever taken to halt operations against the Clan del Golfo. Calderón’s rebuttal returns to the corroboration: the Ministry of Defense’s own statistics, he said, “prove otherwise.” Whether that gap between the recorded private commitments and the government’s public posture amounts to a crime is now, belatedly, before the Fiscalía — and, if Calderón is right about the US interest, may not stay in Colombia.

Primary reporting by the Noticias Caracol investigative unit, drawn from Ricardo Calderón’s interview on the program La Clave. Related Finance Colombia coverage: Editorial: Gustavo Petro’s Total Peace Has Led to Total Chaos in Colombia; Halfway Through His Term, Petro’s Total Peace Is Failing; InSight Crime: Colombian Criminal Groups Gaining Strength Under Petro; Petro Advances Temporary Concentration Zones for Clan del Golfo.

Headline image: Colombian government representative Álvaro Jiménez (left) shakes hands with Clan del Golfo spokesperson Luis Armando Pérez in the presence of Qatar’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Mohammed bin Abdulaziz bin Saleh Al-Khulaifi (center), in Doha on September 18, 2025, at the start of peace talks. Photo shared by Colombia’s Office of the High Commissioner for Peace

Colombia’s first-round presidential election, held Sunday, May 31, 2026, produced a result that crystallizes the country’s political exhaustion with both the governing left and the traditional right. Criminal defense attorney and political outsider Abelardo de la Espriella placed first with more than 10.3 million votes. Leftist Senator Iván Cepeda, a close ally of outgoing President Gustavo Petro and the lead architect of the administration’s Paz Total peace policy, finished second with just under 9.7 million votes. The two will face each other in a runoff election on June 21.

Senator Paloma Valencia, the candidate backed by former President Álvaro Uribe and the standard-bearer of his Uribismo movement, placed a distant third, receiving less than 7% of the vote — fewer than 1.7 million ballots. Former Medellín mayor and Antioquia governor Sergio Fajardo received just over one million votes, while former Bogotá mayor Claudia López finished below 1%, with approximately 225,000 votes. The remaining minor candidates combined for just over 1% of the total.

Under Colombia’s electoral system, the top two finishers advance to a runoff if no candidate surpasses 50% in the first round. The June 21 vote will determine who assumes the presidency on August 7.

Click above to watch the video!

The Candidates: Background and Context

Abelardo de la Espriella, 47, has never held elected office. He built a national profile over more than two decades as a high-profile defense attorney, founding De La Espriella Lawyers in 2002, with offices in Colombia and the United States. His client roster has included controversial figures: he represented Alex Saab, a Colombian-born businessman who became a close associate of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and was implicated in a scheme to launder proceeds from Venezuela’s food-assistance program, the Comité Local de Abastecimiento y Producción (CLAP). Saab was extradited to the United States, convicted, and later granted clemency before being re-arrested in Venezuela in early 2026. De la Espriella also represented members of the Nule family in connection with the Carrusel de Contratos — a major contracting scandal tied to infrastructure works at Bogotá’s El Dorado airport corridor. He has additionally been reported to have represented individuals linked to organized crime.

De la Espriella has drawn comparisons to figures such as US President Donald Trump and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele. His campaign has centered on hard-line security policy, including proposals for large-scale incarceration, expanded military operations against armed groups, and the rejection of negotiations with guerrilla organizations. He is reported to hold Italian and US citizenship in addition to his Colombian nationality, and is said to own property in Florida.

In a notable departure from his defense work, de la Espriella took the side of a victim in a high-profile acid-attack case, acting as a private prosecutor to secure a stronger sentence for the perpetrator — an episode that raised his public profile beyond the defense bar.

Iván Cepeda, 63, enters the runoff as the consolidated candidate of the Colombian left and Petro’s Pacto Histórico coalition. He is the primary legislative architect of Paz Total, the Petro administration’s policy of negotiating simultaneously with multiple armed actors, including the ELN and FARC dissident factions. Cepeda’s family background includes deep ties to the Colombian left: his father was secretary general of the Communist Party, and was assassinated. Cepeda himself studied in communist Bulgaria during the soviet era. The two finalists have an established legal and political history: Uribe attempted to bring criminal charges against Cepeda while both served in the Senate, but the Supreme Court determined that Uribe had fabricated the accusations and attempted to bribe witnesses — a case that resulted in Uribe’s criminal conviction.

“If nothing changes, Abelardo wins.” — Loren Moss, Finance Colombia

The Electoral Map

The geographic distribution of the vote reflects deep regional divisions. Cepeda carried Bogotá, which has trended left for years, particularly in lower-income districts on the city’s south and west sides. Antioquia — historically the heartland of Uribismo and home to Medellín, the country’s second-largest city — voted more than two to one for de la Espriella, a result that signals the weakening grip of Uribe’s movement even in its traditional stronghold.

The heart of coffee-growing country — the departments of Caldas, Risaralda, and Quindío also went to de la Espriella. Caquetá, a sparsely populated department in southern Colombia that has suffered sustained guerrilla violence from both the ELN and FARC dissident groups, voted for de la Espriella as well, a result we may interpret as a direct rejection of Petro and Cepeda’s Paz Total.

Cepeda carried Colombia’s Pacific coast, including the chronically neglected department of Chocó, as well as the sparsely populated Amazonas and Putumayo departments bordering Peru and Brazil, and the northern Caribbean coast. The Caribbean coast result is notable, as the region has historically suffered from underdevelopment, infrastructure deficits, and significant income inequality. Norte de Santander with its Catatumbo region on the Venezuelan border and experiencing severe armed-group activity — voted for de la Espriella, a result consistent with public exhaustion over security policy.

The Political Context: From Uribe to Petro and Beyond

Colombia’s current political trajectory is rooted in decisions made across the past two decades. President Uribe served two terms in the early 2000s and, together with then-Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, mounted a sustained military campaign against the FARC that significantly weakened the insurgency. Santos later broke from Uribe after assuming the presidency, governing independently and ultimately negotiating a peace agreement with the FARC — a deal that Uribe actively opposed. A plebiscite on the accord failed, but Santos used legislative maneuvering to implement it anyway.

Colombia 2026 1st round top two (Graphic: Sofi Imfeld for Finance Colombia)

Uribe’s next handpicked candidate, Iván Duque, won the 2018 election but finished his term with approximately 30% approval. Members of his own party publicly distanced themselves from him — Senator María Fernanda Cabal, a staunch Uribista, called Duque a “mamerto” (leftist idiot) while he was still in office. Under his administration, indicators on crime and guerrilla activity worsened, and armed groups including the ELN rebuilt operational capacity that had been degraded under Uribe and Santos.

