Category Archives: Colombia

Colombia’s Gustavo Petro seeks to contain the growth of “hyper-fascism” in Latin America

by Jim Hodgson

During a visit last week to Mexico City, Colombia’s former president Gustavo Petro declared he would work with others to prevent “hyper-fascism” and “techno-fascism” from taking control of all Latin America.

He met with President Claudia Sheinbaum in the National Palace (above); spoke with students at Mexico’s National Autonomous University on economic policy in the climate crisis; met with Colombians living in Mexico; and sat down for an interview with Miguel Ángel Velázquez of La Jornada daily newspaper.

In that interview, Petro spoke of his complicated relationship with the administration of Donald Trump. The two have differed sharply over Israel’s treatment of Palestine, climate justice, relations with Venezuela and Cuba, and the U.S. “war” on drugs.

Petro’s four-year presidential term ended on Aug. 7 when his hard-right successor, Abelardo de la Espriella was sworn in. Petro had been Colombia’s first president from a party of the left. He had tried (unsuccessfully) to bring about “total peace” in a country torn for decades by civil war and violence tied to drug-trafficking. It was Jan. 3, when the United States kidnapped Petro’s Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolás Maduro, that fear set in.

“After the crucial day, when they bombed Caracas, Trump said: ‘Watch your back, because now I’m coming for Petro.’ That day I thought: ‘A missile is coming for me.’”

After talks among diplomats and with Republicans in the U.S. congress, Petro and Trump met in the White House on Feb. 3. Trump called the conversation “terrific.” Petro said it was “constructive.” (In the La Jornada interview, Petro added that others behind Trump “worse than him” are driving the key decisions.)

Their rapprochement did not last. In Colombia’s presidential election, Trump and his officials backed de la Espriella, calling the other candidate, human rights defender Iván Cepeda, a “radical left Marxist.” This was one more instance of U.S. interference in Latin American elections (after a presidential vote in Honduras and mid-term contests in Argentina). 

Now, countries from Argentina and Chile to El Salvador and Trinidad and Tobago have governments of the hard-right that are solidly attached to Trump’s agenda. The next election to watch is in Brazil next month, where progressive President Luiz Inácio (Lula) da Silva faces Flávio Bolsonaro, son of disgraced former president Jair Bolsonaro.

Across the region, right-wing parties are backed by a large-scale disinformation network, La Derecha Diario (“The Right Wing Daily”). A failed murder-for-hire plot in Bolivia has drawn wider attention to the network’s activities. 

In his interview with La Jornada, Petro spoke of his vision of the political moment: 

“We live in a planetary shell; it’s the matrix of lies. We act like in The Matrix, like in the movie. Suddenly you find a bot farm. It’s not made up of human beings, but rather profiles that automatically react to any Latin American leader because they want to degrade political discourse and reduce it to insults. That’s why I call it the matrix of lies. In this shell of falsehood, some parts escape because they are strong, like states, but the intention of this matrix is ​​to enslave human beings, and it’s not just a physical chain, but a mental one, to enslave human beings to allow the exploitation of non-renewable natural resources, for example.”

Petro explained the counterattack: “Mathematics is required, because it’s a mathematical, algorithmic attack, both in the bots used to manipulate human beings and in the elections themselves and their final results.”

In a subsequent editorial, La Jornada wrote:

“Petro’s contribution to the political debate serves as a wake-up call to increase vigilance regarding foreign agents who exploit communication tools such as social media to promote neo-fascist rhetoric, spread misinformation, incite hatred, and manipulate electorates to benefit their external and internal sponsors – namely, the White House and a sector of big business resistant to democracy. 

“Alongside the bleak picture he paints, there is a message of hope. In his country in 2022, the people elected the first progressive government in history, and this experience cannot be seen as a failure. Societies are not defenseless against technofascism, he says, because they can protect themselves with strong minds and with the same resources used by oppressors: mathematics. Education is fundamental to the resistance that he joins and invites others to join.”

Yes. And, to me, hope is in revival of the networks of social movements that gave rise to the “pink wave” of progressive governments a quarter-century ago.

A postscript: In a Labour Day essay, Canadian politician and activist Charlie Angus offered a similarly sharp warning about the power of the big-tech corporations in the Trump White House. He recalled that in his farewell address, Joe Biden warned that the Silicon Valley elite were capable of destroying democracy and damaging the future.

Javier Giraldo and “community ways of thinking”

“The killers did not seek to kill individuals, but rather to destroy community ways of thinking.”

Javier Giraldo, a Jesuit priest, was speaking of the paramilitary death squads and their allies in the official armed forces who did most of the killing during Colombia’s decades-long civil war. “This was their project since the sixties.” The paramilitaries were created by forces of greed – the large land-holders and industrialists – who demanded the land and fealty of impoverished people who had learned over centuries to support each other in community.

