Category Archives: Colombia

In Colombia, “mass mobilization” needed to counter Trump’s candidate

by Jim Hodgson

U.S. President Donald Trump has again interfered in a Latin American election, this time endorsing far-right candidate Abelardo de la Espriella in Colombia’s June 21 presidential runoff. Trump called him a “smart, strong, and tough leader” and described his opponent, Senator Iván Cepeda, as a “radical left Marxist.”

I beg to differ. Cepeda is a long-time human rights defender. My first awareness of his work dates from 2008 when he was with the National Movement of Victims of State Crimes (MOVICE). The first time that I can remember meeting him was in November 2015 at a breakfast meeting in Bogotá. By then he was a senator and had joined about 60 people from church and other civil society groups to hear reports from the peace negotiations that sputtered along in Havana ahead of the 2016 agreement.

Cepeda and de la Espriella will face each other in a second round of presidential voting on June 21. They were the top two candidates after a first round of voting May 31. De la Espriella won 44 per cent of votes, while Cepeda obtained 41 per cent. 

Petro urges mass mobilization

Colombia’s incumbent president, Gustavo Petro, swiftly condemned Trump’s backing of de la Espriella as a threat to Colombian sovereignty.

“When a country interferes in the decisions of another country, freedom dies,” Petro wrote. “I invite all of Colombia to vote in full freedom and not become either slaves or a colony of anyone.” Petro invoked Simón Bolívar and Antonio Nariño, the founding fathers of Colombian independence from Spain in the early 19th century, to draw a parallel between historical colonial subjugation and what he characterized as modern American meddling. “If the heart of the world loses its freedom and sovereignty, the hope of the world and of Colombia fades away.”

Petro had earlier cast the presidential runoff as a historic struggle between democracy and what he called “mafia fascism,” accusing de la Espriella of ties to paramilitary death squads and alleging widespread vote-buying during the first round. Petro argued that fascist movements have produced catastrophic human suffering wherever they have ruled and said Colombians have a moral obligation to defeat them at the ballot box.

For his part, Cepeda challenged his opponent to a public debate and called for an investigation into what he described as 885,000 electoral irregularities in the first-round vote, also alleging foreign interference in the election.

“Every single ant is out moving mountains”

Among international observers, Rev. Emilie Teresa Smith of the Anglican diocese of New Westminster (B.C.) said in a Facebook post June 3 that “the forces of manipulation and corruption are deep and powerful.”

She looked at the context: that Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio had already re-configured the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine and declared Abya Yala (Latin America and the Caribbean) “their territory to control, exploit and destroy.” 

Smith also pointed to the April audio leaks of Honduran leaders, including convicted drug-trafficker and former president Juan Orlando Hernández. Together these comprise “Hondurasgate,” an international conspiracy to influence the last election in Honduras and to “extend the same operation across the region, targeting the progressive governments of Latin America.”

She also wrote of preparations for the next round of voting: “Every single ant is out moving mountains.”

In its observation report, the San Francisco-based human rights group Global Exchange said that for the first time in Colombian history, the U.S. embassy sent 86 observers to the polls. Among them was Ohio Republican Senator Bernie Moreno, born in Bogotá and now a close Trump ally. Weeks earlier, he warned that Washington might refuse to recognize results if evidence of coercion emerged and conditioned future U.S. assistance explicitly on the election’s outcome. A Florida member of the House of Representatives, María Elvira Salazar, went further. She publicly endorsed de la Espriella and urged Colombians to vote for him. After the vote, Moreno reported that the elections were “completely free and well run.”

The first-round result was unexpectedly close. The vote for a third candidate, Paloma Valencia, seemed to collapse, despite backing from former hard-right president Álvaro Uribe. 

The election also had a higher voter turnout – almost 58 per cent – than any first-round vote since the new constitution came into force in 1991. To win, Cepeda will need to add to Petro’s coalition. 