Petro’s administration has not met initial fears of a Venezuelan-style democratic breakdown: Congress has largely blocked the most radical components of his agenda, including attempts to nationalize the private pension system and convert the healthcare system to a single-payer model. However, crime has increased, armed groups have expanded their operational footprints, and the security situation in several regions has worsened. Paz Total is widely seen as having produced few tangible results.

Uribe himself was convicted of witness tampering and attempted bribery in the case he had brought against Cepeda. Though released from house arrest after conviction, the judges who authorized his release are now reportedly under investigation for judicial corruption. Valencia’s poor performance in the first round — despite being Uribe’s chosen standard-bearer — suggests that Uribismo as a political force is waning, with its core constituency aging and new generations of voters disengaged from the Uribe legacy.

What to Expect Before June 21

Both campaigns will intensify mobilization efforts over the coming three weeks. Cepeda’s movement — Colombia Humana and the broader Pacto Histórico coalition — has historically relied on organized mobilizations, including indigenous community-led mingas, labor unions, and allied social movements. Cepeda’s running mate Senator Aida Quilcué is an indigenous activist, a choice expected to energize those constituencies. FECODE, the Federación Colombiana de Trabajadores de la Educación (Colombia’s main teachers’ federation), is expected to align officially with Cepeda, though individual teachers may not follow union leadership in their voting choices.

On the right, Paloma Valencia issued a public endorsement of de la Espriella immediately following the first-round results. Business community organizations, including ANDI (the Asociación Nacional de Empresarios de Colombia) and Fenalco (the Federación Nacional de Comerciantes), do not formally endorse candidates, but their members are widely understood to favor a government that supports private enterprise and market-oriented policy. De la Espriella holds no congressional constituency, meaning whichever candidate wins will face the same dynamic Petro encountered: a fragmented Congress that is likely to act as a check on executive authority.

The question of centrist voter alignment remains open. Fajardo and López are not expected to formally endorse either finalist, and the direction of their combined approximately 1.2 million votes is uncertain.

Winners and Losers by Sector

For international investors and executives operating in Colombia, the policy differences between the two candidates are substantive across several key sectors.

Petroleum and Natural Gas: De la Espriella has stated unequivocally that he will restart petroleum exploration and licensing, which the Petro administration blocked. Ecopetrol S.A. (NYSE: EC; BVC: ECOPETROL), Colombia’s state-controlled oil company, which also holds producing assets in the US Permian Basin and Gulf of Mexico, has operated under a government that halted new drilling permits. The consequences have included a decline in future production capacity at a time when global oil prices have risen due to Middle East tensions. Colombia has been forced to import natural gas at elevated prices to meet existing domestic demand — including from transportation fleets that were converted to natural gas under government incentive programs. Cepeda would be expected to continue or deepen current restrictions on fossil fuel expansion.

Healthcare: The Petro-Cepeda platform favors a government single-payer model. The administration has already taken over several Entidades Promotoras de Salud (EPS) — Colombia’s managed-care intermediaries — placing the healthcare system in legal and financial uncertainty. Private clinics, hospitals, and physicians who wish to operate outside a government-controlled framework would benefit from a de la Espriella administration. Cepeda’s healthcare agenda would accelerate the shift toward government-managed care.

BPO, Tech, and Call Centers: The BPO sector — which provides large volumes of formal employment, particularly in Medellín, Bogotá, Cali, and Barranquilla — was significantly affected by Petro-era minimum wage increases of 16% and 23% in successive years. These increases created contract renegotiation pressures with international clients, some of whom have shifted or considered shifting operations to competing jurisdictions including Honduras, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Guatemala. At the CX Summit, the industry’s main annual event held in Cartagena, the son of Álvaro Uribe appeared as an invited keynote speaker — a gesture that could be interpreted within the industry as an implicit signal of political alignment. A de la Espriella government, with its orientation toward labor market deregulation and reduced regulatory burden, would be viewed more favorably by this sector. Current Colombian labor law prohibits part-time employment contracts and places significant restrictions on dual employment, making workforce flexibility difficult for businesses that operate outside traditional 40-hour weekly structures.

Mining: The Petro administration has been less aggressive toward mining than toward petroleum, but sector participants expect a more permissive regulatory environment under de la Espriella, and continued constraints under Cepeda.

Security and Tourism: Both candidates have stated support for tourism promotion, but the sector’s trajectory is more directly linked to security conditions. Under current policies, several regions that were accessible to domestic and international travelers several years ago have experienced increased armed-group activity, effectively closing them to tourism. A de la Espriella administration is expected to pursue a more aggressive military posture toward the ELN and FARC dissident factions; a Cepeda government would likely continue dialogue-first approaches. The outcome will directly affect which parts of Colombia’s territory remain accessible to investment and tourism.

Foreign Relations: A de la Espriella government is expected to restore a broadly cooperative relationship with the United States, which deteriorated under Petro following several high-profile diplomatic incidents. De la Espriella has expressed admiration for US President Donald Trump, and reports indicate he holds US citizenship and owns property in Florida. Relations with Ecuador, which have been strained by mutual tariff escalations between Petro and Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa, would be expected to normalize. Relations with Venezuela under Cepeda would likely continue along the current allied trajectory, while a de la Espriella government would be expected to take a more critical posture toward Caracas. China and Russia would find a more receptive diplomatic environment under Cepeda, and a cooler one under de la Espriella.

The Poor and Informal Workers: Cepeda’s campaign argues that minimum wage increases and expanded state services benefit lower-income Colombians. Critics counter that elevated formal labor costs have pushed more employment into the informal sector — which currently accounts for approximately half the Colombian workforce — depriving those workers of pension contributions, health benefits, and job security. De la Espriella’s platform, which emphasizes business formation, security, and labor market deregulation, would be presented as generating more formal-sector job creation. The actual distributional effects of either approach remain contested.

The Outlook

Assuming current polling trends hold and Uribista voters consolidate behind de la Espriella as expected following Valencia’s endorsement, de la Espriella enters the runoff as the frontrunner. Cepeda’s path to victory depends on driving high turnout among his base, securing support from centrist voters who did not vote for either finalist in the first round, and potentially benefiting from any missteps by de la Espriella in the final three weeks of campaigning.

The first-round results produced no major electoral violence. The ELN announced a temporary halt to armed actions during the voting period. Authorities detained some individuals reportedly attempting to purchase votes in rural areas, but no large-scale incidents were recorded.

The incoming president will face a Congress with no natural majority aligned to the executive, a healthcare system in partial administrative disarray, a petroleum sector whose future production trajectory is in question, and regions where state presence remains contested by armed groups. The June 21 runoff will determine which vision — market-oriented restructuring or continuation of the Petro project — Colombia pursues for the next four years.