We had gathered on a Sunday evening in November 2019 to witness the presentation of a report to the chair of Colombia’s Truth Commission, Francisco de Roux, also a Jesuit. We met in an auditorium of the seventeenth-century Colegio San Bartolomé. It sits on a corner of Bogotá’s Plaza Bolívar, roughly between the national congress building and the cathedral. This was three years after ratification of the peace agreement between the government and the largest guerrilla army. 

The event mourned the victims of war but also celebrated decades of work for peace with justice and the investigations then underway into past crimes. The report, “Blood of Martyrs, Seeds of Liberation,” was prepared by the Mesa Ecuménica por la Paz (MEP), an ecumenical peace movement supported by The United Church of Canada and the KAIROS Canada ecumenical coalition.

Padre Javier died Tuesday (Aug. 25): 82 years of age, 61 of them among the Jesuits, 50 years a priest. After surviving countless death threats, he died quietly in hospital.

“Arm yourselves, leave, or be killed”

Javier Giraldo was partly responsible for my first visit to Colombia in 1993. He led a group of Roman Catholic religious communities called the Inter-Congregational Commission for Justice and Peace (known as Justicia y Paz). Later, after tension with conservative bishops, the group became the Inter-Church Commission for Justice and Peace. 

Months before our 1993 visit, Justicia y Paz had presented a report on the growth of paramilitary activity in the mountains of Santander department. It compiled testimonies that showed how paramilitary groups – backed by the Colombian armed forces – were imposing control in the region. In the early 1990s, I was working with the Canadian Council of Churches as its ecumenical education and communication secretary. My colleagues at the Inter-Church Committee for Human Rights in Latin America (ICCHRLA) invited me to join a small delegation that would show solidarity with affected communities and amplify the findings of the Justicia y Paz report.

From people who had been displaced from their land, and from people who lived in fear of displacement, we learned of the paramilitary strategy. People were given three options: join the paramilitaries, leave or be killed. In 1993, the number of displaced in Colombia was around 200,000. 

Over time, the paramilitary strategy we witnessed in Santander was imposed on most of the country. My work with the United Church brought me back in 2001 and the number of displaced was two million. (During that visit, I met Fr. Javier again; because of threats, he was sheltered within a maze of connected churches and schools in central Bogotá.) By the time of my last visit in 2019, more than eight million people had been displaced.

In 1986, large land-owners had thirty-six per cent of the land; by 2011, they controlled 53.6 per cent of the land.

The violence

Media depictions of Colombians, with the drug lord Pablo Escobar as an archetype, have not served its people well. Yes, the violence is real. I think each of the Colombians I know has been touched within their immediate families by war and crime. A child watches a man be murdered in their father’s apartment. A teenager is witness to the killing of another teen and the whole family flees to Venezuela. A middle-class family surrenders its modest savings to extortion after a parent is kidnapped by one of the guerrilla armies. A local bank manager becomes aware that the security firm that delivers cash to the ATMs is pilfering money, and that senior management allows them to do so; he and his family leave for Canada. While I talk with a human rights defender in Bogotá, I am distracted by the bullet hole in her office window. 

But Colombia also produces countless stories of people who work for justice, peace and reconciliation within and among communities. Against all odds, they restore “community ways of thinking.” At all stages of my decades of travel in Colombia, there was time for friendship: a coffee, una cerveza, a conversation, dancing, or a hike in the hills above Bogotá. And now, after more than sixty years of war and despite a new crop of hard-right politicians, they’re still working toward “total peace.” 

Fr. Javier is mourned by many and will be missed, but there are thousands more inspired by his vision who will carry on the labour for peace with justice.

In reading many tributes yesterday and this morning, I am struck by his impact far beyond the Catholic religious communities. Here is what Bishop Luis Andres Caicedo of the Colombian Methodist Church wrote in a Facebook post:

“To follow the path of Father Javier Giraldo is to understand that peace is not built from silence in the face of injustice, but from truth, dignity and commitment with those who have suffered most. 

“May his path continue to engage us and our commitment to peace be also a commitment to justice and life.”

U.S. interference mars Latin American elections

by Jim Hodgson

As I write, Colombians and Peruvians await confirmation of a victor after presidential election day results proved too close to call.

Like mid-term elections in Argentina last October and the Honduras election in November, Colombia’s vote was marred by overt U.S. interference. 

On June 21, Colombians had to choose between a progressive human rights defender, Iván Cepeda, and a far-right political new-comer, Abelardo de la Espriella. Cepeda would continue current President Gustavo Petro’s commitment to achieving peace with several armed groups that have so far resisted joining a prolonged peace process.