“What happens in Colombia on June 21 will not stay in Colombia,” concluded the Global Exchange report. “It will send a signal to every progressive movement in the hemisphere about whether it is possible to govern — and to be succeeded — under the weight of the Donroe Doctrine.”

Santa Marta: Transitioning away from fossil fuels

By Jim Hodgson

Good news may be hard to find these days. But here’s some. Representatives from about 60 nations met in northern Colombia in April to promote a transition away from fossil fuels.

The First Conference on Transitioning away from Fossil Fuels was a response to frustration felt after recent United Nations COP climate conferences, especially the one held last November in Belém, Brazil. Potential consensus around the transition away from fossil fuels broke down in the face of lobbying by oil companies and opposition from oil-producing nations.

The conference, co-sponsored by Colombia and Netherlands, ended April 29 with a clear message: the global conversation has shifted from whether to phase out oil, gas and coal to how to do it, with financing emerging as one of the biggest obstacles. As in many such international conferences, there were pre-events that gathered people from Indigenous, religious and other sectors.

By all accounts, the gathering in Santa Marta felt different from past climate talks. 

“The mood here in Santa Marta is euphoric,” said Tzeporah Berman, the founder and chair of the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty initiative. “After years stuck in endless debates about whether to phase out fossil fuels, finally we are focusing on the how. We are no longer fighting for recognition of the problem, but creating solutions. It’s like watching a dam break – all that pent-up experience, knowledge and passion suddenly flowing into concrete ways to phase out dirty fuels. The hope is contagious.”

But participants were not unrealistic. Colombian President Gustavo Petro warned the world could “reach a point of no return” without the Amazon’s role in regulating the climate. Colombia is itself an oil-producing nation, but it has set a path of “gradual transition at home that balances climate goals with economic realities.”

Finding a good way forward requires addressing the global debt crisis. Countries in the global south that want to invest in renewable energy find themselves blocked by having to spend on high interest payments and imported fuel.

After the conference, Canadian scientist and broadcaster David Suzuki wrote: “Climate action requires unhinging power from foreign corporate privilege and putting it toward justice, democracy and the communities most affected.”

The Canadian government sent a representative: Jeanne-Marie Huddleston, Canada’s chief climate change negotiator – not a minister, but an employee of Environment Canada. Absence of a government minister was criticized (above) by Lloyd Axworthy, a former Canadian foreign minister who has emerged as a frequent critic of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s climate priorities – or lack of them.

In recent weeks, Canada has announced approval for expanding liquefied natural gas, a sovereign wealth fund — which among other things could help oil and gas projects of national interest — and its next budget looks to be cushioned by higher oil prices driven by the Iran war.

Participating states agreed to meet again in Tuvalu in early 2027, a gathering to be co-hosted by Ireland. Climate scientists and the UN have warned that the South Pacific island nation could be submerged by 2100 due to rising sea levels.

Is Trump looking for war in the south Caribbean?

by Jim Hodgson

In this decade of Donald Trump at centre-stage, it has been hard to choose a moment or an issue about which to react. The former reality TV star is an expert in deflection and distraction.

Yet some things (Israel’s genocide in Gaza is one) matter more than others. So too Trump’s threats against Venezuela.

Trump’s statement below defending extrajudicial executions shows again how little he values human life. He was responding to a question from a journalist on Oct. 23 about why he didn’t ask Congress for a declaration of war against drug cartels he claims are at war with the United States: 

“Well, I don’t think we’re gonna necessarily ask for a declaration of war, I think we’re just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. OK? We’re going to kill them. You know? They’re going to be, like dead. OK?”

Over the past two months, Trump’s assassins have killed at least 43 people and sunk ten small boats in the Caribbean and along the Pacific coast of Colombia. As Greg Grandin has documented, when the U.S. withdraws from the rest of the world, it doubles down in this hemisphere.

This time, the United States isn’t even bothering with its usual lies as it moves from a decade of sanctions (“unilateral coercive measures”) to threats of war as it presses for regime change in Venezuela. Sanctions have had devastating effects in Venezuela, according to a study conducted by the Center for Economic and Policy Research and published in August in The Lancet Global Health.