In a written statement, Trump said:

“In Colombia, coca cultivation and cocaine production have surged to all-time records under President Gustavo Petro, and his failed attempts to seek accommodations with narco-terrorist groups only exacerbated the crisis.  Under President Petro’s leadership, coca cultivation and cocaine production have reached record highs while Colombia’s government failed to meet even its own vastly reduced coca eradication goals, undermining years of mutually beneficial cooperation between our two countries against narco-terrorists.  For this reason, I have designated Colombia as having failed demonstrably to meet its drug control obligations. Colombia’s security institutions and municipal authorities continue to show skill and courage in confronting terrorist and criminal groups, and the United States values the service and sacrifice of their dedicated public servants across all levels of government.  The failure of Colombia to meet its drug control obligations over the past year rests solely with its political leadership.  I will consider changing this designation if Colombia’s government takes more aggressive action to eradicate coca and reduce cocaine production and trafficking, as well as hold those producing, trafficking, and benefiting from the production of cocaine responsible, including through improved cooperation with the United States to bring the leaders of Colombian criminal organizations to justice.”

The US State Department on social media directly blamed Gustavo Petro for the failures, but also noted that the US government issued a 1-year waiver, meaning bilateral cooperation, and almost half a billion USD in security and antinarcotics aid to Colombia will not end immediately. One year from now, Colombia will have a new president, as Petro’s term comes to an end August 7^th, 2026.

The decertification puts half a billion dollars of US security aid to Colombia at risk. Mafia & insurgent groups have flourished during the government of Gustavo Petro.

“Under Petro’s misguided leadership, coca cultivation & cocaine production in Colombia has increased to historic levels…President Trump “has determined that the Colombian government failed to uphold its drug control obligations, but he has issued a waiver so critical US cooperation, including on counter-narcotics, can continue. Results matter – we must see progress and it must be soon!” the State Department tweeted.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro ran on a presidential campaign promising “total peace” and pledging programs that would replace coca production with other food crops, increasing Colombia’s agricultural exports. What has happened, however, is the reverse. Narco-insurgent groups such as FARC dissident mafias, communist rebels ELN, and the Clan del Golfo (Gulf Clan) mafia are all resurgent and taking over territory from government control. Over the weekend, narco-insurgents bombed an electrical tower in Medellin, and this just a few weeks after a massive truck bomb killed over 19 in Cali, Colombia’s third largest city. Under the Petro administration, cocaine production has surpassed levels seen during the days of the cartels and Pablo Escobar.

Petro, a former member of the M-19 guerilla group himself, has made statements defending cocaine, calling it “no worse than whisky,” and in April, his own former foreign minister Alvaro Leyva publicly accused him of being a drug addict.

“It was in Paris where I was able to confirm that you had a problem with drug addiction. But what could I do? Surely, I was not up to the task. I should have reached out, helped, intervened. I carry the regret of not having tried to lend a hand. The truth is, you never recovered. That is the reality,” said Leyva.

A defiant Gustavo Petro refused to accept any responsibility and said that the Trump administration’s decision demonstrates that US policy has failed.

Petro’s own Interior Minister, Armando Benedetti, is an admitted recovering drug addict.

Last night, a defiant Petro blamed the US and defended his administration’s efforts, saying that the move would end Colombia’s dependence on the United States, and cited the government’s recent cocaine seizures, without mentioning the skyrocketing production during his Council of Ministers meeting.

“You begin with a factual lie. Coca crop growth has occurred during (Iván) Duque’s administration, and with forced fumigation. It is U.S. policy that has failed. To reduce coca leaf cultivation, what is needed is not glyphosate dropped from airplanes, but a decrease in demand for cocaine, primarily from the U.S. and Europe,” said Petro in response to the US State Department statement.

Former Colombian President Ernesto Samper, whose administration also experienced decertification, and whose 1994 campaign was partially financed by the Cali Cartel drug lords, assured that decertification was “not the end of the world.” The former president added that “we must once again demand that consumer countries like the United States and many in Europe fulfill their commitment to reducing drug demand, precisely at a time when consumption of plant-based drugs has declined and the devastating effects of synthetic drugs like fentanyl and other narcotics we don’t produce are being felt.”

Samper stated that the decision to decertify Colombia in its fight against drugs “is illegal, political, and regressive.” He explained that it is “illegal because no country is authorized to impose unilateral sanctions on another country or its nationals. Only the United Nations can do so under established circumstances and in justified cases of necessity,” and it is political “because it has always been used to punish countries considered “enemies” of the United States. The worst right-wing dictatorships have benefited from the non-application of decertification, while our country, which has paid high human and institutional costs, is decertified every time the Colombian government appears as an “enemy” of the United States government.”

Paisa politicians blame Petro

Not all Colombian politicians are defending Petro. Medellín’s mayor Federico “Fico” Gutierrez, who returned from the US on his own diplomatic missive to meet with US officials  in direct defiance of Petro’s orders not to go, issued a statement damning the Colombian President:

“Colombia is being decertified by the United States in the fight against drugs. It was to be expected. Petro sided with the worst criminals. They are the only ones who have won under this disastrous government. During our visit to Washington last week, our position was to ask that Colombia not be decertified. And if it were to happen, we asked that support for our public forces in the fight against drug trafficking not be withheld, nor that the trade on which millions of jobs depend in Medellín and throughout Colombia be affected. Indeed, our agenda in Washington was successful in defending Colombia. Although Colombia is decertified, it leaves the door open for support for our public forces and expressly highlights the recognition that the United States gives to our public forces and mayors: *“Colombia’s security institutions and municipal authorities continue to demonstrate skill and courage in confronting terrorist and criminal groups, and the United States values ​​the service and sacrifice of its dedicated public servants at all levels of government.”* (see photo) In the midst of all this, we would have solutions as a country. But seeing Petro’s absurd statements, his intention is for Colombia to lose this opportunity and for us to be plunged into chaos. It is very evident that this is what he wants and has sought all along: to be left alone and remain in power. All the more reason we remain steadfast in the defense of Colombia and our people. We pull Colombia forward from the regions.” (below video)

Colombia es descertificada por Estados Unidos en la lucha contra las drogas. Era de esperarse. Petro se puso fue del lado de los peores criminales. Son los únicos que han ganado con este nefasto gobierno.
En nuestra visita a Washington de la semana pasada, nuestra posición fue… pic.twitter.com/2qEIBTpTGU

— Fico Gutiérrez (@FicoGutierrez) September 16, 2025

The Governor of Antioquia, Andrés Julián Rendón, also had a scathing rebuke for his own president. Antioquia is the Colombian department where Medellín is capital and is home to much of Colombia’s economic activity. Rendón tweeted:

