[News] Trump attacks Colombia, and it pushes back: 'We are not a colony'!

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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<https://geopoliticaleconomy.substack.com/p/trump-colombia-gustavo-petro-colonialism?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=457596&post_id=155837833&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=lvppb&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email>
Trump attacks Colombia, and it pushes back: 'We are not a colony'!
Ben Norton
January 27, 2025
------------------------------
<https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4c8b1fbe-2450-4b1c-9ad4-103ae389e663_1920x1080.jpeg>

Donald Trump has kicked off his second administration with a very
aggressive foreign policy.

Trump is threatening trade restrictions and sanctions on countries around
the world, including 100% tariffs on BRICS countries, which now represent
55% of the world population
<https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2025/01/19/brics-expands-population-nigeria-africa/>
.

The US president wants to colonize Greenland
<https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2025/01/23/trump-expand-us-territory-manifest-destiny/>.
He also vowed to take over the Panama Canal.

Invoking "Manifest Destiny", Trump is even attacking Canada and Mexico, the
two largest trading partners of the United States.

When Trump selected neoconservative hawk Marco Rubio as his secretary of
state, it was a sign that he would be focusing his attention on Latin
America, seeking to impose US hegemony in the region -- and in particular
to prevent China from having close relations with Latin America.

During Trump's first administration, Rubio called for the US military to
invade Venezuela, to overthrow the government of President Nicolás Maduro.

Rubio likewise wants to impose even heavier sanctions on Cuba, Nicaragua,
and other independent leftist governments in Latin America.

In the first week that Trump returned to the White House, one of the
nations that he targeted was Colombia.

Historically, Colombia had been one of the closest US allies in the region.
Venezuela's revolutionary President Hugo Chávez famously dubbed Colombia
"the Israel of Latin America". He argued that, just as Israel serves as an
extension of US hegemony
<https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/11/12/why-us-support-israel-geopolitics-michael-hudson/>
in West Asia, acting as an "unsinkable aircraft carrier" for the US empire,
Colombia plays the same role in Latin America, as a base of operations that
Washington has used to try to destabilize other countries in the region.

Colombia's right-wing, pro-US President Juan Manuel Santos said he was
proud that his country was called "the Israel of Latin America”
<https://www.haaretz.com/2013-06-16/ty-article/.premium/proud-to-be-the-israel-of-latin-america/0000017f-f7a0-d318-afff-f7e337760000>
.

However, the geopolitical situation changed quite dramatically in 2022,
when the people of Colombia elected their first ever left-wing president,
Gustavo Petro.

Ever since he came to office, the US government has meddled in Colombia's
internal affairs and sought to destabilize him.

Marco Rubio has waged a kind of political war against Petro, fixating on
his past as a guerrilla in a revolutionary leftist organization, claiming
that he "has put Colombia’s security and stability at risk
<https://x.com/SenMarcoRubio/status/1791144373163270448>”.

Rubio has aggressively aimed to cut off Latin America's relations with
China, which has become the largest trading partner of South America, and
the number one trading partner of Latin America as a whole, excluding
Mexico.

In 2023, Petro visited Beijing, where Colombia and China elevated their
relations to the level of a “strategic partnership”. Rubio wrote in outrage
on Twitter that "Petro’s new 'Strategic Partnership' with the Chinese
Communist Party will leave Colombia hostage
<https://x.com/SenMarcoRubio/status/1717541604041400699> to their
authoritarian grip".

Rubio was especially furious when Colombia cut off its diplomatic relations
with Israel, with Petro comparing Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler and
accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.

Angrily denouncing "President Petro’s anti-Israel rhetoric
<https://x.com/SenMarcoRubio/status/1785762616280805831> and shameful
stance", Rubio claimed, "As a far-left Marxist, Petro continues to serve as
a spokesperson for criminal thugs
<https://x.com/SenMarcoRubio/status/1711809352850374941>, who are viciously
killing innocent Israelis".

The Trump administration has revived the colonialist Monroe Doctrine
<https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2022/02/08/matt-gaetz-monroe-doctrine-argentina-threat-china/>,
essentially claiming that Latin America is the imperial "backyard" of the
United States. Washington wants to prevent the region from having an
independent foreign policy.

On 26 January, Trump announced that he would impose sanctions on Colombia,
along with initial tariffs of 25%, which would increase to 50% in the
following week.

Trump wrote that he would levy "Visa Sanctions on all Party Members, Family
Members, and Supporters of the Colombian Government".

This attack came after Petro condemned the Trump administration
<https://x.com/petrogustavo/status/1883434963057729650> for brutalizing
immigrants and deporting them to Latin America on military planes in
inhumane conditions <https://x.com/ICNDigital/status/1883522867951710334/>,
with handcuffs on their hands and feet.

"We have never refused to accept migrants and we have tried to stop
migration", Petro explained. "The stupid [US] blockade of Venezuela was
what unleashed millions of migrants into the US".

"But do not demand that I accept deportees from the US, handcuffed and on
military aircraft", the Colombian president added. "We are not a colony
<https://x.com/petrogustavo/status/1883630564064080339> of anyone".

Petro responded to Trump's 25% tariffs on Colombian goods by announcing
that Colombia would retaliate with 25% tariffs on US goods
<https://x.com/petrogustavo/status/1883627992150073761>.

