Colombia’s Gustavo Petro Dares Trump: ‘Overthrow me…’

Tensions between Colombia and the United States escalated sharply on Sunday, January 26, after Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced that he would not allow US deportation flights to land in Colombia. Petro said on X, “The US cannot treat Colombian migrants like criminals…the US should establish a protocol of dignified treatment of migrants before we receive them.”

Donald Trump announced several retaliatory measures on his social media platform Truth Social in response to “Colombia’s Socialist President Gustavo Petro”. These measures include a 25% tariff on Colombian goods, which will be raised to 50% in a week, a travel ban and revocations of visas of all Colombian government officials as well as “allies and supporters”, and visa sanctions on party members, family members, and supporters of the Colombian government.

Gustavo Petro wrote a response to Trump’s punitive measures, condemning the attitude and actions of Donald Trump and referencing the historic resistance of the peoples of Colombia and all Latin America to US attempts to control and dominate. In his response, he also announced that Colombia would respond in kind with a 50% tariff to the US.

Read his whole response below:

Trump, I don’t like traveling to the U.S. much, it’s a bit boring, but I confess there are worthy things. I like to go to the Black neighborhoods of Washington. There, I saw a whole fight in the capital of the U.S. between Blacks and Latinos, with barricades, which seemed to me like nonsense, because they should unite.

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

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

I don’t like your oil, Trump, you are going to end the human species with greed. Maybe one day, along with a drink of whisky—which 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 are looking for a stubborn person, that’s me, period. You can try to stage a coup with your economic power and arrogance, like you did with Allende. But I will die by my law, I withstood torture, and I resist you. I don’t want slave owners on Colombia’s side, we already had many and we freed ourselves. Who I want to be on Colombia’s side are lovers of freedom. If you can’t join me, I will go elsewhere. Colombia is the heart of the world, and you didn’t understand it. This is the land of the yellow butterflies, the beauty of Remedios, but also of Colonel Aureliano Buendía, one of whom I am, perhaps the last.

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

You don’t like our freedom, fine. I do not shake hands with white slave owners. I shake the hands of libertarian whites, heirs of Lincoln, and of the Black and white rural boys from the U.S., in front of whose graves I cried and prayed on a battlefield, which I reached after walking through the mountains of Tuscany and after saving myself from COVID.

They are the US, and before them, I kneel, before no one else.

Overthrow me president, and the Americas and humanity will respond.

Colombia, now stop looking to the north, look to the world, our blood comes from the blood of the Caliphate of Córdoba, the civilization of that time, from the Roman Latins of the Mediterranean, the civilization of that time, who founded the republic, democracy in Athens; our blood carries the resistant Black people who were turned into slaves by you. In Colombia lies the first free territory of the Americas, before Washington, of all the Americas, I take refuge there in their African songs.

My land is of the goldsmiths that existed in the time of the Egyptian pharaohs, and of the first artists in the world in Chiribiquete.

You will never dominate us. The warrior who rode our lands, shouting freedom, and who is called Bolívar, opposes you.

Our peoples are somewhat fearful, somewhat shy, they are naive and kind, lovers, but they will know how to win back the Panama Canal, which you took from us with violence. Two hundred heroes from all over Latin America lie in Bocas del Toro, now Panama, before Colombia, whom you murdered.

I raise a flag, and as Gaitán said, even if I am alone, it will remain raised with Latin American dignity, which is the dignity of America, which your great-grandfather didn’t know, but mine did, Mr. President, immigrant in the US.

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

COLOMBIA FROM NOW ON FACES THE WHOLE WORLD, WITH OPEN ARMS, WE ARE BUILDERS OF FREEDOM, LIFE, AND HUMANITY.

I have been informed that you impose a 50% tariff on the fruit of our human labor to enter the US, I will do the same.

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