As Colombians headed for the polls, I received an email from Dayana Mosquera, Colombia consultant at Global Exchange: 

In recent days, foreign figures have openly inserted themselves into Colombia’s campaign. 

It began in Washington. President Trump posted his “Complete and Total Endorsement” on Truth Social, and de la Espriella answered on X, casting the two countries as “sister nations” bound to defend Western civilization. A chorus followed. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whom de la Espriella met privately this year, said Washington would be “very forceful in guaranteeing” a free and fair vote. U.S. Representative María Elvira Salazar urged Colombians to rally behind him.

It did not stop there. Beyond Washington, de la Espriella has secured the unconditional support of other leaders including Presidents Daniel Noboa of Ecuador, José Antonio Kast of Chile and Argentina’s Javier Milei, who interpreted the result as a rejection of the “failed socialist model” and said the forces of freedom across the region were watching and lending their support. From Madrid, Vox leader Santiago Abascal said Colombians could recover the “sovereignty taken from them.” 

Each framed it the same way: as a defense of Colombia’s freedom and even its sovereignty. 

That is the contradiction at the heart of this election. Sovereignty and freedom are not gifts foreign politicians can hand a country by meddling in its vote. They are the very things such interference denies. Nor is this happening in isolation. 

Since Trump reshaped American politics, a familiar style has spread: elections become contests to be won by any means, opponents are cast as enemies, and institutions are treated as obstacles. That style is no longer staying home. It is carried across borders by a networked right, by officials willing to amplify it, and by compliant allies in the region eager to satisfy Washington for their own gain. This weekend, Colombia is where the line is drawn.

Next target for the far-right will be Brazil, where presidential elections are set for October.

Crime and the far-right backlash

In Peru, voters have waited since June 7 for a final result. Keiko Fujimori – daughter of a former dictator – faced Roberto Sánchez who served as foreign minister under former president Pedro Castillo, elected in 2021 but forced from office in December 2022. 

Like Castillo, Sánchez wears a traditional hat popular in rural parts of Peru. He says his hat serves as “the expression of all hats and of the diversity” of Peru. His economic proposals differ from the “market-friendly,” neo-liberal policies applied in recent decades by most Peruvian leaders. He has said he would renegotiate contracts with mining companies, saying that the state should collect more taxes. He has also said that rural communities should own a share of the mines operating in their territory and that he opposes open-pit operations.

Fujimori ran on a law-and-order platform, promising to deploy the military in prisons and on borders. In Peru, where extortion has increased fivefold in the past five years, the approach won votes, as it did in February in Costa Rica in February. Shaken by higher levels of drug-related killings, Costa Ricans chose conservative Laura Fernández for her tough-on-crime platform. 

To an extent, these right-wing politicians draw inspiration (and slogans) from El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, another Trump ally. His heavy-handed security strategies have seen tens of thousands of young men imprisoned without due process, and have targeted environmental protectors (the Santa Marta 5) and human rights defenders like Ruth López Alfaro.

Proposals from the centre and left for community violence prevention programs, better police training, and prison and judicial reforms, show results over years. But the right uses crime as an emotional rallying cry. Their short-term security strategies promise to make people feel safe soon. They come with a high price to human rights and democracy, but to people who live with real fear on a daily basis, those values seem abstract. 

Meanwhile, another right-wing strong man, Daniel Noboa, holds power in Ecuador, neighbour to Peru and Colombia. A week ago, he declared a new 60-day state of emergency across ten provinces and several additional municipalities on Tuesday, suspending constitutional rights and authorizing security forces to conduct searches of private homes without a judicial warrant when organized crime is suspected. His decree came shortly after a meeting at the Pentagon with U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to discuss joint military operations.

Trump officials, including his ambassadors, insist on such joint operations, often with the threat of acting unilaterally if governments do not comply – and the example of U.S.-government-sponsored killings of more than 200 people in aerial attacks on small boats in international waters that are alleged (without evidence) to be carrying illegal drugs.

As a result, the centre-left government of Guatemala declared a state of emergency to crack down on gang violence this year and welcomed Trump’s “help” targeting drug traffickers.

In Mexico, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was found to be working hand-in-hand with the conservative government of the northern border state of Chihuahua – without the knowledge of the federal government – after two agents were killed in a car crash. As that scandal exploded in Mexico, the U.S. government launched indictments against the governor and other officials of Sinaloa state, and sought their extradition. 

In an editorial, La Jornada newspaper described these events as “heavily charged acts of political interference, compounded, to top it off, with an implicit threat.”