Trump’s ire is mostly directed against Venezuela, which since 1998 has refused imperial orders about oil, medical care, governance, and individualistic notions of human rights. But he has plenty left over for Colombia and Mexico.

“He’s a thug” and an “illegal drug leader,” Trump said of Colombian President Gustavo Petro. And he said Mexico is governed by drug cartels, even while expressing respect for President Claudia Sheinbaum.

The text below is translated and lightly adapted from an Oct. 25 editorial in the Mexico City daily La Jornada.

Washington seeks war

The Trump administration is sending increasingly alarming signals about its determination to attack Venezuela to impose regime change and install a puppet administration. Trump uses a “combination of threats of armed action and economic extortion” to support right-wing politicians in Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, El Salvador and now Bolivia “to facilitate the rise or consolidation of the far right throughout the hemisphere.”

On Oct. 24, his “War Department” announced the deployment of an aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, and its strike group to the U.S. Southern Command—that is, the southern Caribbean and northern South America. This entails the presence of the aircraft carrier itself, the 75 aircraft it carries, and the full range of necessary operations: three destroyers, a replenishment ship, a dry cargo ship, and a Coast Guard cutter. The Gerald R. Ford alone carries 4,600 military personnel, in addition to the crews of auxiliary vessels. 

The argument that all these vessels are being deployed with the goal of “dismantling Designated Terrorist Organizations (DTOs) and countering narco-terrorism in defence of the homeland” doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. First of all, they could be deployed off the US coast, thereby reducing the cost of maintaining long supply chains and avoiding diplomatic friction. 

The thousands of soldiers already sent to the Caribbean could have provided a much greater service to their homeland by monitoring land and air points of entry, where narcotics actually enter the United States. Instead of spending billions of dollars operating its fleets abroad, Washington could gain vast resources by combating money laundering within its own financial system, where authorities estimate that organized crime launders $300 billion annually. If traffickers were unable to collect and move the profits from their activities, they would be immediately paralyzed. But it is clear that the White House is not interested in the health of its citizens or the legality of the money circulating through its banks.

The bellicose tone of this escalation is so evident that even Brazilian President Luiz Inácio da Silva (Lula—who is not friendly to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro) criticized the U.S. bombing of boats in the Caribbean, noting that “if it becomes fashionable, everyone will believe they can invade someone else’s territory and do whatever they want,” thus turning the region into a lawless land. 

Lula’s special advisor and former Foreign Minister Celso Amorim warned that external intervention, whether armed or through intelligence services, is not the way to decide who will govern Venezuela, a problem that concerns only Venezuelans. He also warned of the danger of setting South America ablaze and leading to the radicalization of politics throughout the continent. At the same time, Washington is making clear its longing to empower the Colombian oligarchy in Bogotá, always ready to follow its directives and make the Andean-Caribbean territory available to its troops and spy agencies. 

In this regard, Trump escalated his attacks against President Gustavo Petro and imposed sanctions for “allowing drug cartels to flourish and refusing to stop this activity.” No evidence was presented, which is what happens in his constant diatribes against Mexico, Venezuela, and other nations whose governments protect their independence and sovereignty.

In South America, there is no war that justifies besieging the subcontinent with a series of attacks. But it becomes increasingly clear that the White House is determined to start a conflagration, no matter how absurd its pretexts. 

The international community, and particularly Latin American and Caribbean societies, must join forces in rejecting Trump’s attempt to plunge the region into barbarism in order to divert attention from his own ineptitude and hand over vast amounts of money to the military-industrial complex, the only sector whose prosperity apparently interests the U.S. president.

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Here’s a way to keep up with Trump’s threats and responses from Caribbean and Latin American political and social movement leaders. The Center for Economic Policy and Research (CEPR) has been a good source of information on U.S. intervention in the region for decades.