Gustavo Petro (Colombia's President had a few words to say, he's a bit pissed to say the least-
I don’t know if Maduro is good or bad, not even if he’s a drug trafficker; in the files of the Colombian justice system, after half a century of dealing with the biggest cocaine mafias, the names of Nicolás Maduro or Cilia Flores don’t appear. Those who have come forward to denounce him are Venezuelan opposition generals, nothing more, seeking to topple the popular vote.
The judicial power in Colombia doesn’t belong to me; it’s independent of me, and my opposition largely handles it.
If one wants to know about the mafia and the business of cocaine commercialization, just look at Colombia’s judicial files.
That’s why I deeply reject Trump speaking without knowing; my name doesn’t appear in the judicial files on drug trafficking over 50 years, neither from before nor from the present. Stop slandering me, Mr. Trump. That’s not how you threaten a Latin American president who emerged from the armed struggle and then from the people of Colombia’s fight for Peace.
I was part of the clandestine organization that fought for democracy in Colombia against the civil dictatorship of the "State of Emergency." The organization that in 1974, long before Chávez, carried out the operation to raise Bolívar’s sword once more, who said he would never sheathe it until injustice ended in Gran Colombia. I was with the M19 that made the first peace in contemporary Latin America.
He doesn’t read Colombia’s history, and that’s why he fails when he criticizes us. He should only meet with his officers who are experts in drug investigations in Colombia, whom I’ve helped with my own investigations as a senator of the Republic from Colombia’s Left and its people, who have suffered the narco genocide and its political allies, who are also allies of the American far right.
Tens of thousands of our comrades from the armed and popular struggle for democracy were assassinated, and we didn’t go begging you for invasions; we endured and won through Peace.
I’ve never burned a U.S. flag because I’ve read the history of the popular and workers’ struggles in the U.S. through Zinn’s books in Spanish. And that’s why I honor the American working people, the Black and Indigenous people, the young soldiers who, alongside the Soviets, defeated Hitler.
And that’s why I dared to speak on a street in New York in front of the United Nations building and under U.S. law that protects the opinions of those attending the United Nations Assembly to speak freely. I spoke against the genocide in Gaza—how I would have loved to accompany you to make peace in Gaza! Where the Palestinians love me, and perhaps if instead of going to capture a Latin American president with small controls on oil because you blocked the oil and condemned us to hunger and unleashed the exodus that reached your own country, I would have accompanied you to capture Netanyahu, the genocidaire.
For what I said, you took the arrogance to punish my opinion, my words against the Palestinian genocide. Your punishment is to falsely accuse me of being a drug trafficker and having cocaine factories; I don’t have a car, nor estates abroad—my house I’m still paying off to the bank with my salary. It’s unjust, and I fight against injustices.
I’m friends with a lot of people in the U.S. who stop me on the streets, surround me with their arms.
That’s why I respect the history that began with Washington and Bolívar together; they gave each other things, they were liberators more than enslavers.
I learned not to be a slave, and I reject your phrases assigning us unilaterally as your domain’s territory; we Latin Americans are republicans and independent, and many of us revolutionaries. Don’t think Latin America is just a nest of criminals poisoning your people—respect us and read our history, which dates back 30,000 years across all of America. I read your history to understand you. Don’t see drug traffickers where there are only genuine warriors for Democracy and Freedom.
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