Without papers to rely on, in jeans and a guayabera, Gustavo Petro proposed at the XXVIII Ibero-American Summit that is being held in the Dominican Republic to deepen the Ibero-American union with pacts against climate change.
“Our vision of integration is more rhetorical than anything else.
Europe's is concrete, ours discursive.
We talk a lot, but in practice, we do little for true integration.
We have to integrate through clean energy,” he said.
The president of Colombia spoke before the 21 remaining countries just after the intervention of Gabriel Boric, president of Chile.
His were two speeches less corseted than the previous ones, those of the Argentine Alberto Fernández and the Bolivian Luis Arce.
Petro began his speech by highlighting that among the 13 presidents present there was only one woman, Xiomara Castro, president of Guatemala: "Many gentlemen, few ladies."
He started with one of his favorite topics, climate change, which he described as an "existential threat to humanity."
He relied on scientists to ensure that by 2070 the continent will be an "unfit" space for human life and that these effects are already noticeable due to the exodus of people to the north.
“That migration faces machine guns, walls, jails.
That is the destruction of the democratic project”.
He revealed that he has asked the President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, for a summit with other American countries on the issue of migration, to be held in Mexico City.
He did not forget Pedro Castillo, the former Peruvian president imprisoned for a failed coup that he spoke in a televised message to the entire nation.
In the hours that followed, he was arrested and removed from office by Congress.
Petro considers that it was Castillo who actually suffered a blow.
“Today it should be here, they took it out.
He is in jail, ”he complained.
At the horseshoe-shaped table where the politicians sat was the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Peru, who must not have liked those words very much.
Somehow she linked that matter with Venezuela and her reluctance to enter regional control bodies.
Before him, Boric said that he called Volodimir Zelensky to show his support for "the tragedy that the Ukrainian people are experiencing."
Petro acknowledged that Russia was an invasion, but that there have been other invasions that have not been condemned with the same harshness.
“All made by oil,” he added, in a clear reference to the United States.
Washington was not spared from the president's darts, as is often the case when participating in a summit.
He accused the North American country of promoting a war on drugs that Nixon started 50 years ago that has only brought pain and death to Latin America.
"A disaster", in his own words.
He said that this is not a Colombian issue, but a global one, which is why he urges an international conference on drugs to change the current approach, which clearly has not worked.
"These illegal organizations (the cartels) are stronger than some states."
Colombian President Gustavo Petro, at the Ibero-American Summit being held in the Dominican Republic. FEDERICO PARRA (AFP)
He returned repeatedly to the climate crisis and his idea of taking care of the Amazon with money that comes from the richest countries, which at the same time are the ones that produce the most Co2.
He explained that he himself is going to take the initiative by allocating 150 million dollars to pay settler families who live there to take care of the jungle and stop cutting it down.
"Let's try it out," he said.
He returned to one of the ideas in which he believes the most, the American convention, which has disappeared today.
He believes that it is time to promote it now that there is a "democratic spring" in the region, in reference to the victory in several countries of progressive presidents, or at least those who declare themselves to be on the left.
He went back 30 years to the coup against Salvador Allende, a dark moment in Latin America.
“I took up arms during that period”, he recalled his guerrilla past.
Petro arrived a day late to the summit.
The presidents stayed waiting for him on Friday, while he personally negotiated a reform of the health system, one of the most important changes he wants to make in the country.
The meeting in the Dominican Republic lays the foundations for a rapprochement between Latin America and Europe with a view to the Spanish presidency of the Council of the EU.
Former Chilean Foreign Minister Andrés Allamand, who holds the Ibero-American Secretariat, said that this was the opportunity to generate an agenda for the future so that the continents work together on problems such as climate change, which he described as "an existential threat to humanity."
He called on the 22 countries that make up the community to seek concrete results that have "a positive impact on the quality of life of Ibero-Americans."
However, the nations failed to agree on their proposal to reform the world financial market, a document that sought to facilitate access to credit and serve, incidentally, as a guide to the Brazilian presidency of the G-20 in 2024.
Petro will hold several bilateral meetings throughout the day.
He will meet with the President of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and with the Vice President of the European Commission, the Spanish Josep Borrell.
On the air is a meeting with Miguel Díaz-Canel, president of Cuba.
What is confirmed is that he will be invited by Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish president, to a forum of progressive governments in which one of his favorite topics, the sustainable agenda, will be discussed.
When he finished his speech, he walked around the summit area smiling, convinced that he had given a good speech.
It looked like the one he gave at the UN Assembly in New York, but above all it looked like him, the leftist, anti-imperialist Petro, who never referred to Spain or his European presidency.
To the Petro of the youth more than to the president.
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