“Regarding the decertification of Colombia, the Government of @petrogustavo – It’s a snapshot of the failure of “total peace,” of temporizing with criminals, of dealing with them in a friendly way while they destroy the country and Colombians. – Now, the Petro government should stop playing the victim coming up with resentful, outdated, anti-US rhetoric. The President is reaping his own harvest of incompetence and failure: he sided with the criminals. The world and the US are paying him back. – Antioquia is the first victim: flooded in a sea of ​​cocaine by a weak government that ties up soldiers and police to prevent action. The criminals win, and we Antioqueños lose. Drugs, drugs, and more drugs to poison our youth and to enrich and strengthen the criminals. – Aerial spraying was the most successful tool in the past: effective in eradication, it protected our soldiers and police. It must be reactivated. Tomorrow will be too late! It’s been proven: more cocaine seizures are not proof of greater effectiveness in the fight against drug trafficking; rather, they are the ultimate proof of a historic peak in production. We’ve gone back more than 20 years, but fortunately, this government has only months left. In Antioquia, despite intimidation and judicial persecution, we will continue working to defend the interests of my fellow citizens, adhering to the Constitution and appealing to the courage of soldiers and police. In our government, we understand peace as the rule of law, security, justice, and social opportunity. We will remain there, even if our lives and freedom are at risk.

Sobre la decertificación a Colombia, al Gobierno de @petrogustavo:

– Es una radiografía del fracaso de la paz total, de contemporizar con criminales, de tratarlos por las buenas mientras acaban con el país y los colombianos.

– Ahora que el Gobierno Petro no se haga la víctima… pic.twitter.com/OygRV29NER

— Andrés Julián (@AndresJRendonC) September 16, 2025

Business calls for cooler heads to prevail

Amcham Colombia, the binational Colombian-American chamber of commerce based in Bogotá and made up of both Colombian and US businesses involved in bilateral trade, issued a statement lamenting the decision, while also calling for the Colombian President to do more to save the relationship.

“AmCham Colombia firmly and respectfully calls on the National Government to urgently present and implement a roadmap with achievable and verifiable goals that demonstrate political will and substantial improvements in crop eradication, production and trafficking reduction, judicial cooperation, and the financial dismantling of criminal organizations. Only then can the country request reconsideration of the designation in the next cycle and maintain assistance within the national interest of the United States.

Respectfully, AmCham Colombia invites the United States Government to recognize the progress in interdiction and seizures and to consider announcing the resumption of spraying when appropriate and under the safeguards of the Constitutional Court, complemented by alternative development and a comprehensive state presence. These signals should contribute to avoiding measures that affect trade, tourism, and investment between the two countries.”

🇺🇲🇨🇴 #Descertificación con interés nacional@AmChamCol hace un llamado firme y respetuoso al Gobierno Nacional para presentar y ejecutar con urgencia una hoja de ruta con metas alcanzables y verificables que evidencie voluntad política y una mejora sustancial en: erradicación… pic.twitter.com/qDer8SKYFl

— Maria Claudia Lacouture (@mclacouture) September 16, 2025

Above image: Gustavo Petro during his council of ministers meeting where he defended his administration and blamed Trump for his country’s decertification. Photo credit: Ovidio González – Presidencyof The Republic

Uribe Turbay was later transferred to a better equipped hospital in the north of Bogotá where he underwent cranial surgery due to the gravity of his wounds. As of Sunday morning, June 8^th, Uribe’s surgery was successful, though he remains in critical condition. The CTI, Colombia’s equivalent of the FBI, and DIJIN, the national police’s investigative unit, have possession of the youth’s phone and are analyzing messages and contacts.

The following day, Sunday, June 8th, thousands took to the streets in major Colombian cities in solidarity with Uribe Turbay, expressing not necessarily support of his particular candidacy, but rejection of political violence.

Uribe is a “pre-candidate” for Colombia’s presidential elections next May. Pre-candidates are competing within their respective political parties to become the party’s official candidate for the upcoming elections. Other pre-candidates may bypass the party endorsement system by collecting enough signatures to appear on the ballot.

Uribe Turbay belongs to the Centro Democratico political party, controlled by former President Alvaro Uribe, though the two are not related. Uribe Turbay is the son of journalist Diana Consuelo Turbay Quintero, who in 1991 was kidnapped by Pablo Escobar’s Medellín Cartel in 1991 and died in their custody during a failed rescue attempt. In turn, Diana Turbay was the daughter of Julio César Turbay Ayala, who was president of Colombia from 1978 to 1982.

#ATENCIÓN. Se conoce un video que deja ver el momento cuando el congresista Miguel Uribe Turbay recibe los impactos de bala mientras daba un discurso en un parque del b/Modelia.

En desarrollo… https://t.co/HAlu4typX7 pic.twitter.com/d612iyMl37

— Colombia Oscura (@ColombiaOscura_) June 7, 2025

During Julio César Turbay Ayala’s administration, the M-19 rebel group attacked the Dominican embassy in Bogotá, holding several ambassadors hostage, including those from the US, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Israel, and Peru. Colombia’s current leftist President Gustavo Petro was a member of the now-disbanded M-19 guerillas.

Political repercussions

Colombia is in a state of high political tensions, as the leftist president Gustavo Petro, a former armed guerilla, is in the process of attempting to bypass the system of checks and balances and hold a referendum on his labor reforms. The labor reform bill failed to pass congress, and the referendum itself also failed to pass congress, but he is insisting on moving forward with the measure, provoking a constitutional crisis.

Miguel Uribe and his Centro Democratico party have been opponents of the president’s populist agenda, as have several other major political parties, and even a number of the president’s former ministers.

President Petro condemned the assassination attempt and ordered an investigation into Uribe Turbay’s security detail. The government is offering a reward of up to approximately $780,000 USD for information on the perpetrators. All other presidential candidates condemned the attempt and denounced the plague of political violence and common criminality that Colombia suffers from.

Supporters of Petro had called for public marches in support of the president’s proposed reforms for this Wednesday, June 11. This assassination attempt ratchets up tensions, as it recalls “El Bogotazo,” the riots and burning of Bogotá in 1948 after the assassination of presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán. The assassination and the repercussions, against the context of political violence between the two main political parties—Liberals and Conservatives—of that time, were ingredients in the rise of communist armed insurgencies during the 1960s of the FARC, ELN, and EPL, and as a response, vigilante groups like the AUC, which later morphed into common mafias.

Who might want Uribe Turbay dead?

