Colombia’s foreign policy at the service of dictatorships and narco-states

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy)The surrender of Colombia to Nicolas Maduro, the dictator from Venezuela, is a most significant part of Petro’s strategy to be a part of the Castrochavist transnational organized crime system’s international relations. Facing a Maduro, sought by justice for narcotics’ trafficking (Los Soles Cartel), with a bounty of $15 million dollars for his capture, investigated by the International Criminal Court for “crimes against humanity”, a dictator who wields power through “State terrorism” in a “narco-State” that sustains terrorism and is a declared enemy of Colombia, Petro has subjected Colombia’s Foreign Policy to the dictatorships and narco-States of the 21st Century Socialism.

Ever since Hugo Chavez turned Venezuela into a dictatorship and used it as the source for the funding of Cuba’s dictatorship’s expansion with the greatest conspiracy against democracy in the Americas, the Republic of Colombia was seen as the main target to control and take-over. From then on, Colombia has been the target of the replication of Cuban attacks perpetrated in the 20th century through terrorist guerrillas and narcotics’ traffickers as the FARC, ELN, armed groups that it organized, trained, and sustains today from Venezuela.

It is apparent that Petro’s government’s agenda in international politics, is aimed to the subordination of Colombia to the leadership of Cuba’s dictatorship and the accelerated impoverishment of Colombians to add them to the millions of Venezuelans, Cubans, Nicaraguans, Bolivians, and Central Americans who now live in -or are close to- humanitarian crises. It is not that Petro seeks to become the leader of Latin America, quite to the contrary, because facts reveal that he is only replicating previously failed actions of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua’s dictators, and actions of the Para-Dictatorial governments of Fernandez/Kirchner in Argentina and Lopez-Obrador in Mexico, in narcotics’ trafficking and international politics, to coverup organized crime’s dictatorships.

In his inaugural speech, Petro proclaimed as the central theme of international politics “the failure of the war on drugs,” something he repeated at the 2022 United Nations’ Assembly. This narrative was birthed in the past century, during the decade of the 80’s with Fidel Castro who sought to coverup the first narco-State of the region that he had turned Cuba into through his partnership with narcotics’ traffickers Pablo Escobar from Colombia and Roberto Suarez from Bolivia, a fact that he attempted to further disguise with the execution by firing squads of his envoys General Arnaldo Ochoa and Colonel Tony De La Guardia. This false narrative was repeated by Chavez since 2003, by Juan Manuel Santos in 2014 and by Evo Morales at the U.N. in 2016.

The Castrochavist narrative of the failure of the war on drugs is their motion to legalize narcotics’ traffickers and make the narco-States they have built and operate in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua, legal. If narcotics’ trafficking is no longer a crime because the war on these crimes allegedly does not work, then narcotics’ traffickers such as the head of Venezuela’s regime and his “Los Soles Cartel” (all members of the dictatorship), members of the FARC and ELN in Colombia, the system’s chieftains and “capos” in Cuba, Bolivia, and Nicaragua, and members of Castrochavism -in general- are no longer criminals.

None of those who sustain the alleged failure of the war on drugs say that the part that does not work is the one that fell in the hands of the Heads of Narco-States and their accomplices and in the hands of those who have a vested interested in, or are benefitted by, any of the steps of narcotics’ trafficking. There is no way for Heads of Narco-States and their subordinates to fight against narcotics’ trafficking, as demonstrated in Bolivia with Morales and Arce, Ecuador with Correa, Venezuela with Chavez and Maduro, Cuba with the Castro’s and Diaz Canel, Mexico with Lopez Obrador, and yet to be seen Colombia with Petro.

Petro has just perpetrated Colombia’s unconditional surrender to the dictatorship and narco-State of Venezuela. He has traveled to the winner’s territory to tell Maduro that he has Colombia and its Foreign Affairs and to ask, from there, the governments of Latin America -willfully disregarding any mention of political prisoners, torture, violations of human rights- that the dictatorship that has created the greatest migratory crisis in the history of the region be treated as a normal subject of international law.

From a bilateral perspective, the visit did not help at all the serious situation at the Colombia-Venezuela border where organized crime operates and is sustained by Venezuela’s dictatorship. As 54 Venezuelan organizations had demanded, there is no mention about “the participation of the victims from indigenous organizations, human rights organizations, and Venezuelan environmentalists in the total peace process” which is Petro’s proposal “to negotiate with the armed groups that for years have caused violence and have bled the nation” and to turn this into “the State’s policy to include those communities with binding dialogues”.

*Attorney & Political Scientist. Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy.

Translation from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas