Maduro, before Petro: "Colombia and Venezuela have a common destiny"

Nicolás Maduro and Gustavo Petro finally met in person.

At the funeral of Hugo Chávez, when one was foreign minister and the other mayor of Bogotá, they briefly greeted each other.

Now they put on real faces and shook hands.

It is a first contact of a path that the two presidents recognize as difficult, but without turning back.

After six years without a bilateral meeting, Maduro and Petro shared several hours this Tuesday in Caracas.

"Colombia and Venezuela have a common destiny," said Maduro, the first to speak before the media.

The Chavista leader has advanced his next "reconciliation" with the inter-American human rights system, a direct request from Petro.

They are two men who need each other.

Maduro wants to rejoin the international scene after five years apart and accused of not respecting human rights.

This is a unique opportunity for him.

Petro wants to build his international image here, in a place where he can really influence.

He wants Maduro to return to Latin American institutions and sit down again at the negotiating table in Mexico.

Washington trusts the Colombian president to convince the Chavista leader that it is time to begin a transition - or a reverse gear - towards democracy.

The president of Colombia finds himself in the middle of two loyalties, and he intends to profit from it.

After years of accusations that he, as a former guerrilla, was a secret Chavista, he tries to play the role of negotiator, with a date on the horizon: 2024, when presidential elections are due to be held in Venezuela.

The international community wants the opposition to be able to dispute free elections with Maduro.

Petro came with the intention of buying Monómeros, a Venezuelan fertilizer company that years ago was jointly owned.

He didn't get it.

Venezuela bought it from Álvaro Uribe and managed it until the US supported the alternative government of Juan Guaidó and handed over its management to the opposition.

It has been a real disaster, the company is corroded by cases of corruption.

Petro returned it to the Chavista government when he won the presidency and had between eyebrows and eyebrows to buy it to boost the Colombian countryside with cheaper fertilizers.

Maduro, for now, resists.

He is a slow and patient negotiator.

Time seems stopped in the Miraflores Palace.

Petro, on the other hand, is only four years old and his chores pile up on his desk.

He returns to Bogotá without the control of a company that he considered fundamental,

Maduro had planned to show Petro the remains of Simón Bolívar in the national pantheon, according to Venezuelan government sources, but a delay in the arrival of Petro's plane made the visit impossible.

Lunch between them lasted an hour.

The president of Colombia, who was received with an orchestra, brought him a vase and a Caribbean hammock, where García Márquez's characters take a siesta.

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