• Narcotics mafias – Uribe Turbay’s mother was a victim of Pablo Escobar’s mafia and died when he was just a toddler. He may be expected to crack down hard on these criminal organizations if elected, unlike the current administration of Gustavo Petro, who has through his policies, given them space to regroup and rebuild.
• Left-wing militants – Uribe Turbay belongs to the right-wing (despite the name) Centro Democrático political party, led by former President Alvaro Uribe, which takes a hard-line eradication policy against leftist groups like the ELN and the dissident remnants of the FARC after the 2016 peace accords. Alvaro Uribe has accumulated many political enemies, and not just left-wing ideologues. Still, the leftist militants, like the mafias, have been given space under the current administration to reorganize and strengthen their presence in Colombia. They could expect Uribe Turbay and his partisans to work to eradicate these groups once and for all.
• Current government – very unlikely, as political assassination is not a traditional modus operandi of Colombian governments. And there is no clear benefit the current administration would have by Uribe Turbay’s death. If anything, large segments of the population will blame the current administration, so such a move would not bring them any benefit, especially at the early pre-candidacy stage, where should Uribe Turbay die, it will not prevent a strong opposition candidate from emerging.
• Right-wing rivals – very unlikely, though conspiracy theories are circulating that he was either sacrificed for the effect it would have (sympathy vote), or to move a strong competitor aside for the many rivals that want to represent the opposition. At this time, without evidence, Finance Colombia discounts these theories as wild conjecture, but the thread is worth following.
• Unknown personal beef – This is surprisingly frequent, where an action that appears politically motivated, is actually to settle scores of a personal or business matter, and unrelated to political ideology or ambition. Again, unlikely, but possible.

Witness photo of a car bloodied from the senator’s wounds as rescuers struggled to render first aid.

Continue to follow Finance Colombia for updates on Miguel Uribe Turbay and the situation as it evolves.

Headline photo: Presidential candidate and Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay with his wife, Maria Claudia Tarazona. (source: social media)

🇨🇴 | Presidente colombiano Gustavo Petro:

“La cocaína es ilegal porque se fabrica en América Latina, no porque sea peor que el whisky”.
pic.twitter.com/wrL0oswxKJ

— Alerta News 24 (@AlertaNews24) February 5, 2025

These statements align with Petro’s longstanding criticism of the US-led war on drugs, which he deems ineffective. He has previously advocated for rethinking drug policies, emphasizing treatment and prevention over militarized approaches. In a 2024 address to the United Nations, Petro called for removing the coca leaf and cannabis from prohibitive regulations, citing the rise of synthetic drugs like fentanyl as a more pressing concern. 

Gustavo Petro: “Cocaine is illegal because it is made in Latin America, not because it is worse than whiskey.”

Analysis

“Cocaine is illegal because it is made in Latin America, not because it is worse than whiskey,” said the president, a former leftist M-19 guerilla. The statement, saying that it is illegal because it is made in Latin America is nonsensical, because so many other products are made in Latin America and not illegal—rum, cachaça, Colombian aguardiente, Mexican tequila, pisco, wines from Chile, México and Argentina, etc. With the United States as Colombia’s largest import customer, “because it’s made in Latin America” proves incoherent.

Petro suggested selling the deadly poison freely: “The business could be easily dismantled if cocaine were legalized worldwide. It would sell like wine,” he said, suggesting that the resources generated could be allocated to prevention programs to avoid consumption by minors. Oblivious to the fact that making the drug, which hijacks the brain’s dopamine neuroreceptor system, would lead to thousands, if not millions of additional deaths.

Click on the screen above for the entire video of the polemic cabinet meeting. [Spanish]

Context

The discussion occurs amid escalating tensions between Colombia and the United States regarding drug policy. The US has historically advocated for strict drug prohibition and has pressured Colombia to maintain aggressive anti-narcotics measures. Petro’s administration has shifted focus from forced eradication of coca crops, promising voluntary substitution and rural development programs, aiming to address the root causes of illicit cultivation.

However, many former combatants who signed Colombia’s historic 2016 peace agreement have taken to the streets this month to protest the governments failure to deliver on those development programs and other social commitments. The narco-insurgent groups that these former combatants belonged to were in most cases, integral members of the narcotics supply chain.

Petro promised “Total Peace”  when elected, though during his administration, Colombia’s security—especially in rural areas and remote towns, has worsened.  The narco-insurgent groups like the ELN and dissident remnants of the former FARC currently battling in the Catatumbo region of the Norte de Santander department have made a mockery of the president’s peace promises. These very groups are fighting over a key area known for coca production, coca being the bush that produces the leaves later processed into cocaine.

Colombia remains the world’s largest producer of cocaine, with production reaching record levels during the Petro administration. The debate over legalization touches on issues of public health, international relations, and the effectiveness of longstanding drug policies. As discussions continue, the Colombian government faces the challenge of balancing domestic priorities with international expectations.

Petro began his public life in the late 1970’s as a member of the M‑19, the bloodthirsty urban guerrilla group that—among its many acts of terrorism— stormed the Ministry of Justice in November of 1985, held its magistrates and hundreds of employees as hostages, and ultimately caused the violent death of 111 people.

In 1994, a mere two years after the M‑19’s final official amnesty, which coincided broadly with the introduction of a new constitution in 1991, Petro—then a congressman—invited Hugo Chávez to Bogota, where he hosted him for over a week. At the time, Chávez himself had been recently amnestied, having been sentenced for leading a failed and bloody coup attempt in Caracas in 1992.

Reflecting on his time with Chávez in the Colombian capital, Petro said: “We found an ideological understanding in the fight against corruption and in the Bolivarian discourse.”

This editorial originally ran April 19 in the Cato Institute Blog. It is generously shared under a Creative Commons license. The original can be read here.

Chávez became president of Venezuela in 1999. By 2003, Petro was boasting to a Colombian magazine, which described him as “one of Chávez’s closest advisors on the new model being implemented in Venezuela,” about the country’s change of tack. “We are in a transitional stage,” Petro said, “from a neoliberal model to one that I would call ‘neo‐​populism.’”

Eventually, under Chávez’s price and currency controls, food and basic goods in Venezuela became scarce. So too did Petro’s public statements about the Chavista model. “Neo‐​populism,” it turned out, had been a euphemism for old‐​fashioned socialism. And Petro tried to distance himself from the consequences that he had helped bring about. While running for president in March of 2010, he tweeted:

“We are socialists of the 21^st century and Chávez is a 20^th century socialist. I don’t expropriate the workers’ property.”

But Petro later deleted said tweet.

When Chávez died in 2013, Petro, who was then the mayor of Bogota, attended his funeral in Caracas. At the time, Petro claimed that Chávez had been “a great Latin American leader.” On Twitter, he posted a photograph of a supermarket shelf full of goods, adding a denial that food was scarce in Venezuela, as it had already been for some time.

