Colombia's closest neighbors are testing the international leadership to which Gustavo Petro has always aspired. Colombian diplomacy juggles a turbulent time for Latin American integration. So far in April, Mexico broke relations with Ecuador after the police assault on the North American embassy in Quito to take away former vice president Jorge Glas, a reckless action that aroused unanimous condemnation from the international community, while Venezuela and Chile have escalated their confrontation due to the presence in the southern country of the Aragua Train – which the Venezuelan Foreign Minister has come to describe as “a fiction created by the international media” – and the murky murder of a former opposition Venezuelan military officer in Santiago. Almost at the same time, Petro promised from Caracas that Colombia will work for "political peace" in Venezuela, in a visit that sought to settle the friction caused by his criticism of Chavismo's blockade of opposition candidacies ahead of the presidential elections on December 28. July.
The eyes of the world observe with a magnifying glass both Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and Daniel Noboa in Ecuador. Criticism intensifies, but few countries have as much at stake as Colombia in its foreign policy towards Caracas and Quito. These fronts of diplomatic conflict force Bogotá to seek difficult balances to avoid colliding head-on with two neighbors with which it shares porous borders and exchanges of all kinds. Petro, who has never been known for being timid in his opinions, walks in quicksand.
Maduro, the uncomfortable neighbor
The reestablishment and normalization of the always difficult relations with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela – completely broken in 2019 – was one of the early achievements of the Petro Government in 2022. The reopening of a border of more than 2,200 kilometers is underway, commercial exchange The air reconnection between Bogotá and Caracas is also advancing. The president has put the Colombian Foreign Ministry at the service of his total peace, with which he proposes to dialogue simultaneously with the ELN guerrilla, the dissidents of the extinct FARC and other criminal groups. This effort also goes through Caracas, which is the guarantor of the negotiations with the ELN and the dissidents.
Petro, who has met with Maduro six times, has long promoted Venezuela's return to the inter-American human rights system and has sought to convince Hugo Chávez's heir to negotiate an electoral solution with guarantees for the opposition. But that bet now crashes with the disqualification of María Corina Machado. The Colombian went so far as to describe this veto as an “anti-democratic coup,” which provoked a furious reaction from the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry. With this background, Petro met on Tuesday in Caracas with Maduro and the next day with Manuel Rosales, the political chameleon whom Chavismo did allow to register as a candidate – unlike the academic Corina Yoris, Machado's replacement. Petro's questions about the Venezuelan electoral system were buried for now and Colombia opened itself to the possibility of being an electoral observer, an announcement that raised suspicions.
The Colombian Government cannot do what the Chilean Government of Gabriel Boric does, much more vocal in its criticism of Maduro, clarifies political scientist Mauricio Jaramillo Jassir. “They don't assume costs nor are they as vulnerable as we are,” he points out. Petro has preserved a balance, assesses the also professor of International Relations at the Universidad del Rosario, in Bogotá. “He managed to make a criticism, very timid, but he still managed to maintain a relationship with Venezuela.”
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The president of Colombia “has coherence problems when it comes to relations with Venezuela,” an editorial in
El Espectador criticized him in contrast.
“Despite being an international defender of democracy, of the American Convention and of the organizations that monitor the protection of human rights, his constant ambivalence regarding what is happening in the neighboring country raises many concerns,” he argued. the newspaper. “Colombia seems aimed at validating an electoral pantomime,” he lamented.
“Lending to be an electoral observer is an enormous reputational risk,” agrees analyst Sergio Guzmán, director of the consulting firm Colombia Risk Analysis. “Petro basically changes his position depending on who his interlocutor is, he decides if he is harsher or more docile; and he seems more docile if he deals with Maduro,” he points out. In contrast, the first left-wing president of contemporary Colombia, a compulsive tweeter, has never shied away from confrontation with other Latin American leaders who are at ideological opposites, such as the Argentine Javier Milei or the Salvadoran Nayib Bukele. However, he has maintained a cordial relationship with Noboa.
Another problematic border
Petro, in fact, was the only head of state present last November at Noboa's investiture ceremony, even though he arrived late. The Colombian, after meeting with the Ecuadorian, trusted that they will continue developing the bilateral work agenda that was already advancing with the Government of Guillermo Lasso.
Noboa came to power in an atypical election and in the midst of an enormous security crisis. The border between Ecuador and Colombia has been a conflict zone so far this century, with the proliferation of armed groups and drug traffickers. At different times, and under different governments, friction has arisen between two countries forced to cooperate. The diplomatic rupture that was caused in 2008 by the Colombian attack that killed Raúl Reyes in the camp maintained by the then number two of the FARC on the Ecuadorian side is well remembered. Also the kidnapping and subsequent murder of three Ecuadorian journalists from the newspaper
El Comercio
,
by a dissident drug trafficking group of the FARC in April 2018.
In more recent times, Colombian hitmen were involved in the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio in the campaign that brought Noboa to power. In the midst of his exceptional measures, the young 36-year-old president threatened in January to deport 1,500 Colombian prisoners, an idea that Bogotá soon toned down. “It was just a parenthesis that speaks of a Noboa who does not understand international politics, extradition treaties or prison policy,” says Professor Jaramillo Jassir.
Faced with the violent assault of the Mexican embassy in Quito by presidential orders, on April 5, Colombia – a country with a solid tradition of political asylum, like Mexico – joined the international condemnation. “The headquarters of the diplomatic missions are sanctuaries where the host countries do not have jurisdiction, so events such as what happened in Quito are a clear violation of the sovereignty of Mexico,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement in which it also requested measures. precautionary measures to protect former vice president Jorge Glas. These are dizzying days for the chancelleries of the region.
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