Petro and López Obrador call on Latin American presidents to rethink drug policy

Colombia and Mexico will call on the rest of Latin America to change the focus of the failed war on drugs, one of Gustavo Petro's obsessions.

The Colombian president, visiting the Mexican capital, had anticipated that he wanted to propose this Friday to his counterpart Andrés Manuel López Obrador to hold a large conference of leaders of the region regarding a profound reform, and a joint statement from the foreign ministries has confirmed, without great details, that it will have the purpose of "redesigning and rethinking drug policy."

The Mexican government also agreed to join the dialogue table with the guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN) as a guarantor country, the statement said.

After a meeting of several hours that he described as "fertile", Petro celebrated on his social networks that they had reached "concrete agreements" in terms of sovereignty, integration, development and migration.

"If I had to summarize in one word what the relationship is like between our peoples and with the Government of the President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, I would say: brotherhood," López Obrador wrote for his part.

Both accompanied their publications with photos of their meeting in the corridors of the National Palace, amid paintings and murals by Diego Rivera.

Petro's first official visit as head of state to Mexico comes amid the advance of the left in Latin America, a new progressive axis propped up by Lula da Silva's electoral victory in Brazil.

It also occurs on the eve of the restart of the dialogues in Mexico City between the Venezuelan government and the opposition that seek to set a date for presidential elections with guarantees for all.

Both Petro and López Obrador have worked hard to get the parties to sit down at the table again.

The Colombian, who has just passed the threshold of his first 100 days in power, also promotes Venezuela's return to the inter-American human rights system.

In the diplomatic framework of the region, Petro has put the Colombian Foreign Ministry at the service of peace, and is advancing in the "normalization" of relations with neighboring Venezuela, after years of tensions.

The government of Nicolás Maduro, for its part, is one of the guarantor countries of the peace process with the ELN guerrillas, together with Cuba and Norway.

The delegates at that dialogue table, which started this week in Caracas, announced this Friday that they have just invited Mexico, Brazil and Chile to join the process as new guarantor countries.

Mexico's acceptance opens the door for it to host the next cycle of negotiations.

Petro, who had already held a meeting with the Colombian community on Thursday upon his arrival in Mexico City, has said that migration, anti-drug policy and the climate crisis are the agendas that Latin America must build.

Those were the main issues that he discussed with López Obrador.

In his two speeches with the most international echo, before the United Nations General Assembly and the climate summit in Egypt, the Colombian leader has bluntly described as a failure both the fight against climate change and the "irrational" war on drugs, two global issues that obsess him.

The president of Colombia, the world's largest producer of coca leaf and cocaine, is insistently calling for a reversal in anti-narcotics efforts.

Petro has asked to stop criminalizing the weakest links in the chain, coca growers, and focus efforts on hitting criminal organizations that profit from drug trafficking.

This call has already obtained the support of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, to which both former Colombian presidents César Gaviria (1990-1994) and Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018) and Mexican Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000) belong. , and also from the Puebla Group, which brings together progressive leaders from Latin America.

The former mayor of Bogotá was declared this Friday a distinguished guest of Mexico City and met with Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, who starts as a favorite on the list of possible successors to López Obrador.

On Saturday, he will visit the consulate in the Mexican capital to address complaints from Colombian travelers who say they felt kidnapped by immigration authorities.

The so-called little room in Mexico's airports, where people are held before being admitted or returned to their countries, has long caused friction with several South American countries.

Bogotá has protested on several occasions against the non-admissions, which this year total almost 22,000 Colombians.

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