During his stay in Caracas, Petro spoke to Telesur, Venezuela’s state‐​run media agency, of his initial encounter with Chávez. According to the Bogota mayoralty’s website, Petro said that, in 1994, he and Chávez had sworn to carry out “a Bolivarian integration” of Latin America. “We pledged to fight for that goal,” he said.

Nonetheless, in the run‐​up to the 2018 presidential election, which Petro lost, he once again tried to downplay his close ties to Chavismo. Petro continually claimed that, since he opposed all future oil exploration in Colombia, his economic policies had nothing to do with Chávez’s model for Venezuela, which was oil‐​dependent.

Petro’s radical, even apocalyptic, environmentalist rhetoric helped him to win the 2022 election. His not too subtle pivot from traditional statist to climate change alarmist went largely unopposed. Petro’s political rivals, the news media, and center‐​left opinion leaders meekly allowed him to change the axis of political debate.

It fell to a foreign journalist, Mexico’s Jorge Ramos, to provide the only memorable exception. In a 2018 CNN interview, Ramos asked Petro whether he thought that Chávez had been a dictator. After eluding the question for around 40 seconds, Petro said: “I think that international politics is sharply divided by the issue of climate change.” The following exchange ensued:

Ramos: “No, no, no. Was Hugo Chávez a dictator or not, Mr. Petro? […] We can talk afterwards about climate change if you would like.”

Petro: “Hugo Chávez was elected by the people several times.”

Ramos: “Do you think that Chávez was a dictator?”

Petro: “I think that there was no doubt about his elections according to the information I have.”

Ramos: “But you have not answered me whether Chávez was a dictator or not. [Ramos proceeds to quote Petro’s 2013 tweet praising Chávez as a great leader]A great Latin American leader? He had political prisoners, caused many deaths, censored and controlled all news media. Is that a great political leader?”

Petro: “I think that Chávez died and, since his death, a part of Venezuela admires him and another part does not admire him.”

Ramos: “But you, Mr. Petro […] Many Colombians fear that you will do the same.”

Petro: “I cannot do the same for two fundamental reasons. First, because what I propose for Colombia is to separate the economy from oil and coal….”

Ramos: “But you have not wanted to answer me. It is very simple. For you, was Chávez a dictator or not?”

Petro: “I think that he was elected by the people.”

Petro eventually admitted—with an evident lack of conviction in his body language—that the Venezuelan regime had become authoritarian, but only under Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro, and that Cuba’s statist economy harmed democracy. But Ramos’s pushback had exposed his rhetorical tactic: to claim that Venezuela’s economic and humanitarian collapse was not due to Chávez’s socialist policies, which Petro had celebrated and promoted, but rather to the primacy of the country’s oil industry.

Hence, Petro claimed that his center‐​right opponents, who did not intend to shut down oil exploration and production in the country, were the true proponents of Chavismo in Colombia. Not Petro himself, the one Colombian politician who had helped to bolster Chávez’s power in Venezuela.

Petro got away with his sophistry. Also with his claim that, despite earlier statements about the supposed need to change the constitution, he did not plan to summon a constitutional assembly if elected, as Chávez had done in Venezuela in 1999. Thus, leading politicians and opinion leaders of the center‐​left allowed themselves to be convinced that Petro was a democrat and, as such, represented no menace to Colombia’s republican institutions. In other words, Petro was no Chávez. Nor was Colombia, South America’s longest‐​running democratic republic, as institutionally weak as Venezuela had been when Chávez took over.

A pillar of this theory was the formidable opposition that Petro could face from Congress, where Petro’s party did not hold a majority. But this overlooked the longstanding Colombian tradition of a pro‐​government Congress, whose members are always susceptible to the patronage of a powerful presidency.

Indeed, as Petro was preparing for his inauguration, he formed a coalition not only with the center‐​left Green Party. It also came to include the Liberal Party, a member of the Socialist International since the 1990’s, the nominally center‐​right Party of National Unity, and even the Conservative Party. The formidable opposition theory collapsed even before Petro was sworn into office.

By November of 2022, Petro’s coalition had already approved a tax law that raised rates on formal sector employees and businesses, reinstated a national wealth tax, introduced a sugar tax (which falls most heavily upon the poorest in society), and forbade mining companies from deducting royalty payments from their income taxes. Petro’s “tax reform” really meant hefty tax increases (although this was already the norm in Colombia well before Petro came to power).

More recently Petro has garnered support from the Liberal Party and from Conservative senators for his sabotage of the private pension system. Petro aims to end workers’ ability to choose between the private and public pension alternatives for their mandatory retirement savings; the private system consists of individual retirement accounts, whereas the public version is an unsustainable, pay‐​as‐​you‐​go system that is subsidized through the national budget. Workers in the formal sector are currently free to choose between both models. Petro seeks to force all workers into the state‐​run system, leaving private funds as a voluntary alternative for those earning over three times the minimum wage.

Liberal and Conservative politicians are supporting Petro’s statist pension scheme despite their parties’ official exit from the government. Petro’s original, “National Agreement” government only lasted until the first half of of 2023, when it dawned on the political class that Petro truly intended—as he had said all along— to uproot private sector involvement in the healthcare sector.

Last March, Congress refused to approve Petro’s bid to expand state control of the healthcare system at the expense of private health insurance companies. Petro’s government responded by taking control of the administration of one of the largest private insurance companies, which manages the health funds of 5.7 million members. Petro also announced that it was time to summon an extralegal constitutional assembly since Congress could not “rise to the challenge” of implementing his agenda in full.

When it came to healthcare, the opposition finally became formidable. And Petro moved to make it futile. Analysts had failed to consider that, when push came to shove, Petro did not intend to respect constitutional protocols.

While the current constitution allows the creation of a new constitutional assembly, it requires both chambers of Congress to vote in favor by a majority, followed by the approval of the Constitutional Court and a majority of voters in a plebiscite, after which an election to choose the assembly members must take place. But Petro says that none of these requirements are necessary to change the constitution.

Petro argues that the “constituted” power that emerged in 1991 has been corrupted, while the “constituent” power is “the people,” which he claims to represent. “The constituent power is not summoned,” he said in an interview. “It is the people, which summons itself to decide the country’s fundamental questions. That is the constituent power.”

Petro has hinted that “the people” will express their support for a new constitution through a series of cabildos or town hall meetings that the government will summon across the country.

He thus claims that he can bypass Congress, the courts, and the need for a legal plebiscite to usher in a new constitution. Its pillars, Petro says, should include “the struggle against climate change” and “the decarbonization of the economy.” This implies a constitutional mandate for Petro’s ongoing war against Colombia’s hydrocarbon industry. Petro’s constitution also would include “a monetary policy that prioritizes employment and production.” That is, a takeover of the nominally independent central bank.