"US products whose price will rise in the national economy should be
replaced by national production", he said, adding that "the government will
help in this goal".

Right-wing politicians in Colombia, like former presidential candidate Fico
Gutiérrez <https://x.com/FicoGutierrez/status/1883600728339681692>,
denounced Petro and obsequiously expressed support for Trump and the United
States.

"It doesn't surprise me that they kneel [before the US]", Petro shot back
at Gutiérrez.

Petro declared, "Let's fight so that poor families in Antioquia do not
offer their young daughters to the gringos
<https://x.com/petrogustavo/status/1883673839152115816>. It is a matter of
national and personal dignity".

Meanwhile, as the US government was attacking Colombia, China's ambassador
to the South American nation, Zhu Jingyang, emphasized that Beijing
supported it and defended its sovereignty.

"We are at the best moment of our diplomatic relations between China and
Colombia <https://x.com/zhu_jingyang/status/1883610027568902589>, which are
turning 45 years old", said Ambassador Zhu.
[image: petro xi china colombia]
<https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F10a751dd-e202-4949-bc7c-ce63924ca73a_1280x720.jpeg>Colombia's
President Gustavo Petro with China's President Xi Jinping in October 2023

In response to Donald Trump's threats, Colombian President Gustavo Petro
published a scathing yet poetic open letter on Twitter
<https://x.com/petrogustavo/status/1883624818811236502>. The following is
an English language translation produced by Geopolitical Economy Report:

Trump, I don't really like traveling to the US, it's a bit boring, but I
confess that there are some things that are worth it. I like going to the
Black neighborhoods of Washington. There I saw an entire fight in the US
capital between Blacks and Latinos with barricades, which seemed like
nonsense to me, because they should unite.

I confess that I like Walt Whitman, and Paul Simon, and Noam Chomsky, and
Miller.

I confess that Sacco and Vanzetti, who have my blood, in the history of the
US, they are memorable and I follow them. They were murdered, for being
labor leaders, with the electric chair, by the fascists who are in the US,
as well as in my country.

I don't like Trump’s oil; he is going to end the human species because of
greed. Maybe one day, over a drink of whiskey that I accept, despite my
gastritis, we can talk frankly about this, but it's difficult because you
consider me an inferior race, and I am not, nor is any Colombian.

So if you know someone who is stubborn, that's me, period. You can use your
economic strength and your arrogance to try to carry out a coup d’etat,
like they did with [Salvador] Allende. But I die on my own terms; I
resisted torture and I resist you.

I don't want slave-owners on the side of Colombia; we already had many and
we freed ourselves. What I want on the side of Colombia are lovers of
freedom. If you can't accompany me, I'll go elsewhere.

Colombia is the heart of the world, and you have not understood it. This is
the land of the yellow butterflies, of the beauty of Remedios, but also of
the Colonels Aureliano Buendía [a revolutionary leader in the novel One
Hundred Years of Solitude], of whom I am one, perhaps the last.

You will kill me, but I will survive in my people, which came before yours,
in the Americas. We are peoples of the winds, of the mountains, of the
Caribbean Sea, and of freedom.

You don't like our freedom, fine. I don't shake hands with white
slave-owners. I shake the hands of the white freedom-loving heirs of
[Abraham] Lincoln, and of the black and white peasants of the USA, before
whose graves I cried and prayed on a battlefield, which I reached, after
walking the mountains of Italian Tuscany and after being saved from Covid.
They are the United States, and before them I kneel, before no one else.

Overthrow me, President [Trump], and the Americas and humanity will respond.

Colombia now stops looking to the north; it looks to the world. Our blood
comes from the blood of the Caliphate of Córdoba, the civilization at that
time; of the Roman Latins of the Mediterranean, the civilization of that
time, who founded the republic; the democracy in Athens. Our blood has the
Black rebels who were turned into slaves by you.

Colombia is the first free territory of America, before Washington, of all
America. There I take shelter in its African songs. My land is made of
goldsmiths from the time of the Egyptian pharaohs, and of some of the
earliest artists in the world, in Chiribiquete.

You will never dominate us. You are opposed by the warrior who rode our
lands, shouting freedom, who is named [Simón] Bolívar.

Our people are a bit fearful, a bit timid, they are naive and kind, loving;
but they will know how to keep the Panama Canal, which you took from us
with violence. Two hundred heroes from all across Latin America lie in
Bocas del Toro, now Panama, formerly Colombia, whom you murdered.

I raise a flag and as [Jorge Eliécer] Gaitán said, even if I am alone, it
will remain hoisted with the Latin American dignity that is the dignity of
America, which your great-grandfather did not know, and mine did; you, Mr.
President, who is an immigrant in the United States.

Your blockade does not scare me; because Colombia, in addition to being the
country of beauty, is the heart of the world. I know that you love beauty
as I do; do not disrespect it and it will give you some of its sweetness.

COLOMBIA FROM TODAY ON OPENS ITSELF TO THE WHOLE WORLD, WITH OPEN ARMS; WE
ARE THE BUILDERS OF FREEDOM, LIFE, AND HUMANITY.

I am informed that you are putting a 50% tariff on the fruits of our human
labor that enter the US. I am doing the same.

Let our people plant corn that was discovered in Colombia and feed the
world.
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