By MANUEL RUEDA
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Colombian president Gustavo Petro on Tuesday lashed out at the U.S. government after it added Colombia to a list of nations failing to cooperate in the drug war for the first time in three decades.
In a message on his X account, the leftist leader accused the United States of seeking to “participate” in Colombian politics and looking for a “puppet president” as the country prepares for presidential elections next year.
“The Colombian people will reply if they want a puppet president…or a free and sovereign nation” Petro wrote, adding in another message that he would not let his nation “kneel” to U.S. interests and allow peasants who grow coca to get “beaten up.”
On Monday, the Trump administration designated Colombia as a country that is failing to meet its international commitments to fight drug trafficking and blamed the Colombian government for a lack of progress in the fight against the cocaine trade.
The designation, known as decertification, is a stunning rebuke for a traditional U.S. ally. It comes amid a recent surge in cocaine production and fraying ties between the White House and Colombia’s first leftist president.
Even as the U.S determined that Colombia has failed to comply with international anti-narcotics obligations, the Trump administration issued a waiver of sanctions that would have triggered major aid cuts.
On Tuesday, the charge d’affaires at the U.S. embassy in Bogota, John McNamara, said that consular services, humanitarian projects and defense cooperation would not be affected by Colombia’s decertification.
“We are going to do everything we can to fight with the Colombian people against the global threat” of drugs, McNamara told Colombian radio station Blu.
Colombia’s decertification comes as cocaine production skyrockets in the South American country.
The amount of land dedicated to cultivating coca, the base ingredient of cocaine, has almost tripled in the past decade to a record 253,000 hectares in 2023, according to the latest report available from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.
Petro, a former rebel himself, also has angered senior U.S. officials by denying American extradition requests as well as criticizing the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and its efforts to combat drug trafficking in neighboring Venezuela.
The Colombian president has also said that whisky kills more people than cocaine, and claimed that the reason wealthy countries like the United States want to crack down on cocaine is because its produced in Latin America.
Sandra Borda, an international relations professor at Bogota’s Los Andes University said that Colombia’s decertification is unlikely to affect efforts to take on drug traffickers in Colombia, because military cooperation is expected to continue.
However she expects tensions between the governments of the U.S. and Colombia to increase, as Petro uses Colombia’s decertification to tap into anti-American sentiment and rally his supporters ahead of next year’s elections.
“There has been a difficult relationship” between the Petro and Trump administrations, she explained. “You have statements and declarations that are not friendly and I think what you are going to see is an escalation of that.”
In the Presidential Determination submitted to Congress on Monday, the Trump administration mostly blamed Petro for the rise of cocaine production in Colombia, describing his efforts to negotiate peace deals with “narco terrorist groups” as a failure.
The report said that Colombia’s security institutions and municipal authorities have shown “skill and courage” in confronting drug traffickers, but said that “the failure of Colombia to meet its drug control obligations over the past year rests solely with its political leadership.”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio also commented on Colombia’s decertification on Tuesday.
“Colombia has been a great partner historically,” Rubio told reporters. “But they have a president now who in addition to being erratic has not been a very good partner when it comes to taking on drug cartels.”
Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
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