Petro’s attempt to create a new, statist constitution is reminiscent of Hugo Chávez’s own methods, replicated by Latin America’s “21^st Century Socialists” Rafael Correa in Ecuador and Evo Morales in Bolivia. Like Petro, who implies that Colombia’s 1991 constitution is obsolete, Chávez affirmed that the Venezuelan constitution was “moribund” when he was sworn in as president.

But even Chávez’s opponents admitted that, in 1999, his constitutional convention “began as a democratic process that in its origins did not involve the rupture of the previous political regime.” Petro, on the other hand, is attempting a full rupture with the established order. He aims to bypass all existing checks and balances to his power.

Petro’s plan is more akin to Nicolás Maduro’s spurious constitutional assembly of 2017, which nullified the power of the National Assembly, where the opposition held a majority since its victory in the election of December, 2015. In that sense, the commentators who still claim that Petro is no Chávez are correct, albeit for none of the reasons they put forth (such as the strength of Colombian institutions).

Rather, Petro’s contempt for the rule of law is arguably greater than that of Chávez during the initial stages of his rule. Then again, whereas Chávez sought to conceal his true intentions during his campaign for the presidency in 1998, Petro campaigned while offering Chavista recipes openly. There were, for instance, his threat to expropriate specific companies, his ambiguity on his intention to change the constitution, and his defense of Marxist doctrine, such as the labor theory of value.

In 2022, a small majority of Colombian voters acted against their better judgment and allowed Petro to hold power. A large majority is now firmly opposed to his government. The question is whether the republic itself will withstand Petro’s imminent constitutional onslaught.

President Petro wrote on his Twitter account: “I wish my son luck and strength. May these events build his character, and may he reflect on his mistakes…As a person and father, it hurts to see so much self-destruction.” 

When the scandal was brought into the open last March, Petro distanced himself from his son, claiming not to have raised him and disavowed knowledge of his actions in a news interview. Daysuris Vásquez at the time accused Nicolás Petro of receiving narcotrafficking money during his father’s political campaign on Colombia’s Caribbean coast last year.

The arrest results from charges leveled by Nicolas Petro’s ex-wife, who accused him of taking narcotics money in the name of his father’s campaign, then keeping the cash for himself.

According to President Petro, he was an active insurgent, hiding and fighting in the ranks of the guerrilla group M-19 (an acronym for the 19th of April Movement), which kept him away from his son, as he explained in the interview to Cambio.

Along with Nicolás Petro’s detention, the Attorney General’s Office stated through a press release that Daysuris Vásquez was indicted for money laundering and personal data violations in actions that occurred since 2022. 

The ex wife of Petro’s oldest son affirmed that he received the illicit campaign funds but did not hand it over to the campaign team, and instead he squandered it on luxury goods. In the most serious allegations against him, she assured that the resources were provided by the well-known drug lord, Samuel Santander Lopesierra, who goes by the nickname “Marlboro Man.”

Vásquez attested that the delinquent allegedly donated $124,000 USD to Petro’s campaign. Santander Lopesierra was incarcerated in a US jail for 18 years after being convicted of drug trafficking. Meanwhle, Gustavo Petro has repeatedly denied any kind of illegitimate connection.

Guido Hurtado, a researcher and political analyst in Cali, in the southwest of Colombia, a region that heavily favored Petro’s presidential election, sought to defend the Petro family, opining to Finance Colombia that “it is undoubtedly a political persecution but adjusted to the law. They disguised behind the law’s actuation that government pursuit. They do not apply the law this way to all the people.”

On the other hand, the same prosecutor’s office has active charges against Uribe protegé and former Vice President Oscar Ivan Zuluaga, and it was Nicolas Petro’s own ex-wife who first denounced him for the alleged corruption with which he is charged. Furthermore, President Petro himself demanded an investigation into any wrongdoing by his son. It was this very investigation that led to today’s charges.

Nicolás Petro and his resumé of controversies

The first wife of Gustavo Petro, Katia Burgos, is the mother of the president ‘s eldest son, Nicolás Petro Burgos. Nicolas studied law at the Pontificia Universidad Bolivariana and later obtained a master’s degree in climate change from an Ibero-American university, and a master’s degree in government and public management for Latin America at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain. He lived several years in Barranquilla (Atlántico Department’s capital), one of the bigger cities in the north of Colombia.

Likewise, he pursued the political career of his father and ran for the governorship of Atlántico in 2018, being defeated by Elsa Noguera, which led —thanks to the opposition statute— to his occupying a seat in the Department’s Assembly —in practice, a collegial body that functions as a regional congress.

The dauphin has been in the eye of the storm several times. On January 5, 2023, Musa Abraham Besaile Flórez, son of a former senator who is being prosecuted for parapolitics —politicians who had secret ties with illegal armed groups that operated as private armies and fought the guerrilla troops—published a photo on his social networks together with Petro Burgos. At the time, he was showered with criticism for his questionable alliances.

Nicolas Petro was also sanctioned in December 2022 by the National Electoral Council (CNE) after two years of investigation for possible irregularities in the campaign to reach the governorship of Atlántico. And a sentence was imposed on him that forced Petro Burgos to pay a fine of approximately $3,800 USD.

Above photo: (l-r) Nicolas Petro, Day Vasquez, Gustavo Petro (photo: Petro presidential campaign)

Colombia has changed since then. The establishment is now made up of left‐​wing academics, woke journalists or “influencer” celebrities, public sector grandees, and career politicians. One mantra that binds these subsectors together is that the country’s heavily interventionist economy, which ranks 92^nd in the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World index, is a “neoliberal” outpost in dire need of even more taxes, regulations, and welfare handouts. Another is that the only way to deal with Cuba‐​backed, communist insurgents is to tremble before the bearded, cocaine‐​dealing Kalashnikov‐​wielders and offer them generous amnesties.

The establishment is now made up of left‐​wing academics, woke journalists or “influencer” celebrities, public sector grandees, and career politicians.

The last came in 2016, when the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia’s (FARC) killers were granted 10 unelected seats in Congress. Since 2018, they have carried out their parliamentary duties as middle‐​aged legislators with taxpayer‐​funded SUV’s and expanding waistlines. They sit alongside elected yet otherwise indistinguishable specimens. Even guerrilla group membership has become a semi‐​formalized part of the cursus honorum.

As such, Petro, an amnestied member of the M‑19 guerrilla group who has held some type of government post for well over 30 years, is pure neo‐​establishment. His admiration for Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, whom he advised, still spooked a part of the Keynesian technocracy, as did his intentions to end all exploration of oil, Colombia’s main legal export, expropriate all private pension accounts, and print money to pay for subsidy schemes. But he still managed to woo a former “neoliberal” finance minister, several ex‐​members of the central bank’s board, and other sacred cows of the technocrat class.

Petro’s rival was Rodolfo Hernandez, a 77‐​year‐​old construction magnate who was a one‐​term mayor of a medium‐​sized city and a neophyte on the national stage. He became a true threat to established politicians and mandarins alike with his popular pledge to cut all wasteful spending, a revolutionary stance by Colombian political standards. He even threatened to make congressmen pay for their gas guzzlers and mobile phone plans out of their own pockets. This blunt, petit bourgeois businessman simply could not be allowed to win.

Colombian Professor Daniel Raisbeck is a policy analyst on Latin America at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity.

On Sunday, Petro claimed that he owed his victory to the young and to oppressed minorities. However, what likely drove him over the finish line—he beat Hernandez by a mere 700,000 votes—was the support of well‐​oiled, often corrupt political machines, whose bosses sought to protect their guaranteed slices of the annual budget or regional bureaucratic fiefdoms.

Both bien pensants and political machine operators seem to bet that they somehow can curb Petro’s more fanatical tendencies. Some commentators claim that Congress, where his party does not hold a majority, can resist Petro’s push for autocracy, and that the central bank will be able to maintain its independence. Others interpret his promise to “develop” Colombian capitalism during his victory speech as a sign of moderation.

I remain a skeptic, not least due to my personal dealings with Petro in online debates—he once wrote to me to defend the labor theory of value—and during his mayorship of Bogota, when, arbitrarily, he attempted to shut down the city’s 25 very successful charter schools due to ideological posturing and pressure from the local teachers’ union. Which is to say, I believe he can cajole or bribe sufficient congressmen in order to form a majority. He might even try a hostile takeover of the central bank.

I am Colombian and certainly don’t want Petro to pull off what his allies did in Cuba and Venezuela, whose tyrants profusely congratulated him yesterday as, perhaps shockingly to some in Washington, Bogota likely drifts toward the Havana‐​Caracas‐​Managua axis. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the more prosperous, urban, multiple degree‐​holding types who supported Petro thinking he was some sort of Nordic social democrat live to regret it.

This article is generously shared with Finance Colombia by The Cato Institute under the Creative Commons license. The original article can be found here.

Also read:

• The Reason Foundation’s Daniel Raisbeck On What Peru’s Election Can Tell Us About Economic Liberty In Colombia & Latin America

• A Candid Conversation With Bogotá’s Libertarian Candidate For Mayor

Headline image: Twitter @petrogustavo

Gustavo Petro has been serving in Colombia’s senate after losing the 2018 presidential elections to current President Ivan Duque. Earlier, Petro served as the mayor of Bogotá, and in his youth, was a member of the M-19 guerilla group. Vice President-elect Francia Marquez is a social activist known for her fight both for feminist issues and against mining interests.

Rodolfo Hernandez is a successful real estate developer and one-time mayor of the city of Bucaramanga who ran on an anti-corruption platform. His running mate, Marelen Castillo is a vice rector of a prominent Catholic university in Colombia.

Finance Colombia presents immediate post-election analysis in video and podcast format.

Petro, who is praised by his friends for his “solid Marxist foundation,” plans to ban all exploration of oil, Colombia’s main export, to expropriate the nearly $100 billion that are now saved in individual, private pension accounts, and to print money to pay for public spending, à la next‐​door Venezuela.

The polls correctly predicted that Petro, a former mayor of the capital city of Bogota (2012–2015), would win the first round of voting, held last Sunday, by a wide margin. However, they failed to foresee that his opponent in a run‐​off would be the unpredictable, unorthodox Rodolfo Hernández, a 77‐​year‐​old construction magnate whose only recent political foray was his mayorship of Bucaramanga, a medium‐​sized city of 600,000 inhabitants in northeastern Colombia.

The austere Hernández, who unexpectedly came in second place with 28 percent of the vote compared to Petro’s 40 percent, addressed his followers via Facebook Live from his kitchen table. He now leads the polls.

Colombian Professor Daniel Raisbeck is a policy analyst on Latin America at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity.

Petro, a skilled demagogue, had recognized Hernández’s own demagogic abilities early on, inviting him to enter an alliance in which Petro, of course, would be the leader. Hernández had other ideas. Still, Petro only began to attack him during the last two weeks as a “corrupt millionaire” and a supposed “uribista,” that is, a follower of disgraced former president Álvaro Uribe. The latter’s party did not even field a candidate in the election.

Petro, who is running on an agenda of “change,” regularly denounces Colombia’s “oligarchy,” unleashing fury against the political class. The irony is that he now faces a rival who makes him look like a routine establishment pencil‐​pusher. After all, Petro has spent eight years as a senator, eleven as a representative in the lower chamber of Congress, two as city councilman in the town of Zipaquirá, and two more as First Secretary of the Colombian embassy in Brussels. Not to mention his three extravagant presidential campaigns. Comically, his allies now claim that Petro is an experienced “statesman,” just when 60 percent of voters rejected his agenda for being recklessly statist.

If Hernández wins the presidency on June 19th, Colombia will have kept clear of Chávez‐​inspired socialism yet again, which is not to say that Hernández, an interventionist, will implement a classical liberal agenda. As Spanish economist Juan Ramón Rallo argues, Hernández’s program contains the heavy doses of social democracy and mercantilism that are common in Colombia’s politics.

For its part, the New York Times is already branding Hernández Colombia’s Donald Trump for “his fuzzy orange hair and his businessman’s approach to politics.” But the comparison fails to consider his fiscal conservatism, which he demonstrated as mayor of Bucaramanga. Hernández also supports individual liberties and is a poignant critic of the drug war, a stance that could trigger a positive change in the country’s relations with the United States. Nor are there signs that Hernández would meddle with the constitution to prolong his stay in power, as Petro has often hinted he would do.

The impact of Hernández’s coarse style reflects citizens’ deep concerns. The country’s class of often foreign‐​trained technocrats—among them current president Iván Duque, Uribe’s protégé—is about to hand over an indebted economy with double‐​digit unemployment, chronically high levels of informal employment, a sharply devalued currency, and a renewed inflation problem. Frustration with the mandarins and professional politicians of all stripes could send a self‐​made builder, unknown until recently, to the presidency. The current demand for change, it seems, was much stronger than Petro anticipated.

This article is generously shared with Finance Colombia by The Cato Institute under the Creative Commons license. The original article can be found here.

Also read:

• The Reason Foundation’s Daniel Raisbeck On What Peru’s Election Can Tell Us About Economic Liberty In Colombia & Latin America

• A Candid Conversation With Bogotá’s Libertarian Candidate For Mayor